Can Open, Worms Everywhere!

A few issues back, Card Player columnist Mike O'Malley described a situation that occurred in a $20-$40 hold'em game ("The One-Card Button," Oct. 8, 2004), a situation that resulted in a ruling from the floor, and asked the question: Was this a good decision? Inasmuch as I am a Card Player reader as well as contributor, and since the question was put to the general readership, I would like to weigh in.

Here is the situation: There is sixway preflop action. On the flop, five players check to the button, who has been drinking and playing loosely. He bets, and everyone calls. On the turn, everyone again checks to the button, who suddenly announces: "It might be a good time to look at my hand!" He then discovers that he is in possession of one and only one holecard. Undaunted, he proclaims that one card is all he needs, and puts out a bet. The next player quickly raises, whereupon the dealer stops the action and calls for a floorman to make a ruling. When the floorman arrives, one player expresses the opinion that the live one should be able to play with only one card if he so chooses. Other players voice agreement. The floorman gleans that these players don't want to "upset" the live one, and not wanting to upset them, he simply overrides the applicable rule – the one that plainly states that a player in this spot has a dead hand. This brings us to the question Mike O'Malley posed.

No, this was not a good decision; in fact, the floorman's reasons (as conveyed by O'Malley) fail to make sense even on their own terms. As a result, he's opened a very messy can of worms. If that were the only problem, however, I'd have simply rolled my eyes, turned the page, and forgotten all about it. My reason for wanting to address this matter has to do with a much more fundamental issue – namely, the appropriate limits of the floor's discretionary power. Unfortunately, the principle of discretion remains vague and ill-defined in the minds of many who wield it, leading to abuse of a power that was intended to correct abuse. But let's start at the beginning.

According to O'Malley, the floorman concluded that to kill the player's hand would have been to "make a decision solely on the rules, without taking anything else into account." Right away, we're in muddy, worm-infested waters, for what this approach misses is the fact that some rules are general and others are situation-specific, and the latter type already describe which factors are to be "taken into account." They're written in phrases like, "If A, then B … " and "if, however, a player has done X, then Y." These rules are self-contained; if they weren't, individual floormen would be free to factor in details so extraneous as to raise serious conflict-of-interest questions. And speaking of extraneous factors, here's a beauty: "In this case, the entire table wanted to allow the player to play with one card. Allowing (him) to play … kept everyone happy, even the player who was at a disadvantage."

The can opens, and the first worm slithers out. How was it determined that the "entire table" wanted him to play? In the original description of events, we were told that one player voiced this opinion, and that "other players said the same thing." That hardly sounds unanimous; it simply means that some players voiced an opinion, while others abstained. Does silence constitute consent, or is there another possibility? In case you're wondering why a player might refrain from casting a vote in this absurd election, the answer is simple: He's in the middle of a poker hand – and poker is a positional game! If this floorman is so eager to expand his considerations beyond the realm of the stuffy old rules, he should expand them to consider this: that voicing an opinion in the middle of action could put a player in the position of betraying information about the strength or weakness of his hand! This would be especially true if the opinion a player expressed struck an opponent as uncharacteristic. Oops, here comes another squiggly night crawler. Even a player's silence could betray him – again, if silence amid controversy was out of character for that particular player. Also, isn't it possible that some players simply assumed that despite all of this preliminary nonsense, sanity would prevail and the floorman would be bound by principle to apply the applicable rule – in which case, there was no need to tip their hand by voicing an opinion, dissenting or otherwise?

Don't look now, but the worms are spreading. Regarding the contention that "even the player at a disadvantage was happy" – hadn't he been drinking? What if, after he sobers up, he decides that he was taken advantage of? Frankly, I think his case will be stronger than the one he made while lobbying to play with one card. After all, is the floorman's job to "make everyone happy," including indulging them in drunken requests, or is his job to enforce the appropriate rules? If he chooses the former, isn't he necessarily making some players more happy than others – such as those who were so eager to play, not just against a drunk, but against a drunk with one hand tied behind his back?

And if accommodating players who might be "upset" by being forced to adhere to the rules is an appropriate standard, should that standard be applied consistently? (The can is wide open now.) Should it be applied whenever a live one wants to make consecutive short buys, or pass chips, or rathole "a little" money off the table? If we start picking and choosing when such blackmail is OK and when it isn't, we won't even be able to make out the carpet, so completely covered will it be by slippery, crawling uglies.

Let us never forget that the floor derives its discretionary power from the "Best Interest of the Game" rule, which allows for the possibility that a strict, technical interpretation can sometimes be ignored in the interest of fairness. But that rule requires that there be a compelling reason, and that it be related to fairness – not to majority whim, or the path of least resistance, or the profitability of the cardroom. Although not all rulebooks share the same wording, one thing they all make clear is that deviations from the standard ruling must be based on "unusual" or "mitigating" circumstances. An example of a legitimately mitigating circumstance would be some obstacle or impediment that physically prevented a player from ascertaining an irregularity as quickly as the rules might require. In such a situation, a player would be in the position of being punished for an infraction beyond his power to avoid – which would be patently unfair. But was that, or anything remotely similar to that, the case here? Was there any reason to deem it "unfair" that this player should be responsible for his own hand? Almost three full rounds of betting were completed before he even bothered to check on his cards. To suggest that gross inattention at the poker table is a mitigating circumstance is absurd; to suggest that it's unusual is laughable.

In the absence of any unusual or mitigating circumstance, then, what were the grounds in this case for abandoning the letter of the law in favor of a discretionary ruling? Sadly, nothing more than this: A tiny mob of players spontaneously decided that they didn't feel like playing by the rules. Does that constitute a "compelling" reason? Sorry, not even close.

A friend of mine by the name of John Tadich, a very wise fellow who works the floor these days at Hawaiian Gardens Casino, made an off-the-cuff observation to me 12 years ago, one that I've never forgotten, and it certainly applies here. He said: "Running the room for the customers doesn't mean letting the customers run the room." That simple principle speaks volumes, and floorfolk everywhere would do well to learn from it.