"Oh, you cuss around women and you don't even know their names"
Recently, there have been some threads on various Internet poker forums about chat policing. One thread on www.pocketfives.com said that the site for which I work, PokerStars.com, is too quick to punish people who use inappropriate chat at our tables. There are different arguments, such as: "Hey, we're all adults here; we don't expect the conversation to sound like an English teachers' bridge party." Or, "You just don't understand how frustrating it is when some donkey calls all in for all of your chips with just a gutshot draw that promptly gets there on the river."
I'll give you two reasons why inappropriate chat is not acceptable. Oh, I know that
you would never say anything off-color or insulting in the chat box at an online poker table. But just in case you know somebody who does this sort of thing and thinks it's OK …
Reason No. 1: It's bad for poker. Many of you are too young to remember the "bad old days" of poker, even though they weren't that long ago. This was before online poker, and if you wanted to play in a serious poker game, you went down to a casino or card club, which was usually a smoky, dingy place. And while most of the players were relatively polite and gracious, very poor behavior was largely tolerated. Nasty men (it was almost always men) abused the dealers, the staff, waitresses, and each other. I remember thinking far too often that I was getting dollar expected value at the cost of emotional turmoil and perhaps lung cancer. I wondered how many people who came to give poker a try were turned off by the whole scene and left, never to return.
But times are different. Younger, more forward-thinking people are managing poker rooms. There are even quite a few women running major shops (such as Donna Harris at the Mirage and Kathy Raymond at The Venetian). They, and many other men and women, know that a friendly, polite climate in a poker room makes people enjoy themselves and creates a positive environment for new players to get comfortable with poker. The smoke is gone from most of the poker rooms in Las Vegas, and dealers and floorpeople take a zero-tolerance attitude toward abuse of dealers and fellow players. Now people can play (and learn to play) poker in an appealing and welcoming environment.
That's exactly our job in online poker, too. Sure, we're fortunate that we can let the smokers smoke while the nonsmokers don't breathe secondhand smoke. And we don't have to worry about dealer abuse; random-number generators are famously thick-skinned. But we do have the problem of cursing and player abuse; it's bad for business. And what's bad for business is bad for you, the player. Bad for business means fewer players, fewer games, less action. It's bad for us and it's bad for you. So, we're going to police the chat and expect our players to use chat that would be appropriate in a face-to-face meeting.
Reason No. 2: It's bad for you. Huh? Let me put it this way: You know that we police the chat on our poker site, right? But, you let loose some invective that gets your chat taken away for a while (or just a warning). Well then, you were on tilt. After all, you know what happens if you say those things. But, you did it anyway. That means that your keyboard fingers were out of control; you lost your discipline. Those are the same fingers that cause the mouse to click "Raise" or "Call" when it should be clicking "Fold." You don't have very many circumstances in which somebody steps in and says, "Hey - you're on tilt. You better take a break." But that's exactly what a chat warning (or penalty) means. You're not in control of yourself, or your game. It's time to get up and walk the dog, go have lunch, or whatever. Stand up, and yell at the top of your voice whatever choice insults you wish; that's fine. But if you can't control what you're
typing into the chat box, there's no reason to think you're controlling which action button you click.
Now, some of the discussion on these poker forums has complained about a lack of consistency in enforcement. Sometimes a certain phrase will get a player silenced, but at another time, it gets him just a warning (or there's no response at all). It would be wonderful if we had 100 percent consistent enforcement of our chat rules. But we have scores of people who do this job, and they're dealing with thousands of different scenarios. We have written guidelines for enforcing chat rules, but even so, there will be some variation.
However, I think it's safe to say that if you'll think for three seconds about what you're about to type, you'll know if it's OK or not.
In summary:
1. Virtually all of us in the online poker industry agree that it's good for business to expect a reasonable level of civility in the discourse at the tables. And what's good for business is good for you, the player.
2. You have complete control over whether you have chat problems. And that control is the same control that enables you to play your A-game. Lose one, and you lose the other.
"and you dumb enough to think that'll make you a big ol' man" 
Lee Jones is the author of the best-selling book Winning Low Limit Hold'em, and is the poker room manager for PokerStars.com.
