"The debt is uncollectible. It's a gambling debt."
- From Raymond Chandler's "Trouble Is My Business"
It was a quiet evening, the table had just broken, and most of the players had gone in search of new games. As the dealer sorted the deck and I racked up my chips, we fell into casual conversation, during which I floated a question pertaining to the game that had just gone down. Why, I wondered, had she said nothing to a player who had several times compromised the action by angrily folding out of turn? The question brought a pained expression to her face, and she replied that the player had taken a couple of bad beats and she didn't want to upset him, since he tended to be surly when losing.
Now it was my turn to don a pained expression, for her answer, while different in its particulars, was troublingly similar to the responses of other dealers in the room to whom I've put the same question. The common denominator in such rationales is "extenuating circumstance" - ingredients in play that supposedly serve to explain and/or justify both the player's breach and the dealer's failure to address it. Unfortunately, it's an idea that has become stretched so thin as to cover virtually anything. Indeed, these extenuating circumstances (and their accompanying apologias) are now available in any size and color, including (but by no means limited to): players with tableside food service routinely folding out of turn the moment they lose interest in a hand ("What's the big deal, the poor man's trying to eat"), and smokers so eager to duck out for a quick drag that they can't be bothered to act in turn ("Give him a break, he just wants to get out quick so he can get back quick"). Substitute "restroom stop" for "cigarette break," and you get yet another variation, in the form of those so keen to get to the bathroom and back without missing the
next hand that they cheerfully compromise the interests of those still playing
this one. Indulging this last group generally involves the dubious "nature calls" defense ("For God's sake, the poor man had to go"), a position built on ignoring the obvious question of just how it is that bladder pressure can be pressing enough to warrant a premature exit from a hand, yet never be sufficient to eschew taking said hand in the first place.
One of the problems with all of this is that as extenuating circumstances go, none of these things even begin to cut the mustard. When the hospital calls and says your wife has just gone into labor -
that's an extenuating circumstance. Chicken wings and mozzarella sticks - sorry, not so much. Should your kids call and scream that the house is on fire, you've got yourself a grade-one mitigating condition. If, on the other hand, your straight has simply gotten run down by a flush, you're a little short in the extenuation department, and we're going to need you to act in turn.
There's not a person alive who would seriously suggest that the act-in-turn rule applies to everyone - everyone, that is, except people who go to the bathroom, people who eat, people who smoke, people who make or receive phone calls, and, oh yes, people who sometimes lose poker hands. And yet collectively, in
practice, that's exactly the notion that dealers who apply such dubious personalized "standards" are serving to propagate. This leads us to another problem - namely, the implications of such modus operandi. Where does it all end?
Well, consider the following. Later that evening, I was in another game in which the same dealer sat down in the box. Within 10 minutes, a hand came down in which a bet and raise reduced a field of three to a field of two, prompting an offer from one of the remaining two to chop the pot. Once again, the dealer said nothing, leaving it for one of the players to object, at which point a huge, contentious argument broke out that significantly disrupted the game. Although I didn't bother to ask aloud why she failed to respond to
this breach, my silent look apparently managed to convey that very question, and there was considerable irony in the fact that by way of answer, she plaintively rued, amidst the quarrel raging all around her: "I just didn't want any trouble."
Well, that plan worked out well.
Adding to the irony was the fact that her words were almost identical to those uttered an hour or so before by another dealer who, after informing two players that
they couldn't chop a pot, proceeded to sit on his hands as they cheerfully went about the business of chopping it anyway. The dysfunctional scene that followed might have been amusing were it not indicative of a growing trend. When a player asked the dealer, "So if they can't do it, why are you letting them?" the dealer murmured the vaguest of admonitions in the general direction of the culprits, who shrugged it off and continued with their business. This prompted the player to repeat his question: "If they're not allowed to do it, why are you letting them?" Unnerved by this show of persistence, the dealer then made like a computer on overload; he simply froze … crashed … and for a full half-minute, his entire system shut down. When he finally rebooted, and the player hit him with the question yet a third time, the only answer he could manage was a weary, "I just don't want any trouble."
Many readers, accustomed to playing in rooms where the rules exist not to be broken but observed, will undoubtedly read this and wonder: Chopping pots? While everyone looks the other way? Does this stuff really happen - in broad daylight? Unfortunately, once you establish that the rules may routinely be broken - without penalty, and for the flimsiest of "reasons" - you're just a sand wedge away from all manner of general breakdowns. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when the cops on the beat ignore the trouble right under their noses, on the pretext that they don't want any … trouble?
When it's all said and done, indulging the few serves only to ensure that the few will soon become the many. The biggest problem with the "I don't want any trouble" school of dealing - or flooring, or managing - is that trouble is precisely what it breeds.
Barry Mulholland is a former New York actor who now resides on the left coast. He makes his living at the tables by night, and wrestles with the great American novel by day. He can be reached at [email protected].
