The Rules Guy: How To Conduct Yourself At the Poker Table

Most players learn poker’s explicit rules pretty quickly: the “one-chip rule,” for example, or “verbal declarations are binding.” But not everyone seems to have digested the game’s vast book of unwritten rules, admonitions like “don’t berate other players (particularly bad ones)” or “say ‘nice hand’ even when you mean something entirely different.”

Enter “The Rules Guy.” TRG believes that civility and sportsmanship are never wrong, and that bad behavior (even when you’re simply trying to get an edge) is bad for the game. Have you got a question about how to conduct yourself at the poker table? Email TRG at [email protected].

Dear Tournament Directors:

You are probably familiar with the execrable behavior displayed by Daniel “Jungleman” Cates in the $100,000 Challenge event at the January Aussie Millions tournament series in Melbourne, Australia. Jungleman has a bad rep, justly earned, but this outburst is unconscionable.

In for his second “bullet” (though, at $100,000, “bullet” seems like a woefully inadequate term) in the event, Cates picked up pocket kings at the same moment that Jeff Rossiter picked up pocket aces. Good for Jeff, bad for Jungleman—but also horrible for poker as a whole.

The Rules Guy wants to be fair. Jungleman was in a very painful situation. It was made all the more painful by one of those quirks of variance that can tilt anyone: This was the second time that his cowboys had run into another player’s bullets. Still, this cannot excuse what he did:

Jungleman shouted “Are you f***ing kidding me?!” He hurled his cards at Rossiter. Then he picked up a handful of chips and threw them “baseball style” at Rossiter, striking him in the chest.

It hardly takes TRG to see that this is a bad example of poker etiquette—make that examples: getting verbally angry, dropping an F-bomb, throwing cards, and throwing chips.
But here’s the problem: How can you punish Cates for his behavior?

He was all-in with the kings, so he was all out when the board ran out and Rossiter’s aces took the pot. Ergo, a penalty accomplishes nothing because there’s nothing you can do to a busted player.

Penalties are an effective weapon to punish players still in a tournament; sitting out for an orbit or for a specified amount of time extracts a precious toll, particularly when antes are in play and stacks are short. But when a hand busts a player and he misbehaves, there’s nothing to be done.

Right? The Rules Guy hopes you, Tournament Directors of the world, will change this situation.

So here’s the question for TDs: Can you fashion a suitable, and suitably painful, penalty for a player who is extraordinarily out of line?

TRG will give you some suggestions: Ban him from a future tournament. Ban him from the tournament room for a certain number of days during a series. Ban him from tournaments of a similar buy-in. Ban him from re-entering a multi-entry event. Ban him—and it’s always going to be a “him” by the way—in such a way that it hurts. Escalate as needed. It’s easy to imagine (though everyone should hope it almost never happens) that someone might be banned for a year on the World Poker Tour, for example, or an entire World Series of Poker.

Or: Write it into the rules that abusive behavior is subject to a fine—say one to five percent of the buy-in—with the proceeds going to charity or to the Tournament Directors Association or something similar. This would only be levied after a warning or two, and The Rules Guy frankly has no idea if it would be legal or how it might be administered.
Again, it should be hoped that this kind of punishment would rarely be meted out—and TRG suspects that after one or two well-publicized examples, the problem might disappear. Sanction a player of Jungleman’s caliber with a real penalty, and you’ll never have to levy it again. It would put all players on notice that bad behavior isn’t charming, isn’t a good part of poker culture, and isn’t acceptable.

Jungleman is an outlier, to be sure, at the far end of the bell curve of bad behavior. But actions like his must be addressed in a way that’s meaningful. The game’s TDs are in the best position to figure out an appropriate punishment and a way to administer it.

This situation also points to the crying need for an official and regularized set of rules to govern poker, transcending poker tours, venues, and national borders. This could give TDs more weapons to combat the issue of egregious behavior.

TRG believes most TDs share his distaste for bad behavior, and he applauds their efforts to improve it. But eruptions like that of Jungleman in Australia are beyond the pale—and it’s up to you to figure out a way to curb him and his ilk.

If a TD writes in with an response (send it to [email protected]), The Rules Guy will publish it in a future column.

Sincerely,

The Rules Guy

You Can’t Win If You’re Not There

Dear TRG,

In a live game, on the river with action pending and one player left to decide, a player turns his cards face up, stands up, and leaves the room. Turns out at the showdown, his pair was the winner. We ruled the player was absent at the showdown, cards abandoned, his action(s) indicates surrender, and he needs to be present at showdown to claim the pot.

Your thoughts, please?

Poker Room Manager at Buffalo Thunder Resort

Dear Poker Room Manager,

TRG loves this question—though it’s more of a technical rules question than an etiquette one. But it highlights the importance of interpretation: You won’t always find an on point rule that addresses a situation. Floor people must be able to read between the lines and fathom an appropriate response.

Which TRG thinks you did. On the one hand, “cards speak” and he tabled the best hand. On the other (and more important) hand, he acted out of turn and very clearly abandoned his hand. There can be no other reasonable interpretation. If he believed even slightly that he had the best hand, he would have waited for the outcome. If he had an emergency of some sort, he could have said, “time.”

If he simply acted out of turn and stayed in his seat, he’d win the pot (but get a warning). But TRG agrees with you: He surrendered his cards and his right to the pot. Note that the dealer could have scooped up his cards the minute the player was out of (say) arm’s length of the table and mucked them, allowing the action to proceed.
Good call! And thanks for the question. ♠