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. What’s wrong? What’s right? What’s an angle? Got a question about how to behave at the poker table (or a comment about a column)? Email TRG at [email protected].

Props to Lee Robert Schreiber, author of Poker as Life: 101 Lessons from the World’s Greatest Game, for the question he poses in “Lesson #63: Nobody wants to hear your sad stories:”

Who wants to hear someone – anyone – go on and on about the huge ferocious fish that got away after a 90-minute struggle; the pure 195-yard bunker shot that landed inches from the cup; or the camel trip to Upper Golgotha, from which your neighbor will be showing her 600 slides and offering a “fascinating” three-hour commentary….?

The answer to Schreiber’s question is, of course, no one. At least no one who wasn’t there, and this definitely holds true for poker stories and bad beats. Nothing is more fun than rehashing a poker tournament by those who played (or perhaps even those who railed), but few things are less fun than suffering through bad beat stories, particularly those involving, say, $100 pots in a $1-$2 game. If you must tell a story, tell one about the “good beat” you enjoyed: all-in with K-K against A-A and you make a four-card, runner-runner flush. People like those stories because they remind them that luck is a zero-sum game.

“While We’re Young…”

Dear The Rules Guy:

I accidentally exposed my hand in a tournament. A player to my left saw my cards and still tanked five minutes plus a one-minute clock before deciding if his hand was higher or lower than nines.

— A Very Funny Player Who Looks and Tweets Like Jamie Kerstetter

Dear AVFPWLATLJK:

First, in the interest of full disclosure: The Rules Guy wants to acknowledge that this question is fashioned entirely around a Tweet posted by poker pro Jamie Kerstetter (@JamieKerstetter) last summer. TRG has been waiting for an opportunity to use it ever since, and now is that time. Thank you, Jamie!

No regular reader of this column, and TRG knows there are at least four of them (thanks to JD, Joel from Pinole, Joel from Berkeley, and NoiseRawker), will have any doubt of The Rules Guy’s stance on tanking.

It. Is. Bad.

Tanking is wrong. Tanking is bad for the game. Tanking turns poker into chess (and not speed chess either). Tanking is boring. Tanking is wrong.

Okay, to be fair, there is one positive to tanking, as Kerstetter’s funny Tweet suggests: Tanking makes the tanker look like an idiot. Perhaps looking like an idiot lulls one’s opponents into a false sense of superiority and results in positive EV. Nonetheless, at the end of the day, if you tank like this, you still look like an idiot. A passive aggressive idiot, like the people at restaurants who linger after settling their bill in full view of hungry, thirsty, visibly waiting diner wannabees. It’s passive: they just sit there. It’s aggressive: they know what they’re doing and they do it anyway.

But in addition to being stupid, and TRG is speaking to you Jordan Cristos (aka the tankers’ tanker), tanking is selfish. (Psychologists, is there such a thing as passive-aggressive selfishness? Narcissism? That’ll work.)

Tanking is selfish because it values your own time at the expense of others’. It’s often said that poker has something in common with war: “hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror” (minus the danger, of course). But when an habitual tanker is, well, tanking, then poker becomes hours of boredom punctuated by moments of murderous rage. All eyes are on you, Mr. Tanker (aka Jordan Cristos), and you are selfishly, narcissistically loving it.

It’s possible that it takes some players six minutes to construct ranges (hint: her range here is 9-9) and then decide whether your hand can beat that range enough times to make it profitable. And it must be acknowledged that there are other factors we don’t know about. It’s possible the villain had a monster with a bunch of people left to act and was trying to figure out how to get more people in and maximize the pot. It’s possible the villain had 10-10 and was trying to figure the precise amount to bet to get, say, J-J to fold. It’s possible he had A-K and was trying to decide if he was willing to flip for his tournament life. It’s possible that the villain didn’t realize the action was on him until someone called the clock. (Okay, that’s not possible, but TRG is trying to be fair here.)

But none of these possibilities excuse the villain’s action…er, lack of action. You run through your options in your head. You run through what you know (“Kerstetter has nines…the guy to my left looks to be folding…the button is acting like he wants to bet…the big blind has a monster stack, etc.) and then make your decision manifest with the unambiguous one-two punch of verbal declaration and a near-simultaneous physical action. In the worst case scenario (aside from WSOP final tables), this is a minute’s worth of decision-making, maybe 90 seconds at most. And barring one of those extra-special made-for-TV moments, it should never necessitate calling the clock.

Poker is hard. But it’s not that hard. And the difficulty of a player’s decision is not really the issue here. There is something almost pathological about tanking and tankers, and it’s up to the rest of us to cajole and, if needed, shame people into speeding up their play.

And While We’re Nice…

Dear TRG:

I see this often and wondered how to handle it: A player is berating a fish at the table for a move they made or a hand they played. Should I ever step in? If so, when and how do you defend the fish?

— Not Averse to Speaking Up

Dear NATSU:

TRG believes no player deserves berating – full stop. By all means call it out when someone string bets, exposes a card, or is taking too long. When people cross a line, ask them to stop and/or call the floor. End of story. But bad play is not mentioned as an offense in any set of poker rules.

Where is the rule that says a player cannot stay in with 2-4 offsuit because his birthday is Feb. 4 or his girlfriend just turned 24 or Kiefer Sutherland is his hero? What rule does the luck box in seat 4 break when he calls all in for his tournament life on a gutshot and makes it? Players should not berate bad players; they should buy them a drink.

Unlike someone who string bets or acts out of turn or exposes his hand, however, it’s not always on you to defend the bad players against the berators. But feel free to step in. You can say, without rancor “nice pot” to the beneficiary of the poker gods. You can say, without rancor “that’s uncalled for” to the berator. And even if you don’t speak out (which isn’t for everyone), you can behave like a decent human being at the table and set an example for every player, inexperienced or not, good or bad, nice or not. ♠