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 Tommy Angelo

Poker player, poker coach, and poker writer Tommy Angelo is back on the poker book shelves with Painless Poker, a new iteration of his Zen-heavy coaching approach and packed with good advice for the tilting poker player (i.e., virtually all of us). Lots of nuggets of wisdom in the book, and here’s one:

“Games change, betting styles change, venues change, rules change. For all we know, Matt Savage will be President one day, and tournament buy-ins will be tax deductible. The one thing I have learned from coaching guys half my age is that while the game forever changes, the pain remains the same.”

Speaking of pain, on to the first question this month:

Good Sports Don’t Dis Bad Sportsmanship

Dear The Rules Guy:

I’m in a hand with a player who is also a dealer – and a crybaby whenever someone sucks out on him. We’re playing no-limit, and I flop a set of jacks. Make a small c-bet. The trap works, and he goes all in with a pair of aces. The board pairs on the turn, and he calls for a third ace on river, which he gets, beating the boat I turned.

Obviously, in his head, he’s rooting for his two-outer to hit, but to verbalize and then get it after he got outplayed just aggravates the hell out of me. I say, “congrats, well played, but not good sportsmanship.” He calls the floor over, who says it’s not unsportsmanlike cause it happens all time time. I don’t think it’s kosher. Your opinion?

— A Player To Be Named Never

Dear APTBNN:

You can call me “The Rules Guy” or you can call me Dr. Freud, but in this case, TRG is putting on his Dr. Freud hat:

What aggravates the hell out of you is not your opponent, but the fact that you lost the pot. You are only fooling yourself by attributing your aggravation to the behavior of your opponent.

Look at all the good that happened here. You were dealt a pair of jacks – an excellent starting hand (that was lucky!) You got to see a flop with those jacks – an excellent opportunity for you (that was lucky!) You flopped a third jack against a pair of bullets – just about the most excellent scenario in poker (that was super-lucky!) And lest TRG’s point is not fully appreciated, note just how lucky you were: You were way behind preflop, with a bit less than 20 percent equity in the hand, then you were way ahead, with more than 90 percent equity in the hand. You made a bet that induced the maximum raise you could hope for by someone almost hopelessly behind (and that too was lucky!). Again, an excellent result (TRG would not necessarily say you outplayed your opponent; this is pretty standard stuff).

Then the unthinkable happened. Except that it’s not in the least bit unthinkable. With one card to come, your opponent had a 4.55 percent chance to win. It’s a slim chance but two-outers happen (TRG was about to say all the time) about 5 percent of the time.

You need to re-spin this narrative in your head. You got unlucky, that’s a fact. But your opponent’s actions did nothing whatsoever to influence that final card. And it’s hard to make the case that calling for a card is unsportsmanlike. If the river card fell and he screeched out “Yessss! I knew it was coming, I knew I would fill up, you and your idiot jacks,” well then, that’s unsportsmanlike and any decent floor person would tell him to zip it (particularly if that card room also happens to be his employer). Or you could follow Tommy Angelo’s brand of advice: say “Nice hand!,” take a few deep breaths, and recompose yourself.

But your grievance is not a grievous one. You found yourself in a fantastically profitable situation, and the cards went another way. When we play poker, we voluntarily give up some degree of certainty – and it’s how you respond to that lack of control that will dictate whether you will enjoy the game or not.

No one likes losing big pots. But that’s the price of admission to this game. Get used to it, or find another game.

Objection, Your Honor – Asked And Answered…

Dear The Rules Guy:

I’m just looking for a ruling in a situation that can’t be that uncommon: Two players go to the river with bets on both the flop and the turn. On the river one player moves all-in. He is quickly called. The all-in better tosses his cards in the muck and says, “It’s yours.” The one remaining player does not show his hand. Does he win the hand? If not what happens to the pot? I guess the real question is must he show his cards, and if he must, what happens when he doesn’t.

— Curious In Cairo (Illinois)

Dear CiC(I):

It surprises The Rules Guy that this issue pops up so frequently because the answer seems so intuitive, but for the record: Of course the non-mucking caller wins the pot, and that’s the only conceivable outcome regardless of what he holds and what he does. And no, he does not have to show his cards (though he is free to do so). For the purists out there, the relevant rule in The Rules of Poker [Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky] is covered in Rule 5.20: Asking to see a winning hand: “If, on the last round of betting, all players muck their hands except one, the pot may be shipped to the last remaining player without that player revealing her cards.”

Let’s be clear for the sake of, um, clarity: You’re talking about a cash game, not a tournament, because both hands must be turned face-up with an all-in and a call in a tournament. To not do so would invite collusion (hence the rule), and a player who disobeys this rule could be penalized.

But in a cash game, a player is free to muck in turn and when he does so, he gives up any right to the pot. Think about this transparent situation: A player moves all-in, and his opponent mucks. It doesn’t matter what the all-in player has because he is now unopposed. And in the situation you describe, it doesn’t matter what the caller has because he is now unopposed.

Of course, anyone who had been dealt into the hand can ask to see the surviving player’s cards. Old-school players like TRG nearly never do this, since the spirit of the rule is to prevent collusion and not to gather information. ♠