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.

Props to the Tournament Directors Association (TDA)

The TDA convenes around the time of the World Series of Poker (congratulations, by the way, to Scott Blumstein on winning the main event) to discuss changes to the rules. The TDA deserves massive props for their ongoing efforts, and the newest document, released on July 28, 2017 (easily found online), opens with a “General Principle” that should guide everyone in the game of poker: players, dealers, floor people, and tournament directors. Under the heading “General Concepts,” Rule 1 states:

The best interest of the game and fairness are top priorities in decision-making. Unusual circumstances occasionally dictate that common-sense decisions in the interest of fairness take priority over technical rules. Floor decisions are final.

This is not a new rule, but for this edition, the TDA added the phrase “common-sense.” This is a great addition to a good rule. In life as in poker, there isn’t a rule for everything. But by making common-sense decisions in light of “the best interest of the game and fairness,” it’s hard to go wrong. And that final sentence quoted above is also crucial: The floor person is judge, jury, and executioner. Note that fact well and take your medicine like a poker player.

The second rule, “Player Responsibilities,” changed marginally (emphasizing “proper terminology and gestures,” for example, and the importance of tabling all card at showdown.) But this should be required reading before every tournament, Miranda rights style.

The TDA also made the rules about “proper terminology and gestures” more precise and explicit. Poker players like their own lingo and they love gestures that demonstrate their insider-ness, but seriously: You cannot go wrong (assuming you’re acting in turn) with “official betting terms [that] are simple, unmistakable, time-honored declarations: bet, raise, call, fold, check, all-in, complete, and pot” [in pot-limit games only!]. When you use other words or nonstandard gestures, you are responsible if they are misinterpreted.

Note well, music listeners: When you’re tapping the table while chilling to your favorite tunes and the action gets to you, that gesture can and will be seen as a check. It doesn’t matter what you “mean” to do; what matters is how other players interpret what you do. Other players should never have to know any words or gestures other than the standard ones, particularly at events with an international field.

The TDA also addressed all kinds of more technical issues (for example, the showdown situation, which makes a clear and welcome mandate for those players unwilling to show their cards first) and added a clarification about disputed hands (Rule 22). If you think a mistake in reading the hands has been, or is being, made, then speak up before the deal; if the error is about the size of the pot, you have “until substantial action occurs on the next hand.” (But why on earth would you even wait that long if you suspect the pot is short?)

And, in language that should send a shiver of glee through the hearts and minds of every player, the TDA has given TDs more flexibility to call a clock. Plus, the association halved the time given to a player once the clock has been called (in the 2015 version, a clocked player had 50 seconds plus a 10-second countdown to act; now, it’s 25 plus five). This is purely good for the game of poker. But again, the TDA stressed the importance of situation and context over a strict, robotic application of the rule: “TDs may adjust the time allowed and take other steps to fit the game and stop persistent delays. See also Rules 2 and 71.” (Rule #71 is about etiquette violations; TRG is considering a tattoo of same.)

Again, massive props to the Tournament Directors Association. If there’s a single entity doing something that is purely good for poker, it would be the TDA. The Rules Guy suggests that every player, dealer, floor person, and tournament director in the world download the new rules, read them, read them again, and, most important, adhere to them during the course of play.

C U L8R, LOL.
Dear The Rules Guy:

Why the furor over texting at the table?

—A Bystander At The Table Where Tony Bracy And Lazaro Hernandez Played At The Main Event

Dear ABATTWTBALHPATM:

The Rules Guy read some coverage of an interchange – an altercation that escalated into shouting, racial slurs, and threats – between Tony Bracy and Lazaro Hernandez during an early session of the main event. If the reporting is correct, Hernandez was texting a lot during a hand, and Bracy asked the dealer to control the game. Hernandez took offense and, as seventeenth century English poet (and poker player) John Milton put it in his epic Paradise Lost: “All hell broke loose.”

You won’t find the word “text” or “texting” in the TDA rules. There is a rule about not talking on the phone at the table (good rule!; see “4. Electronic Devices and Communication”), but it should be patently obvious to anyone smart enough to understand the mechanics of the game that you should not be texting at the table in general and particularly not during a hand. Or looking up stats on players. Or using PokerStove. Or playing Open-Face Chinese. Or Words With Friends. You should not be Facebooking or watching Netflix or surfing porn or, well, almost anything. Because you could be colluding (very bad!). You will almost certainly appear to be colluding (also very bad!). And you will be slowing down the game (which is extremely bad).

However, none of those things is, in the view of The Rules Guy, as bad as using a racial slur. Were TRG to become a TD, he would make that grounds for immediate disqualification. Hernandez had to be “escorted out of the room” and got a three-round penalty, while Bracy was penalized one round.

Maybe there’s more history between the two than the story related and maybe Hernandez felt more put upon than we know (still, it would never justify using a racial slur). But assume that Bracy did in fact ask the dealer for some help with Hernandez. That’s reasonable, and somewhat less confrontational than getting up in someone else’s grill.

The dealer could say, “No texting during a hand” to the entire table and avoid singling one player out. But how could it get to the point of racial slurs before someone calls the floor? Where were the other players? Someone needs to be an adult and step in before these situations get out of hand.

And if you’re on the receiving end of a tirade, no matter how unjustified, don’t engage. Call the floor, keep your cool, and take advantage of the other guy and his obvious tilt. Note well: TRG does not like sexist language either, but these kinds of altercations always involve guys. ♠