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

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 Eileen Sutton

“For me poker is a contact sport for the soul…. The game mutates wildly but has one constant. As David Mamet wrote, poker will surely reveal our character, even against our will. Extreme contradiction works our social poker muscle and we seem to like it. We aggress and we surrender. Declare and hide. Risk and defend. Along the way we may get to know ourselves.”

The Rules Guy is a perennial sucker for lyrical musings on this most excellent of games, and TRG likes what Ms. Sutton has to say on the subject in her essay, “Poker is Love.”

But the green expanse of the felt isn’t always about love, of course. Read on…

Never Be Afraid to Speak Up (In Turn)

Dear Rules Guy,

Here is an interesting situation I encountered in my local poker room.

We were deep in a $80 tournament with 120 players in a local card room. There were 19 of us left when the following hand occurred. I was UTG+1, and the blinds were 3,000-$6,000. I had 17k left and was dealt Q-3. The big blind didn’t realize he was the big blind and threw his cards face down across the line. The dealer pushed them back and said, “You’re the big blind.” The big blind then put in 6k announcing, “You all know what I am going to do” at the very same moment I go all in for 17k. The dealer tosses me the all-in button. It folds to the cutoff, who crosses the betting line with 6k, then pulls it back and tosses his cards into the muck. The dealer tells the next player it’s his action. The next player says, “He said call, I’m waiting to see what you are going to have him do.” The dealer states, “I didn’t hear him say call.” The player repeats: “He said call then put out 6k and pulled it back.”

That is what I also saw and believe I heard. I didn’t want to say anything because I was the one who was probably going to benefit. The floor was called, and the ruling was made that his cards were unable to be retrieved. And he had to call the all in with no cards to play. Action continued and I was pushed the pot after the big blind folded his cards.

The two players to my right began referring to the player who spoke up as “that a-hole who should have kept his mouth shut.” I told them the player was right in doing it, and we all had a responsibility to protect the integrity of the game. They then told me I was wrong and so was the other person. The very next hand the person who spoke up was dealt pocket aces and went out to a one-outer on the river. The two players to my right said, “See? That’s karma, and the poker gods making things right!”
Any comments?

— Dill from Delaware

Dear D from D:

“Karma is a bitch.” But karma isn’t anywhere near as much of a bitch as the little bitches who invoked the sacred term of karma to justify their own ignorance. But The Rules Guy is getting ahead of himself.

The fact is, nearly everything about this hand seems suboptimal to me. And let’s start with the big blind. First, it’s his buffoonery that kicked off a lot of this. If there’s a karma killer, it’s him, sending the game a-kilter and giving out tons of information to the entire table. Second, by announcing his intention (two times: first by mucking out of turn; second, by reminding everyone that he was going to muck at the very first chance he got), he really weakened the impact of your raise. Your first-in vigorish, as Dan Harrington calls it, was reduced – it’s nice you got the walk from the big blind, but he somewhat increased the chances that someone would come into the pot. (Given your holding, you’ll take the walk!)

Then there’s the pump fake/whatever of the cutoff. Clearly, he has made a mistake at least of attention. You had an all-in button in front of you, and he should have known that. It requires no great observational talent to realize you’ve raised all-in. Now, if he in fact said, “Call,” he is definitely on the hook. Just crossing the lines with chips does not constitute a call; he must release the chips to make it a call (in the absence of a verbal declaration).

It’s possible he may have been on autopilot, thinking as the action worked around to him that you’d limped (admittedly, this is unlikely; you did get an all-in button), started a forward motion with his 6,000, realized you’d raised, and pulled it back. In the eyes of the small blind, there’s enough ambiguity to make the situation, well, ambiguous, and he is entitled to ask about it and the dealer must call the floor.

However, even if the cutoff made a good faith error, the floor person was within the rules to say he’d called. To be specific, he’d made an undercall, defined by TDA Rule #42B: “declaring or pushing out less than the call amount without first declaring call.” The rule continues: “An undercall is a mandatory full call if made in turn facing 1) any bet heads-up or 2) the opening bet any round multiway.” So the floor person made what seems to be a good ruling – good, that is unless you’re the cutoff.
But TRG’s real vitriol is reserved for the peanut gallery who called out the small blind. In bold italics for emphasis:

Of course, the small blind should have asked the dealer what the cutoff’s ambiguous action meant. He has every right to ask. Indeed, if he’s playing correctly, he has to call not to punish the cutoff but to make a good strategic decision. If the cutoff calls 17,000, now the pot is 43,000 (small blind 3,000, big blind, 6,000; your all-in for 17,000 plus the cutoff’s call of 17,000), so the small blind has to call 14,000 to win 43,000. That’s a bit over 3:1 on a call, which makes it quite easy for him to call with any two in many, many situations.

The big lesson to TRG is this: It can never be wrong for someone to point out an irregularity or ambiguity. Never. And to call someone out for same, as your karma-invoking opponents did, is pure wrong. Unless they are buddies with the cutoff, WTF are they complaining about? Make a mental note of them: You always want to be at their table.