Contracts and Poker: Appeals

A player makes a string raise, and a player protests. The dealer does not want to get involved. Should the player call the floor?

In law, you have a right to appeal, but you only get one appeal. Your case usually starts out in a court of general jurisdiction, which goes by different names in different places. In New York, for example, it is confusingly called the Supreme Court, even though it is the lowest level court! If you lose in the court of general jurisdiction, then you have a right to one appeal. In some jurisdictions, particularly the smaller states, there is only one higher court, often called a Supreme Court. Some of the larger jurisdictions have an intermediate court. These intermediate courts are often called a Court of Appeals, though in New York the highest court is the Court of Appeals! If you lose in the intermediate court, you don’t have a right to appeal to the highest court – you have to request permission, which severely limits the number of cases those courts take.

One appeal seems to be the structure with the TDA Rules as well, though the Rules are not so clear. The dealer’s role is strangely minimized in the Rules. There is a lot said about the decision of the floor, or the tournament director (TD), but little about the dealer. But anyone who plays tournament poker knows that the floor rarely gets involved unless the dealer calls them to the table. And that is usually because 1) the dealer knows a decision needs to be made but does not feel equipped to make it, or 2) the dealer has made a decision that a player does not agree with.

The rules should make clearer the authority of the dealer, for the dealer is in the position of the judge in that court of general jurisdiction who is called on to make the initial determination. Some dealers are quite knowledgeable about the rules, but others show an amazing indifference to them. Dealers should be the first decision maker, and a dealer’s sound decision will usually be the end of the story.

There is only one rule that appears to obligate the dealer to do something, but it is not clear to me what that rule means. Rule 51 states in its entirety: “Dealers will call string bets and raises.” Maybe we all know, but it might be helpful for the rules to spell out what a string bet is. As to the rule’s meaning, it is not stated as the obligation of a player, as in, “players shall not make string bets and raises.” In fact, that admonition is already made by implication in Rule xx, which tells us that all betting actions must be made in “one motion.” So this rule must be saying something different.

By saying that dealers will call a string bet, is the rule implying that players may not call it and only dealers may do so? In other words, is it saying “dealers will call string bets and raises” or “dealers will call string bets and raises”? Many dealers are reluctant to call a player for a rules violation unless prompted by a player. OTOH, as a player, I may be happy not to call a string bet. If I have pocket aces, for example, and my opponent makes a string raise, I am content to let him raise and will keep my mouth shut. Does this rule mean the dealer is nevertheless obligated to call the string bet even if no player protests?

If I do protest, and the dealer says, “Sorry. I’m not going to call that a string bet,” then I might appeal to the floor. The floor will probably listen to the dealer’s account of what happened and then determine whether there was a string bet or not. If it determines that there was, then the dealer has not called the string bet; the floor has.

All of these quibbles with the TDA rule are taken into account in the more comprehensive WSOP Rule 99:

Strings Bets and Raises: Dealers will be responsible for calling string bets/raises. All participants at the table are encouraged to assist in calling a string bet/raise if a dealer fails to identify it. A floor person must verify string bets/raises called by a participant. A string bet/raise is defined as attempting a bet or raise in multiple movements that include a return to a participant’s stack without a prior verbal declaration of intent or visual deception intended to induce action out of turn before a participant’s action is complete.

Rule 1 ends, like most house rules, by saying that the floor decision is final. This rule is occasionally repeated in other rules. Rule 13.B, for example, ends by saying “The TDs decision on whether a hand was sufficiently tabled is final.” Who else could you appeal to? As suggested earlier, appealing to the floor is like taking your case to a higher court, and that one appeal is usually the end of it. But what if there are multiple levels of floor? In the televised WSOP, for example, we sometimes see the dealer consulting with a floor person, but if it is a particularly contentious decision, the Tournament Director may be called over. I doubt there is any set procedure for this, but if the TD was always willing to hear an appeal from the floor, there would be little need for that first level of appeal. By analogy to the court system, the one appeal should usually be the end of it. The TD could reinforce this by declining to review the decision of the floor unless it was clearly erroneous.

So the answer to our question is yes, the player should appeal to the floor when the dealer fails to make a decision or makes a decision that the player disagrees with. Hopefully, greater familiarity with the rules will assist both dealers and players in carrying out this process. ♠

Scott J. Burnham is the retired Curley Professor of Commercial Law at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Washington. This column is adapted from his article, A Transactional Lawyer Looks at the Rules of Tournament Poker, which was published in Gaming Law Review and Economics. He can be contacted at [email protected].