Contracts and Poker: Taking Advantage of the Rules

If you google the 2011 EPT Grand Final Madrid, you will find a blatant example of angle-shooting. Facing a bet on the river, a player carves out from his stack the chips needed to call and pushes them forward while saying, “Raise.” He then immediately says that he meant call, noting that his English is not good. The Tournament Director (TD) is called over. The TD knows that the player had pulled this stunt earlier when he had the nuts. What should the TD do?

Should the floor intervene in a situation where a player uses the rules to his advantage?

The Tournament Directors Association naturally encourages players to know the rules it promulgates. Of course, one with knowledge can often take advantage of that knowledge. A reader of this column knows that I have made a hobby out of knowing the rules, and I confess that I have not been immune from taking advantage of this knowledge.

For example, in a tournament at the Wildhorse Poker Roundup, I had a draw and wanted to see the turn as cheaply as possible. There were a number of callers after a raise and a re-raise, so I put in a minraise. When another player attempted to raise, I said that he could not do that because there could only be a bet and three raises. Everyone laughed, pointing out that this was no-limit poker. I insisted that the floor be called, and he confirmed what I already knew — that the casino had a house rule capping the number of raises. This makes no sense, but it is the rule and I took advantage of it.

In another casino, the dealer warned us that the yellow 500 chips looked a lot like the gold 5,000 chips. So when a player bet 1,000, and I had a monster hand, I pushed out two gold chips. I couldn’t bring myself to act mortified that I had made this “mistake” and just let the action speak for itself. When the dealer asked if I intended to bet 10,000, I responded, “Does it matter?” I knew the floor would rule that the bet stood in any event. One of the players still holds the move against me.

A player taking advantage of an obscure rule fueled the plot of an episode of the Maverick television series called According to Hoyle. Edmond Hoyle lived from 1672 to 1769 and did indeed codify the rules of a number of games. However, he had nothing to say about poker, which was not played while he was alive. This did not prevent Binion’s Casino from inducting him into the inaugural class of the Poker Hall of Fame. A non-playing inductee is supposed to have “contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker,” so they didn’t exactly follow the rules in this case.

Anyway, the episode began with a title card that states: The Rule of Hoyle quoted in this story is authentic, and is from Hoyle’s Book of Games, 1876.

As the players sat down for a game of five-card stud, Maverick’s nemesis Samantha Crawford suggested that they should play “according to Hoyle,” and all agreed, for Hoyle’s name had long been applied to any collection of authoritative rules. But Samantha knew that buried deep in her edition of Hoyle was a rule not known to the others that she was able to exploit. When Maverick claimed that his straight prevailed over her pair of nines, she sprung her trap, opening her handy copy of Hoyle and quoting: “In five-card stud poker, straights are not played unless it’s determined at the commencement of the game that they be admitted.”

I could not find the edition of Hoyle quoted in the title card, but I did find an 1875 version of Hoyle’s Games that contains this information on the “Value of Hands” in poker:

1. “One pair” beats any hand “without a pair.”
2. “Two pairs” beats “one pair.”
3. “Three” beats any “two pairs.”
4. “Flush” beats any “three.”
5. “Full” beats “a flush.”
6. “Four” beats all the other hands.

It will be noted that the rank skips from “Three [of a kind]” to “Flush” and furthermore states that “‘Four’ [of a kind] beats all the other hands,” all of which implies that straights and straight flushes do not count. It appears that the title card was more accurate than the title cards in Fargo that tell us, “This is a true story.”

So, knowing the rules can sometimes give you an edge. Should the floor ever intervene when it finds that a player has taken advantage of the rules, like the player who knew full well his raise would stand? The floor clearly has the authority to crack down on angle-shooting under Rule 1:

Floor Decisions

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

The general concept tells us that the rules are not to be applied mechanically but require discretion. In performing this function, the concept is similar to the obligation of “good faith and fair dealing” which is read into the performance of contracts. The TD has the power to deal with such behavior, but should probably exercise it sparingly. In the event, the TD took a middle position between doing nothing and contravening the rule. He let the raise stand, but told the other player that he had pulled this stunt earlier with the nuts. The bettor nevertheless called the raise. It can pay to know the rules. ♠

Scott J. Burnham is Professor Emeritus at Gonzaga Law School in Spokane, Washington. He can be contacted at [email protected]. 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.