A poker rules myth propagated again

Date: Fri, Jun 27, 2008

I think there has been good reason to praise, in general, the coverage of the World Series of Poker by the live bloggers working for PokerNews. But once in a while, frankly, they just don't know what they're talking about.

Here's the post from earlier today that prompts that observation:

To Tell the Truth

Those that may be new to live tournament poker may not know that it is
against the rules to talk about your hand truthfully before showdown. For
example, if you are on the turn and getting ready to bet or call a bet, you
cannot tell a person what you actually have. If you were to tell a player that
you have a king and then show a king either at showdown, or at any point, then
you would receive a one-round penalty.

This rule was just explained to a table by our floor staff. After hearing
the explanation, a player stated, "In poker, it's OK to lie, but it's not OK to
tell the truth."

Welcome to poker.

But that's not the rule.

It's hard to know exactly how to apportion the blame for getting this wrong and, once again, putting out this erroneous information to the poker-playing public. Perhaps the floor person explained it badly. Perhaps the players misunderstood what he told them. Perhaps the field reporter for PokerNews heard it wrong. Perhaps the blogger writing up the post introduced some errors of his own. I can't tell. But I can tell that the result is misinformation.

I've previously explained in boringly excruciating detail what's wrong with this common myth, so I won't trouble y'all again about it. Go back and read that post if you're interested. For now, here's what PN got wrong:

PN said, "[I]t is against the rules to talk about your hand truthfully before showdown." That is not the rule. If it were, you could be penalized for saying, "I'm really strong here," or "I like my hand," if those were deemed to be truthful statements. Heck, you could pick up a penalty for saying, "I have two hole cards."

PN, with apparent approval, quoted a player as saying, "In poker, it's OK to lie, but it's not OK to tell the truth." That, too, is not the rule. As I detailed in my previous post on this subject, it would be trivially easy to disclose one's hand to an opponent, should one choose to do so, entirely with lies about what one is holding. But disclosing one's hand by lying is just as much against the rule as disclosing one's hand by telling the truth. The prohibition is against disclosure, not the means by which one might accomplish the disclosure.

PN wrote, "If you were to tell a player that you have a king and then show a king either at showdown, or at any point, then you would receive a one-round penalty." This isn't entirely wrong, but it's not entirely right, either. There is some squishy, unclear area about exactly how much one can "disclose" about one's hand before it violates the rule. For example, in some situations it might be irrelevant whether one has a king, and if so, such disclosure may not amount to much more than saying, "I have two cards." Therefore, it is not clearly correct, as a blanket statement, that truthfully announcing that one has a king will always incur a penalty.

Furthermore, the penalty may not necessarily be sitting out for one round. It might be merely a warning. Or, if the infraction is deemed unusually flagrant or affects the outcome in some way that is highly prejudicial to another player, the tournament staff might choose to impose a more severe penalty, even on a first offense. They have a lot of discretion about penalties. (See WSOP rule 46 here.)

That's a lot to get wrong about one rule, in one post.

There oughtta be a law, or at least a rule

Date: Wed, Jun 25, 2008

A couple of nights ago I was playing at Planet Hollywood, when I witnessed an action so foul, so evil, so vile, so disruptive to the entire order of the game, that I instantly became convinced that we need a new universal rule put in place to prevent its future recurrence.

There was an Asian guy about my age sitting in Seat 4, directly across the table (the short way) from me, since I was in Seat 1. I had a perfect view of him. I picked up an unusually good tell on him. Twice he made a large bet on the river, bluffing with just ace-high or with a busted draw. Both times, he verbally announced the size of the bet ("Forty," or "Eighty") quite emphatically, then grabbed and slid forward the corresponding amount of chips. Conversely, I twice saw him make value bets on the river with very strong hands, and in both of those instances he remained silent, just pushed forward the amount he was betting.

This is a fairly common type of tell: People do tend to do things differently when they are bluffing than when they have the goods. In fact, I have noticed a tendency in myself to do something similar; if I'm not careful to think about it in advance, there's a pronounced difference in how I make an all-in move when I'm hoping for a call versus when I'm hoping to see a fold. (No, I'm not going to tell you what it is!)

I got involved with this guy on a hand some time later. I raised before the flop with A-K. (It was a frustrating night because every single strong starting hand I received was when I was in early position, making them much harder to play profitably and well.) He called. The flop was 2-5-7, rainbow. I made a smallish continuation bet, which he also called.

I had decided well in advance not to try to bluff this guy, because he had a large quantity of calling station in him. As a general rule, people tend to think that everybody else plays the same way that they do. Frequent bluffers like him therefore tend to see bluffs everywhere, and call readily. He followed this common pattern. So he was definitely one from whom I was planning to make my money by (1) value bets, and (2) catching his bluffs.

Because of his call on the flop and my determination not to blow money bluffing at him, when the turn card was an 8, of no help to me, I shut down. He checked behind me.

The river was a 9. I checked. He thought a bit, then loudly announced "Fifty," and grabbed 10 red chips to put out.

Hmmm. I was quite confident, from having watched him for a couple of hours, that he was not one to make thin value bets. That is, it was highly unlikely that he had something like one pair here; if he did, he'd be much more likely to check again and just hope he was good against what he would have to worry might be my overpair. He either had a very strong hand, or nothing. Of course, I had just ace-king, no pair. But I had seen him bluff with an ace-high, which I could beat, and I had seen him bluff with a busted draw, which I could also beat.

The size of the bet, which was more than the size of the pot, also smelled of a bluff. If he had a strong hand, he would presumably want me to call, rather than to scare me off. Since I had checked both the turn and the river, he couldn't think I had a great hand that could call any bet he cared to make. He had to know that I wasn't particularly strong here. So if he was strong and wanted to get paid, he would bet smaller.

Then, finally, there was that tell. The way he announced the amount in advance was just like he had done twice before, and distinctly different from what he did when making value bets with strength.

That sealed it for me. It's not often I'll call a bet larger than the pot with just ace-high, but this combination of considerations led me to conclude that it was the right choice here.

This demon spawn had K-6, and had caught runner-runner straight.

Why did he call an early-position raise from a tight-aggressive player before the flop with K-6 offsuit? Because that's what calling stations do. Why did he call on the flop? Because that's what calling stations do. I saw similar idiotic calls from him all night long.

Anyway, I decided right then and there that all poker rooms need to institute a rule prohibiting players from establishing clear, distinctive patterns for their bluffs and value bets, then breaking away from those patterns at crucial moments. The remedy? I should be able to explain my observations to the floor person, point out how this cad cheated by using his bluffing action when he had a strong hand, and be entitled to the pot--or at least to a chop. Nobody should be able to get away with such nefarious actions.

Incidentally, as I kept watching him, it became clear that he had no pattern at all. He had not carefully constructed a false tell for me to pick up; rather, he was just completely arbitrary in whether he announced a bet amount in advance. There was no relationship between his betting mannerism and his hand strength. I had simply detected a pattern on the basis of too few observations that didn't hold up as I gathered more data. (That said, seeing distinctly different things on each of two bluffs and two value bets is usually a pretty reliable basis for assuming that the observation is a consistent unconscious pattern.)



The image above is one of the more famous ones from the "Dogs Playing Poker" series by C.M. Coolidge. This one is titled "A Bold Bluff." If you look closely, you can see that the St. Bernard appears to have just a pair of deuces, but he is betting into the exposed pair of aces of one opponent, and tens of another. He probably stated the amount of his bluff before pushing out his chips....

Poker gems, #135

Date: Wed, Jun 25, 2008

Jacob Sullum, Senior Editor of "Reason" magazine, concluding a June, 2008, article on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). I recommend reading the full article, which is available here.



Opponents of online gambling focus on extreme cases and imply they’re typical. A June 2007 hearing on Internet gambling held by the House Financial Services Committee featured testimony by an Ohio minister whose college-age son robbed a bank to pay off the debts he incurred while playing online poker. The research firm Ipsos estimates that 15 million Americans play online poker for money; most of them do not end up robbing banks. According to industry data collected by the Poker Players Alliance, the average online player spends $10 to $20 a week. Players like these are neither winning nor losing large amounts of money; they are mainly having fun, a concept that Bob Goodlatte seems to have trouble comprehending.

Barney Frank, by contrast, gets it. In July 2006, during the congressional debate over the UIGEA, Jim Leach averred that “there is nothing in Internet gambling that adds to the GDP or makes America more competitive in the world.” Frank took exception to Leach’s argument:

“If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn’t add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit? Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose?…People have said, ‘What is the value of gambling?’ Here is the value: Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn’t that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do.”

Poker gems, #134

Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2008

David Chiu, in Card Player magazine, June 4, 2008 (Vol. 21, #11), p. 74. This comes at the conclusion of a remarkable story. In 1998, Chiu was arrested and charged with kidnapping, in a classic mistaken-identity situation. He spent 3 1/2 months in jail and nearly $100,000 on legal defense before the charges were dropped.


People ask me, "How are you able to stay so calm about everything you've been through?" I just think about it in the same way that I would handle a poker hand. I took a really bad beat in a really big pot, but life goes on. Next hand.

Poker gems, #133

Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2008

Roy Cooke, in Card Player magazine column, June 4, 2008 (Vol. 21, #11), p. 66:

You don't need to be the best [poker] player in the world to perform well, just one of the two or three best at your table, in most situations.

HBPRS, #5

Date: Tue, Jun 24, 2008

Episode 5 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show is now up, with download and show notes available here. As usual, the Grump has a little part in the show.

Poker gems, #132

Date: Mon, Jun 23, 2008

Max Shapiro, as quoted a short time ago by one of the PokerNews live bloggers:


Two things you don't do, pull on Superman's cape or play Billy Baxter in a lowball game.


[Until yesterday, I hadn't really paid attention to Baxter's track record, though of course I knew the name. The guy has won an amazing seven World Series of Poker bracelets, all in lowball games--specifically, five in deuce-to-seven events, one in ace-to-five, and one in razz, scattered between 1975 and 2002. See the full evidence here. Nobody else even comes close to his record in these rather unpopular and unconventional forms of poker, and probably nobody ever will. This is an amazing accomplishment, old-school poker at its finest. He was inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2006. As I write this, he has made the money in yet another 2-7 event, and is the chip leader with only 17 players remaining. I'm pulling for him to rack up piece of gold #8 at the final table tomorrow, to stretch out his bracelet-winning span to an astonishing 33 years.]