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When
should an absent poker player's hand be killed? This
subject has been a matter of debate for a long time,
particularly in tournament play. I am referring to a
player who was not at the table when the cards were
dealt, but received a hand anyway.
There are two basic schools of thought on this subject,
the "lenient school" and the "strict school." The
lenient school is the more traditional way of doing
things. It is the way that money games have been handled
throughout the history of the game. The strict school
has arisen with the steadily increasing popularity of
tournament poker. Here are the two main alternatives for
handling an absent player's hand in the rules.
The
lenient school wants the absent player's hand to be live
until he faces a bet. This is the more charitable way of
doing things. The absent player, who often has money in
the pot by way of an ante or blind, is given the maximum
opportunity to get the benefit out of the money that he
or she had put into the pot. In tournament play, a
player has a strong incentive to stay at the table, so
an absence is likely to be for a necessity such as
answering a call of nature, rather than just lobbying.
The
strict school wants the hand of an absent player to be
dead if the player is not there to take action, whether
or not he is facing a bet. So, if someone is in the big
blind, once the betting gets around to him, he has the
option to raise. If he is not present to exercise this
option, the dealer kills the hand. This rule can be
extended to stud, governing the forced bet by the low
card. The person with the low card has an option, to bet
the minimum or to bet the full amount. (We sometimes
tend to forget that this is an option, as this "choice"
is to bet the minimum in virtually every case.)
At
the sixth annual World Poker Industry Conference in
July, there was a meeting of a group of people called
the "Tournament Directors Association." They had a big
discussion concerning the standardization of tournament
rules. As you know, there is no such thing as a standard
set of poker rules; each cardroom has its own rule set.
So, it seems that if anarchy over poker rules is to be
finally ended, termination of discord will be greatly
aided by standardizing tournament rules. We can all be
happy that poker now has an organized group of
tournament directors that is trying to standardize
rules.
Members of the Tournament Directors Association agreed
on 14 rules they would all follow. Some are general
rules of poker, such as: "If a player puts in a raise of
half or more of a previous bet, he will be required to
make a full raise." Others are rules that would apply
only to tournaments, such as: "All cards will be turned
faceup once a player is all in and action is complete."
I fully agree with 13 of the 14 rules adopted by the TDA.
However, I have misgivings about portions of the rule
for treating the hand of an absent player; hence, this
article.
Here
is the wording of the TDA on an absent player's hand:
"Players must be at the table to call time. In flop
games, the big blind's hand will be dead if he is not
there to act on it before the flop. In stud-type games,
the forced low hand will be immediately dead if the
player is not there to act on his hand at the time
required to put money in the pot (the minimum bring-in
must be posted and the hand will be killed)."
I
think the first part of this rule is good, requiring a
player to be at the table to call time. It is disruptive
for a player to be hollering across the room, and it
also slows up the game by making the entire table wait
on his arrival. So, I will confine my discussion to the
portion of the rule that discusses when an absent
player's hand should be mucked by the dealer.
I
asked a person who was present at the TDA meeting for
the reasoning behind this rule. Here is how it was
explained to me:
"In
Texas
holdem,
action is required by the big blind in the form of a
check or raise before the flop. If he is not there, he
cannot make the required action. We should not assume
that he would check, any more than we can assume that he
would raise. Since he did not act when action was
required (just before the flop was to come out), his
hand is dead. In stud, the action is required at the
time of the bring-in. The bring-in is required to act by
deciding whether he will bring it in for the smallest
bet or for the full bet. Again, we should not assume
which one he would do, so he will put in the small bet
and his hand will be dead."
I do
not agree with this reasoning. First, I think the
situations in stud and Texas holdem are not equivalent.
In
Texas
holdem,
one can draw a conclusion about the big blind's hand by
his failure to raise. In stud, we know zero by the
failure to bet the maximum when having the forced bet,
since this is hardly ever done. It is the holdem
equivalent of giving the big blind the option of posting
twice the small blind or six times the small blind. Is
this truly an option? Was the opponent of an absent
low-card player in a stud game handicapped in any way at
all by being deprived of information? Hardly.
Second, even though in
Texas
holdem one
can argue that the failure to gain knowledge about an
absent big blind's hand is a drawback, one cannot say
the absent player benefits more than he loses by not
having the chance to raise preflop. Basically, it
appears to me that players at the table are not content
with deriving only half a pound of flesh by the player
in the big blind being absent; they want the full pound.
So, I do not buy this argument.
However, there is a strong argument for killing an
absent player's hand later on in the hand, even though
he has not faced a bet. This argument is particularly
meaningful in pot-limit or no-limit tournament play.
Picture this situation: You are in early position at a
no-limit
Texas
holdem
tournament table. You call the big blind, who is absent,
and the button calls, so three of you take the flop. The
absent big blind checks, and you decide to bluff by
putting all of your chips into the pot. The button, who
is a short stack, thinks for such a long time that the
big blind is able to return. The big blind wakes up with
two aces, has a big stack and calls, and your attempt to
get the short stack out results in your getting knocked
out yourself. Worse yet, you find out later that the
short stack had a clear fold! Evidently, his huddle was
done for the purpose of letting the absent player get
back to the table, giving the short stack a better
chance of winning a bigger pot. For this unfairness to
happen, there is a hole in the rules someplace. You need
to know how many opponents you have when making this
type of bet, and you do not want one of them having
direct control over that number by stalling to get you
more opposition.
Here
is my opinion on the rules that we need: For stud, let
the absent player's hand be live on the initial bet if
he is the forced low card. Simply treat it as an
automatic blind bet. Kill the hand if the player is not
back in time to get a fourth-street card (or if he faces
a raise, of course). It is a simple matter to have the
rules declare the "decision" of how much for a stud low
card to bet as trivial, and exempt it.
For
games with blinds, such as
Texas
holdem,
one possibility is to let the big blind's hand be live
until the flop. Then, kill the hand on the flop betting
round when the action reaches the absent player. The
argument about players being deprived of info on the big
blind's hand seems a bogus one, since the other players
gain more by not being raised than they lose by the hand
being of undisclosed strength. The argument about
needing to know who is in the pot with you later on is a
strong one, so I do not like waiting until an absent
player is faced with a bet before mucking the hand.
Perhaps this compromise is a reasonable way to handle
this admittedly thorny problem. |
