I have pondered this more than once. Time to flesh it out here. A poker game is always going to be a bit of a strange mixture of events, happening simultaneously, filled with a lot of emotion. Not only is the mechanical side of the game a bit complex at times – because of rules and different games being played at different limits (sometimes at the same table in mixed games) – there are certain things that have to happen in order for poker to be the game it should be. Add people!
That is where everything goes haywire. People are the foundation of a poker game, yet they destroy its foundation and create havoc in most instances. No one would ever expect a game to run like clockwork, without a hitch or a glitch or a noisy disturbance somewhere down the line. If poker games ran that way, it wouldn’t be a game, it would be a boring systematic function of checking, raising, folding, and everyone stacking their chips out in front of them in neat little piles, being totally polite, never exposing a card, and never acting out of turn (and let’s add ALWAYS tipping the dealer – because I like that part).
While we all know dealers are not always on top of the game and not doing their best to make it run smoothly, what about the players that think they are being IN-FUCKING-CREDIBLY funny by doing some stupid shit thing that could cause a dealer to make the wrong call or move?
This happened last week – I’ve put more than a little thought into it and I’m still shaking my head. $25-50 NLH. Some of the players are long time pros, a few new faces, and the two people that this revolves around have been in the mix a long time. I do not know their names. They come into town when a tournament is running and are not regular Vegas-ites.
The action had been pretty smooth, no gigantic pots but just nice $500 raises now and then, a call, check, bet, fold type of thing.
That last hand of my down, the 4s raised pre-flop, the 7s and the 3s called. I can’t even remember the action and how it went. I do remember thinking that the 7s must finally have found something when he called the pre-flop raise, simply because he’d been pitching and glaring since I sat down and the raise was over the minimum, like $300 or $350 or something like that.
It was bet on the flop (can’t remember how much), check the turn, and the river put up a back door flush. The 7s was first to act and I believe he bet $100 or $200. The 3s raised it and I’m guessing at the amount – maybe to $500 or higher. The 4s raised it to over $2,000.
The 7s thought for quite some time before folding. The 3s thought, counted chips, looked at his stacks, looked at the 4s’s stacks, thought, counted chips, and finally exclaimed, “I’m all-in!” as he reached over and threw his cards to the 4s.
I didn’t move. Experience has taught me that something is always going on that I don’t know about or they have some special deal between them or something haywire designed to make a dealer crazy.
The 4s looked at the 3s’s cards and exclaimed, “I fold!” and then threw both hands away as he started reaching for the chips the 3s had put out as a raise.
WTF?
They both started laughing and chatting it up and the 4s told the 7s he was really lucky he didn’t call the bet, blah, blah, blah. I pushed the pot and pushed out of the box.
In retrospect, everything happened really fast, there wasn’t a huge time delay in the events but yet it was very confusing. I had been ready to count down the 3s’s bet and take it out of the 4s’s raise so the 4s knew what he was facing. It was the 4s’s turn to act and verbal is binding.
Any player at the table could have called foul and so could the dealer. Then a decision would be needed, and thenâ¦