Monday, November 8, 2010
Ethical Issue
As a tournament director you run into many issues that you are supposed to act on in the best interest of the game. Some are technical and some are ethical. I ran into an issue this weekend that I should have acted on but chose to say nothing and in the end it cost me a lot of chips.I was running very hot early on my Saturday night game and had a nice chip stack. As a tournament director you end up giving names to players or styles of players. Most times I keep them to myself. One such player was dealing, I call him douche bag, LOL! I noticed that when he dealt from the position that I was sitting I was able to see all the cards being dealt. Now, I should have said something right away and called a miss deal, but decided to play the hand out and speak to him about it later. The cards are dealt and I have A-10 suited. I make a small raise. It is raised again by pocket 8's and then rerasied again by pocket 9's. It is folded to me and normally I would fold my cards to a raise and a reraise, but I know what their cards are. I have a big stack and figure it to be a check down because one of the players is all in. It is a lot of chips but I can afford to make the call and I know that I have two overs to both their pairs. So I call, because of the information I received because of douche bag. You know that you get what you deserve because the whole board was a blank and the 9's end up winning a big pot and go from almost out to a big stack that took them all the way to 4th. Another player asked me why I had called there and I told them that they had to read this blog to find out why I had called. It is an ethical issue to me as a tournament director because you are supposed to do things that are for the best of the game and I chose to ignore it at that time and use the information to my advantage, which did me nothing but loss a bunch of chips. I would love to hear opinions on this subject. Should I have stopped that hand as it was dealt or is that just information like a tell that is available to anyone that pays attention?
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Just based on my personal understanding of poker ethics, the general rule is that when a dealer accidentally reveals a card that a limited number of players see, those players have to tell the rest of the table what it was, and if several cards are accidentally revealed then the hand is called a misdeal. So you could have told Douche Bag after the first few cards were dealt that you could see every card coming out, announced what those cards were, and let him redeal by adjusting his deck manipulation. Had you won a huge pot, many players would consider your inside information to be tantamount to cheating. Since you lost more chips than you otherwise would have due to your advantage, my fairness instinct would regard it as a just result. That said, I think it's a natural inclination of good poker players to keep useful information to themselves and use it to one's own advantage, so I can understand the counterargument.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to your role as tournament director, I would pose the question this way: if a player announced at the start of the hand that he knew every card because the dealer had handled the deck poorly, but he refused to reveal what those cards were or permit a misdeal, how would you handle the situation?
You have to tell. Letting the dealer know you can see exposed cards is the right thing to do.
ReplyDeleteTDA Rule #12 says all player are obligated to protect all other players in the tournament, including not reading a hand that hasn't been tabled.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Robert's Rules of Poker, section 3, goes pretty in depth into this sort of thing, but basically comes down to the same as the TDA rule.