New TDA Rule

There has been a lot of talk recently about the new TDA rule about when a player must be seated in order to play in a hand at a poker table. Here is the rule.

29: At Your Seat
 A player must be at his seat when the first card is dealt on the initial deal or he will have a dead hand. A player not then at his seat is dealt in, he may not look at his cards, and the hand is immediately killed after the initial deal. His blinds and antes are posted and if dealt the bring-in card in a stud-type game he will post the bring-in*. A player must be at his seat to call time. "At your seat" means within reach of your chair. This rule is not intended to condone players being out of their seats while involved in a hand.


There has been much debate about this issue in the poker industry and it has been mostly negative. The 1st thing I would remind everyone is that the TDA rules are meant as a guide and any tournament director has the right to use whatever rules he chooses as long as it is clear to all their intentions. If you are running a tournament and don't like this new rule then just announce what you are going to use as your time frame to kill a hand if a player is not in his seat.

I personally like a couple of things about this rule for Bar Poker. It sets a clear time that you must be in your seat. How many times at a bar game has the dealer waited to deal the last card because they are waiting for a player to get to table. Happens all the time and in the long run of a tournament, that blinds go up fast, a few minutes can make a difference of several hands of play. The other thing that I like is that the player may not look at their cards. A player that looks at mucked cards almost always gives away if their hand was strong or weak by their reaction.

There were many changes and additions to the TDA rules, so you would like to see them all here is a link to their website.

http://www.pokertda.com/poker-tda-rules/

I am just happy that someone is trying to get a set of poker rules to try and keep the game uniform. I don't like that it is getting more specific about rules and it's getting harder to know all the exact rules, but at least it's not pages and pages long like the current WSOP rules.
Thanks TDA and keep up the great work for the game we love!