Rules of the Game

Rules of the Game
By Michael Wiesenberg

Do you know the rules? A beginner sits in a $20-limit lowball game (single-limit, Northern California-style). The betting is spirited before the draw, with three players each putting five bets into the pot. The first player draws a card, as does the beginner, in second position. The other remains pat. After the draw, the first player is nearly out of chips. He bets his last $15, one chip short of a full bet. The beginner has made the best hand, a wheel. He doesn't want to scare the other player, so just calls the $15. The player with the pat hand now completes the bet, by putting in $15 and adding another $5 chip. This creates a side pot. The beginner now tries to reraise. The house dealer patiently explains that the extra $5 does not constitute a raise. The hands are shown. The first player had made a seven, the beginner has a wheel, and the third player has a six-four, the second-best possible hand. This player then says, "I get my $15 back; he passed a seven." Several players then offer the gratuitous information that had the beginner completed his bet (that is, put in the full $20), the six-four would have been able to raise, and he could have reraised.

Many clubs interpret not putting in a full bet in turn, that is, just calling a short bet by an all-in player, is equivalent to passing a seven. The sevens rule states that, in lowball, a player who passes a seven or better after the draw cannot win any bets after the draw. He doesn't lose the pot, but he does lose any after-the-draw action. (Once upon a time, a player passing a seven or better lost the whole pot, but that changed in most cardrooms more than 30 years ago.) Undoubtedly the beginner would have won at least five bets after the draw, maybe more, had he just put in the full $20, instead of having been forced to remove his $15, a difference of at least $100. This is one of the least understood cardroom rules, but it exists, nonetheless.

Poker is proliferating all over the world. California has over 200 cardrooms. Nevada has scores, maybe hundreds, most part of larger casinos. Poker is legal and open to the public in at least 17 other states. The game many consider to be uniquely American has expanded far beyond our borders, available on our own continent also in Canada and in Central America, in at least 10 European countries, in Australia, New Zealand, and even in Asia. Of these hundreds of clubs, many print their rules in a brochure, some post them on the wall, a few do neither. But they all have rules. Movements are afoot to standardize these rules, and I hope all cardrooms will one day buy into one -- I hope just one -- of these codified collections.

Some of the rules may appear, on casual examination, to be silly, picayunish, and designed to trap the unwary. Despite the seeming pettiness of many of the rules, they all exist for good reason, and you should familiarize yourself with them. Rules vary from club to club, as does the strictness of enforcement. Some situations are universal and rules governing them exist in all clubs.

Here are the rules most likely to start an argument or trip up a new player.

1. All poker games are played for table stakes. This refers to all games, high or low, limit or no-limit. You can't buy chips in the middle of a hand, even if you are dealt a royal flush in high poker or a perfect wheel in lowball. In a home game, players frequently run out of chips in the middle of a hand, and either haul out their wallets for more ammunition, or "go light"--remove chips from the pot equal to how much they are short, with the intention of "matching their lights," if they lose, at the end of the hand. In a cardroom, you better have as much before the start of a hand as you intend to play on that hand. Say you've been losing all day in a $6/$12 hold'em game, you're stuck (down) about $140, and are down to your last $2 chip (but still have a wallet full of hundred-dollar bills). You get dealt pocket aces. The action player who's been beating you a lot gets pocket kings. He has $300 worth of chips in front of him, mostly yours. Another player who also chipped away at your stack has about $200, and he starts with A-J suited. The bet is capped, most of it going into a side pot, since all you get to contribute is that one chip. The flop comes ace-king-jack, followed by another jack, and a deuce on the end. Each round is capped. You win $7 (including the two blinds) with your aces full of jacks that beat kings full of jacks and jacks full of aces. If you'd bought more chips before that big hand was dealt to you, you'd not only be even, but slightly ahead.

Whenever this happens in a cardroom, you hear, "I was just going to buy chips." Don't let it happen to you. Buy chips before you get that big hand.

2. If a player incorrectly describes his hand as being better than it is, and in so doing, causes others to discard their hands, he forfeits any rights to the pot. The best remaining intact hand wins. A player must declare a pair (in lowball). This rule prevents certain players from "shooting an angle." Sometimes, at the showdown, a player who knew he could not win would declare his hand, before actually showing his cards, as being better than it was, hoping that the other player would take his (the angle shooter's) word for it and throw his (the sucker's) hand away. This would leave the "angler" with the only intact hand and, in most cardrooms, if there is only one "live" hand (one player holding his cards), that hand gets the pot.

For example, a player might say (in lowball), "I've got an eight." The fellow who called with a nine would throw his hand away before seeing the other hand. Now the "angler" might show down a hand with a king in it and, when the loser said, "But you've got a king; I had you beat!", would claim to have "overlooked" the king. "Gee, I'm sorry. I thought I made the eight. You know how a king can sometimes look an ace from the side. Anyway, you did throw your cards away, so I guess it's my pot. This sort of thing caused so many arguments that many clubs instituted the rule that a person miscalling his hand lost all claim to the pot if by so doing he caused another player to throw away a potential winner.

In cardroom practice, the rule used to be interpreted this way. If two players are in a pot, and one verbally announced his hand at the showdown as one the other cannot beat, the second threw his cards away, usually unshown. If the player who announced his cards could not produce a hand at least as good (he could have better with no penalty), the pot automatically belonged to the player who threw his cards away, even though he might not actually have had the better hand. If there were more than two players in a pot in which one player miscalled his hand, the others held their hands, because, since the rule is supposed to apply if the miscall caused another player to throw away his hand, the pot then went to the best remaining hand (not the player who threw away his hand).

If no one threw away his hand, the best hand won in some clubs, even if it was the miscalled hand. Other clubs ruled that the miscalled hand forfeited all claim to the pot, no matter what the circumstances.

Since this rule was so confusing and inconsistently interpreted, your best practice was to say nothing at the showdown; you spread your hand and let the "cards speak" (unless you were in one of those lowball games in which you had to announce a pair, and then you said, "I have a pair"). In most card-playing areas, you were best off not to throw away your cards until you saw the complete winning hand and ascertained that it was indeed better than yours (and not foul for some reason). In cardrooms that did penalize a miscall, your strategy was to watch how other players handled the situation, and emulate that.

I couched all this in the past tense, because the pendulum seems to have swung the other way. This rule was instituted to prevent players shooting the angle of miscalling their hands hoping that opponents would dump their cards before seeing the miscalled hand. Unfortunately, the reaction, while introduced with the best of intentions, proved to be so confusing, that most cardrooms reverted to the "cards speak" situation. In this case, the best practice is to ignore what a player sees, and wait to see the winning hand before dumping your cards. Many clubs rule that if the best hand is spread face up on the table, it is entitled to the pot even if dumped upon being told that someone else has a better hand.

Be aware, though, that some cardrooms do enforce the verbal declaration rule cited here, which is why I mention it.

More rules likely to trip up the unwary coming.