All conditional verbal statements are necessarily out of turn, right? And I was under the impression that rules concerning out of turn play were driven as much as possible by the goal that a player acting out of turn should derive no benefit from doing so. It seems to me the only consistent way to ensure this principle is followed is to enforce conditional verbal action.
In other words, If you said "If... then...." then if "If" happened then "...." will be enforced.
So you and I are playing and I say to you .... "if you bet .....I will call ....."
and you bet and then I don't call .......
What benefit did I get from my statement?
And how would that benefit (if any) be different than the benefit I would get from saying the following "If you bet ..... I way call" or "be careful ..... I have a good hand" or from my putting my hands in position to push my chips in .......
The benefit i have is that of position. You are not supposed to know what I am going to do when it is my turn ... so how is my making a statement (which may be false) about what I intend to do changing that......
I say I gained no benefit. I benefitted from my position on you
_________________ If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
Joined: Sun Jul 31, 2011 6:25 am Posts: 479 Location: Southern California
Greet feedback everyone. Obviously I benefited by where this happened and also because of the dealer I had. Could have gone very differently with different staff involved.
I do want to address the benefit that the player might have been seeking by making his comment. Recall that he verbally expressed fear about the possible straight during the street before, and basically admitted that he wasn't going to bet then because of that ( I suppose he should have been warned about "talking about the hand" there but was not).
The river didn't look like it changed anything. Suppose I didn't have much either. Suppose I would have folded the turn if he bet there. Now he's basically invited me to bluff with his turn comment. Maybe he was even smart enough to realize that at the time. If I had picked up on that and decided to bluff at the pot, his comment was telling me that wouldn't work, that I should give up on the idea of stealing the pot.
If I was thinking of making a stone-cold bluff there, his comment would have dissuaded me. Since he couldn't beat the straight he feared, he clearly got some advantage of he could get me (and the other player, in this case) to check it down.
Joined: Thu May 03, 2007 12:28 am Posts: 3695 Location: Drawing Dead and Getting There.
I think we may be creating problems in our desire to see screwballs get punished.
apollo wrote:
If conditionals are totally meaningless and everybody knows it, then in this hand the guy saying that might as well have been talking about the weather.
[Emphasis added]
This is key to me. Being in the position of handicapping the uncertainty of whether this might or might not be enforced is the worst situation from my point of view. If an Iffy Flaky dude's declaration may be enforced, I think it may sometimes create more problems for me at the table and also sometimes end up helping the player creating the problem more potently than not doing so. In my usual LHE games I start thinking of examples such as what it might do to a potential semi-bluff with a free card play; in the NLHE structure I believe others can likely come up with more and better examples than I can, but the first one that comes to my mind is when I believe I can push Iffy out of the pot with a stiff bet, but now the floor may (or may not) rule that he has to call, in which case his king-high no-pair busted flush draw beats my jack-high no-pair busted straight draw, and we've just rewarded him with the pot by forcing him into a hero call which I may have correctly read him as incapable of, or taken away my weapon against Mr. Iffy-thenie Doufus due to the uncertainty of how the rule will be applied rather than the already ample uncertainties of incomplete information in playing the game normally.
In this case adding the live possibility of the floor making him call makes his statement more powerful. Or would one plan to possibly sometimes rule this way when called to the table if Iffy apparently deserved it and then reverse the decision upon seeing the result? Or let me decide that I want him to have to actually decide for himself whether he really wants to call off his stack? I dunno, I guess the overall net effect of following these threads for a considerable time just gives me the intuitive feeling that enforcing these kinds of declarations of action may amount to wading out into some deep water with a bunch of perverse unintended consequences swimming around in it.
Doesn't having someone wearing a starched shirt and a nametag promtly state that Iffy's declaration will be meaningless when action is upon him take care of the immediate situation?
I'm as much or more inclined to want to whack the Iffy Weasels of the poker world as the next guy, and like a previous poster I'm unsure how best to do it, but until those container loads of tasers finally arrive at the Local Rock Casino loading dock I sure wish we would just confiscate his watch and his shoes and make him clean all the casino's urinal cakes for a while when we think it is called for, rather than trying to get at the Iffy Douchenozzles by potentially tying some weird knots in the game that he'd prolly enjoy a lot more than me.
Good that RVP apparently got his money's worth outta making the thread here.
_________________ Life is six to five against. -Damon Runyon
If I was thinking of making a stone-cold bluff there, his comment would have dissuaded me. Since he couldn't beat the straight he feared, he clearly got some advantage of he could get me (and the other player, in this case) to check it down.
Yes this is presumably the advantage the player seeks ....... but here is the rub ....... He only gets this advantage ........ if the rule is that the statement is enforced.
If the rule is that the statement is not enforced then the players simply know that if they bet he may call or may not call ...... which is exactly what they are supposed to know.
So I go back to my previous post and ask ....
If a player grabs a bunch of chips and acts like he is going to (bet, call, or raise depending on the stack) when it gets to him does he game an adavantage ....
How about if he says "Hey Be careful ....I have a great hand and might just call any bet you make" Does he gain an advantage ......
Well if his opponent becomes scared to bet and checks it down and that's what he wanted ..... well then he has gained the same advantage as by the statement of conditional action. So should we make him call?
Local Rock makes a valid point about the problem of people not knowing whether the action is binding. But I say that problem is generated by poker managers who decide to put in place this bad rule. Now you have some places enforcing the action and some that don't so a player may be confused when this happens. But then again that can be true of any rule.
Unfortunately one thing that never happened here that should have was the dealer stepping in and telling the player not to speak about the hand while it was still being played. This is a very common problem ..... in fact if you ask 85% of the players I tell that to I would be the only dealer in the entire universe who thinks that is against the rules. I'm also apparently often the only person at the table who doesn;t understand why this sort fo talk is "fun" as I am often told that enforcement of this rule is the equivalent of telling they aren;t allowed to have fun at the table.
_________________ If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
Joined: Thu May 03, 2007 12:28 am Posts: 3695 Location: Drawing Dead and Getting There.
psand wrote:
the only dealer in the entire universe who thinks that is against the rules.
Of course you probably already realize it will also be the first time he has ever heard of this strange new concept the next time a dealer tells him that, and will still be the first time the time after that...
_________________ Life is six to five against. -Damon Runyon
Joined: Wed Feb 29, 2012 11:43 pm Posts: 751 Location: Las Vegas
psand wrote:
TheGameKat wrote:
All conditional verbal statements are necessarily out of turn, right? And I was under the impression that rules concerning out of turn play were driven as much as possible by the goal that a player acting out of turn should derive no benefit from doing so. It seems to me the only consistent way to ensure this principle is followed is to enforce conditional verbal action.
In other words, If you said "If... then...." then if "If" happened then "...." will be enforced.
So you and I are playing and I say to you .... "if you bet .....I will call ....."
and you bet and then I don't call .......
What benefit did I get from my statement?
And how would that benefit (if any) be different than the benefit I would get from saying the following "If you bet ..... I way call" or "be careful ..... I have a good hand" or from my putting my hands in position to push my chips in .......
The benefit i have is that of position. You are not supposed to know what I am going to do when it is my turn ... so how is my making a statement (which may be false) about what I intend to do changing that......
I say I gained no benefit. I benefitted from my position on you
Ironically, and as you've no doubt realized, the only time you gain no additional benefit over other maneuvers (like getting ready to push your chips in) is when everyone agrees and understands ahead of time that conditional statements are non-binding. Given that typically 25% of players at a 1/2 table are so vague on the rules that they seem amazed every time the BB hits them I think the remedy is to make conditional verbal action binding. The current TDA "rule" just compounds the matter.
Ironically, and as you've no doubt realized, the only time you gain no additional benefit over other maneuvers (like getting ready to push your chips in) is when everyone agrees and understands ahead of time that conditional statements are non-binding.
Not really. Your statement would be more accurate I think if you if say that everyone thinks it is binding. But the key here is that it is only true if everyone thinks it is binding. If I am trying to gain some advantage by making this statement and I don't know whether you know if its binding or not ..... then I am unable to effectively us ethis to gain an advantage.
Further if the dealer would actually step up and address the tabel talk the players coudl all be informed.
Quote:
Given that typically 25% of players at a 1/2 table are so vague on the rules that they seem amazed every time the BB hits them I think the remedy is to make conditional verbal action binding. The current TDA "rule" just compounds the matter.
Yes but a large percentage of players think grabbing your chips is the same thing as calling as evidenced by the numbers of times that i tell the player in seat 6 to wait for seat 5 to act before folding and I get told "He grabbed his chips"
Additionally I really really do not think it is good for the game of poker to dumb the game down to the lowest common denominator.
But then again I hate when people say their is a dead small blind. or move the button to an unoccupied seat.
_________________ If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. -- George Orwell
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