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Talking About A Hand While It’s Still In Progress

When I decided to do an article on talking at the table during a hand, I thought along the lines of friends making jokes and idle chatter. Chatter along the lines of “Get out of my pot, “Thanks Pal, I owe you one” or “How can you play that garbage.” All these are harmless digs that mean nothing more than that you are having fun. What I found out is that this can be an extremely hot topic with more than a few people. The opinions covered all of the bases, ranging from friendly chatter to unethical angle shots, and outright illegal moves that are made to intimidate other players. It started with this question,

In an effort to bring some basic rules to this argument, I would like to propose some ideas for dealing with this problem.

1. When somebody does something that is clearly out of order at the table (discussing possible hands, exposing cards, etc.) Politely ask them to stop. If they give you any lip, the dealer should step in and, tell them they are wrong, and then tell them not to do it again.

2. In #1 above if the dealer cautions the person without prompting by others, I will often throw them a $1 chip.

3. In #1 above, if the dealer doesn’t step in to your defense, seek out a floor-person. Tell them that you shouldn’t have to police the game, but when you go to the effort to do so, the least the dealer can do is come in on your side when you get flak about it.

Opinion 4

I totally agree with Lee. I recently played a hand where I held KK and the flop came KQT. The turn brings the Jack. One of the two remaining players states “Well, I’m not going to bet because we obviously all have the straight.” Then another rocket scientist pipes up and says, “Don’t be so sure of that, I would bet anyhow.” After the hand I told the rocket scientist to keep his mouth shut, when I was in the hand, and when he argued with me, the dealer finally stepped in, but it was too late as far as I was concerned.

Opinion 5

I disagree insofar as it applies to players who are in the hand. If I’m still in the hand I expect I should be able to say anything I want. I would do this in an attempt to influence others to call, fold, or react in such a way that I can guess what they have. Only once that one ceases to have a financial interest in the outcome of the hand, do I believe it becomes inappropriate to indulge in table talk that may affect that hands outcome.

Opinion 6

If I was hoping to fill a boat, and had you pegged for a flush, and someone else for a straight, I would try to do anything I could to discourage a player behind me from raising, and making my draw more expensive than it had to be. It wouldn’t matter to me in the slightest if what I said about your hand was true or not, if it achieved my purpose of intimidating the other player into calling instead of raising. How different, really is this from advertising my strength by making a face or exercising some fake tell? Poker is a game of trickery and deception perhaps as much as it is a game of mathematics and probability.

What is the definitive rule on table talk? It seems the definitive rule and the ethical rule seem to be different. I believe that it is possible to draft a set of rules that would eliminate these ethical considerations that always seem to be causing difficulty. It seems that many inexperienced players are used to playing stud where it is common to call out potential hands as the streets’ progress. In Hold’em this is not only frowned on, but also absolutely incorrect.

In closing I would like to mention one of my gripes. It is when I am playing in a stud game and the dealer insists on speculating and announcing a possible hand. I have been in games where the dealer not only announced what he thought the hand looked like, but also gave a running commentary, such as “A possible flush or straight in the works.” Give me a break, is this not breaking the one head to a hand rule? In stud, this favors the player couldn’t care less about what is on the board in front of the other player’s.

If a player is having a problem seeing the other end of the board, I have no problem with the dealer or anyone else reading the cards to them. My problem comes with helping those not skilled or interested enough to read the cards held by other players at the table, being spoon fed this information by the dealer. I realize that dealers are trained to do this as a help to newer players and a courtesy to others, my only thought is that they not carry it too far. You may think this is wrong on my part.

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