An ethical dillema for live players

This month so far:  +$10.49

It's nice to have things going in the right direction for a change.

This will be a little long, because what follows is a series a posts from the twoplustwo.com poker forums, discussing an ethical dilemma that live players sometimes face, and which I have faced.  The first post is an online magazine article which is not copyrighted, and is available for the use of members of the site until 6 months after it is writen, at which point it is taken down and all rights revert to the author. Posts 2 and 3 are a conversation between myself and the author.

The Bellagio Bandit and the Bully: a Poker Player’s Dilemma

by Tim Napper
Two Plus Two Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 3


I was feeling upbeat as I walked through my favorite poker room in Macau at the start of a tournament series that held much promise for my bank roll. I was looking to hit up some soft cash games to fill in the days between preliminary events. A poker comrade had told me about a great Omaha High game going and I wandered over to the table to look at the line up. I stood back watching the game and it looked good. Nearly every pot was a family pot, and four or five guys seemed to doggedly hold on until the river. Now, I am not a big fan of Omaha since it’s one of my weaker games. But, I’m not one to say no to a situation with positive Expected Value. If I could hit a few hands and keep my head, I was going to have a good night at the tables.

After I had un-racked my chips and sat down for a few minutes, something struck me about the game. The players seemed withdrawn and were barely mumbling a word. A sense of foreboding hung over the table, a disquiet that seemed to be caused by just one of the players- a middle-aged, stocky western gentleman with a shaved head and big gold chain around his thick bull neck. He sat down one end, alternating between glowering over the game and loudly making off-color remarks about gays, Chinese people, women, you name it.

As the game continued, it got worse. He started eyeballing his opponent every time he got in a pot. He’d puff his chest out. Sometimes he’d stand up, right over his opponent. If he won or lost a big hand, he’d tell his opponent to “stay out of his pots”. If another player in the pot with him picked up chips, he’d ask them “what the [expletive] are you doing?” At one point when he lost a hand, he slammed the table and let loose with a “don’t you know who I am?” And when he wasn’t threatening other players, he’d be jabbing his finger in the face of the dealer, dropping some choice swear words.

I was stunned. I couldn’t figure out why the table or dealer was putting up with this. One or two players silently racked up and left, presumably because of his behavior. However, no one said a word. I was just about to call the floor over when a conversation between the bully and one of the other players made things a little clearer. There was talk of a court case followed by some comments about the drug trade. The clear imputation was that he had sort of association with organized crime. The bully seemed quite proud of himself and the rest of the table laughed uncomfortably as he told his story. Now, it could well have been nonsense, but everyone at the table seemed to be intimidated. Indeed, everyone seemed to know him reasonably well, and a steady stream of well known big-time local gamblers came up to the game to engage him in conversation.

So, I found this situation unacceptable, which put me in something of a dilemma. You see, I wasn’t too keen on sitting at the bully table and yet I didn’t want this guy to leave. The thing is the guy in question was also the worst player at the table by far and he also had a huge pile of chips in front of him from getting lucky a few times. From the perspective of Expected Value, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value I wanted this guy to stay in the game. I thought about the situation and figured if I made a complaint straight away one of two things would happen: (1) the guy would be asked to leave the table to cool down or (2) I could be asked to leave so as to help keep the peace (the latter seems strange but in my experience, when it is a ‘regular’ versus an ‘outsider’ in some poker rooms, the regular wins out- especially when he is a an aspiring Don). In any case, either option wasn’t very palatable. In the end, I decided on a compromise. I would beat him out of a chunk of money and then report him to the floor manager. This is exactly what I did after racking up a tidy profit, won mainly from him.

But results aside, as I walked away from the game I felt somehow unsettled. I started to think about where poker players should draw the line in terms of Expected Value. How offensive, unethical, or illegal the actions of a player will you endure just to make a profit? Anyone who has spent any time at the table has seen highly dubious behavior such as physical intimidation, verbal insults or angle-shooting. And anyone who has played for long enough has been willing to let these things go from time to time when the player doing these things is terrible and spewing chips (conversely, it may be a good strategy to object to boorish behavior from very good players, if you think it will put them off their game).

In the words of Barry Greenstein, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Greenstein in his excellent book Ace on the River,

“A successful poker player looks for any flaw in his opponents’ personalities and uses it as motivation to beat them out of their money. Fortunately, it is easy to find flaws. I like to beat up on the bad winners, bad losers, slow-rollers, deal-abusers, chauvinists, racists, egomaniacs… and loudmouths”.

Amen Barry. But sometimes I wonder if it is worth allowing the crude arithmetic of short term expected value to guide all our actions at the table.

Let me give a separate example. Late last year, the Bellagio was held up by a gunman. He simply left his motor bike running in the valet area, walked through the North entrance with his helmet still on, pointed a pistol at those standing around the nearest craps table and made off with 1.5 million in chips. Simple and effective.

But here is where the story gets interesting. The guy who committed the crime, while brazen in staging the robbery, was equally imprudent in his behavior afterwards. He decided he’d stay at the Bellagio, spend the chips he stole and contact random strangers on online poker forums, including 2+2 on whether they’d like to buy the chips. Needless to say, the guy in question, Tony Carleo, a bankrupt, drug addicted, judge’s son (what a damning troika), was captured in February. Anyway, best not to dwell on his stupidity, but rather on the response to his stupidity.

Word has it that high-stakes poker players happily sat down and took huge chunks of money from him in big poker games. He dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars over the period of just a few weeks. He was so strung out on drugs and so open about the way he’d come into enough money to play in the bigger games that pretty soon it was widely known that he was the motorbike bandit from the Bellagio. Todd Brunson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Brunson even tweeted after the bandit was arrested, saying “Tony Carleo was finally arrested for robbing the Bellagio… Was the worst kept secret in Vegas who did it.”

So here is the question: is it reasonable to play a known armed robber to beat him out of his illicit gains? What if he’d robbed a small, independently-owned business? What about if he’d shot and killed someone during the robbery? Is it ethical to try to win the money from him then? Where do we draw the line on Expected Value?

I think living your poker life focused on short-term expected value has a negative expectation in the long run. I think if you let certain things slide for too long, the really ugly side including the bullies and strung-out armed robbers; well, they make the table a pretty ugly place to be. It is this underbelly of poker that can drive people from the game. And that’s not good for value. Moreover, if you’re so mercenary that you will never take a stand on a question of principle at the table, at what point do you find your own beliefs bending to theirs? A crucial strength needed as a poker player is knowledge of oneself, and a confidence in that knowledge: of your strengths, your weaknesses, and the boundaries you form around your poker life. Enduring any offense for the sake of EV leads you to a point where you are personally diminished, and that’s not much good for your game.

Now, I’m not saying you have to get worked up over every infraction. On the contrary, like Barry says, look for the flaws in your opponents and punish them for it. For the most part, when playing scumbags, you should just shut up and drag the pot. But there’s a line here somewhere, and every good poker player needs to figure out where that line is.

If I can finish with Greenstein: “I follow a stricter set of ethical guidelines than most of my opponents, even if it costs me money in the short run. It has given me inner peace, and in the long run I have actually profited from it”

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Very interesting article. I have faced situations like the one you described. Part of my job as a poker player is to stay calm in wierd or uncomfortable table situations. They are going to happen, and I have to be able to deal with it.

We've all seen the pros out of control on TV. Someone accused of cheating. Jennifer Tilly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Tilly  and others wearing low-cut dresses, knowing how distracting it will be to some of their opponents. Scotty Nguyen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotty_Nguyen so drunk at the table that he barely knows what's going on. Tony G http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_G shouting at an opponent who has pictures of his kids at the table, "I'll take all your money, and your children will starve!" Those things shouldn't happen, but they do, and I can't let myself tilt when it happens.

A few months ago I was playing a tournament in one of the local charity rooms. During the break I watched one of the cash games. After I watched a few hands, I realized that the dealer was inexperienced, and that things were about to take a very bad turn.

Drunk white guy (DWG) at one end of the table was insulting angry black guy (ABG) at the other end (the word "bitch", among others, was used), and I could tell that the ABG was taking it both personally and as a racist insult. I worked in a rescue mission for 12 years, and I have seen that kind of racially charged situation, with drugs or alcohol or drugs involved, more than once.

I found the tournament director and told him that there was going to be a fight. By the time the TD and I got back to the table, it had already started. The insults were flying, DWG stood up, then ABG and the other two black players at the table stood up. The TD immediately stepped in, and said that the next person to make any kind of threat or insult, or do anything physical, would be asked to leave, with police help if necessary. That took care of the problem, and everyone was on their best behavior after that.

I have always said that I would love to be at that kind of table. Not that I condone that kind of behavior, or want to be threatened. I would want a table like that because it gives me an edge--not only against a tilted, angry player, but against the table as a whole.

My edge would be that I wouldn't tilt. Like the author of the article, if you want to go on tilt, and insult or threaten me, while giving me all your money (or in my case chips, as I only play tournaments), I'll take that deal any time. In fact, I would choose such a table if I could, knowing that other players at the table would be tilted as well, even if they weren't directly involved in the verbal abuse--and playing against a table full of tilted players should give me a big edge.

However, with the bully scenario, I was uneasy about thinking that way. My problem is with letting someone drive the fish away. There are many players that will intercede, tell the bully to shut up, or call the floor to get it stopped, because they don't want to lose the fish. A bully can make it not worth the trouble for an occasional recreational player, who maybe drives to a casino once a month, or plays in a charity room only on the weekend.
So, while staying calm while being abused increases expected value, letting amateur/recreational players get chased away is -EV. Staying calm at a table of insulting morons is definitely +EV, but if it's someplace that you play regularly, doing nothing while recreational players are made uncomfortable is -EV for you, for everyone who plays there, and for the casino itself.

Regarding the robbery situation, that has happened in my city as well. We have three charity rooms, and one of them (not the one where I play) was the victim of an armed robber last year.

http://www.atpoker.com/news/armed-ro...o-microstakes/

If I knew that I was playing against one of the robbers, I would call the police as soon as I could do it without the thief knowing (not because I would be scared, but because I wouldn't want to tip him off that the police were coming).

Thanks Poker Clif, you make some good points (I am the author of the article by the way). If you are confident in your ability to stay calm, then some of the wilder tables are certainly +ev.

However - like your example of the recreational player – some of these scenarios just are not good for the game. I felt the bully certainly fit into the category of short term +ev but long term –ev for that poker room. If you have a bit of gamble in you (and in Macau, everyone has a ton of gamble) why sit down with an a-hole when you can get your fix at the baccarat table?

In my home room in Australia I’d be even less inclined to deal with any of this nonsense – one because I’m a regular and I know the floor won’t make life difficult for me, and two because I don’t want these sort of guys cutting into the profitability of the room. Again, not talking about a bit of colourful language or characters – these people are one of the reasons live poker can be enjoyable. But it’s a question of assessing where someone has gone too far (and, I should add, when the dealer or floor aren’t doing their job and responding to it).
 But beyond all this – there’s the ‘inner peace’ point that Barry makes. If you get to a point where you’re sitting there in silence while someone treats the table like ***** for two hours (which is essentially what happened to me in Macau) there’s a danger you’ll experience that slow-burning tilt that eats away at your game. So yeah, I walked away with a profit – a fairly substantial one – but I’m not sure I felt good about it. There’s short term and long term ev, and in the last instance, there’s a point where you have to say f*ck value.
 I guess one of the things I’ve noticed about ‘ev’ conversations is that it is almost always treated in a vacuum, as a mathematical concept - yet as we know, nothing ever exists in a vacuum at the poker table.

 p.s. I will never object to low-cut dresses.


p.p.s Except maybe on Shaun Deeb
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1&search=%22Shaun+Deeb%22&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns1=1&ns2=1&ns3=1&ns4=1&ns5=1&ns6=1&ns7=1&ns8=1&ns9=1&ns10=1&ns11=1&ns12=1&ns13=1&ns14=1&ns15=1&ns100=1&ns101=1&ns108=1&ns109=1