Plenty of times I have seen players openly misrepresent a hand - telling opponents “I wouldn’t call if I was you,” when holding weak cards or suggesting that they will be beaten by any caller, “Good night, good game all,” while holding pocket rockets. No one has ever complained when the duplicity is revealed.
So you’re saying that angle shooting is okay with you?
As for you if6was9, I would play with you, but at some point you would start to cry and roll into a fetal ball. This, along with the sudden loss of control of your bowels, is a a huge tell and I wouldn’t care for such an unfair advantage.
Or the sench, for that matter.
I wasn’t previously aware of the term ‘angle shooting’ and on-line definitions range from “unethical” to “deal with it, crybaby”. It looks like something the opponent does to get a rise out of you, thus revealing information about your hand while he offers less, or none. If you can’t keep your cool, your poker face, then go play Monopoly.
Crybaby.
You’re wrong, but that’s unsurprising since you admit you didn’t know what the term meant before and are now deciding to take a few different opinions and make a decision based on some supposed “controversy.” Sounds like what a creationist would do and that’s about the worst insult I can give someone.
Here is a useful definition:
The emphasis above is mine. Since angle shooting is considered unethical, it goes to say that there is ethics in poker.
The degree would be what angle is being shot. Here are some examples:
Some angle shooting becamse so prevalent that they made rules about it. One reason we don’t say “I see you and raise” like in the old West is because that itself was an angle - see the reaction to a call before you make your raise. It was considered in bad form so now you have to say the word “raise” or it’s not a legal raise.
Some “angles” are fairly benign. Some are simply evil: I heard about a guy who kept his chips in front of his cards the whole time; it was just the way he was sitting. This didn’t matter until a guy with the nuts decided that the rules stated that this meant he was all in. Never mind that he had been that way the whole game and nobody, including the angle shooter, said a word. Now is when he raised a stink about it and because of the rules of the cardroom that were unenforced until that moment, the platyer was told by the dealer that he was all-in! Since the rules of poker are supposed to stress intent rather than the letter of the law, the floor overruled the dealer but nobody at the table thought the move was very ethical and if the floor didn’t have a brain it could have worked.
Calling someone who views at least some angle shooting to be unethical a “crybaby” when you barely even know the term says more about your ability to jump to conclusions than your ability to figure out what the term accurately means.
Oh, and angle shoot at your own peril at backroom card games. You can wind up getting your ass kicked.
Oh. Well, I hope you’ll put more effort into it as time passes.
Sounds like circular logic, something I understand creationists can’t get enough of. I realize that’s a major insult in your world, but I’ll use it anyway.
Trying to work up some lame ad hominem attack out of someone’s unfamiliarity with a specific piece of jargon says more about you than it does about your argument. In any case, I stated early on that I was distinguishing psychological tactics from actual cheating. If you can’t pay attention to the game, you certainly shouldn’t be playing it for money. Try oreos instead.
Your own cite says it all. Of course I prefer to sit at a table that is a gentleman’s game. It’s much more enjoyable.
It’s amazing how many poker experts there are now. What happened, did they start putting it on TV or something?
I will when the target is worth the effort.
No, this is simple logic, evidently not a strong point of yours. If looking for evidence of ethics in poker, finding something that is widely considered “unethical” seems to me to be the evidence that is needed. Possibly if I draw you a map you can figure this out? I’ll use a lot of colors so it might at least entertain you…
Poker is apparently over your head. This might help you find a game you can excel in.
It says that some people are unethical, yes, and accuses them of not being gentlemen while acknowledging that some unethical people may be at your table. Which goes to say that there are indeed ethics in poker because how can someone act unethically in an ethics-neutral environment? It doesn’t wash…
Of course it’s legal to go all in every hand. What I said was unethical is going all in after saying something like “I have to leave, call me.” Could you in future maybe respond to my actual statements?
Poker has ethics because poker can be played unethically? Admit it, you read yourself to sleep with Genesis every night, don’t you?
Fine, my response is to disagree that this is the basis for assuming an ethical standard in poker. In fact, if poker ethics exist and you assume another player is throwing all-in because he really has to leave (and not on the actual strength of his hand), aren’t you behaving unethically? You’re taking advantage of his tight schedule, when your decision to stay in should be based solely on the strength of your own hand and a reasonable expectation about the strength of his. What are you, some kinda angle shooter?
Whoever the fuck thinks there aren’t ethics in poker should be forced to play by his own credo in an old West game and see how long it takes before he ends up like poor Bill Hickock.
Of course there are ethics in poker–there are things you aren’t supposed to do because they violate the spirit of the game, or because they are angle-shooting. Making statements that reveal–truly or falsely–the quality of your hand is unethical. I can’t remember his name, but there was some dumbass at the WSOP who slammed the table in disgust when the flop came after he had folded, thus essentially revealing that he would have connected with the flop. He was given a 10 minute penalty for doing so.
Some other unethical behavior that should get your ass kicked is slow-rolling, acting out of turn for information, and other amateurish bullshit. Note, for example, that Cooke’s Rules of Real Poker 17.12 prohibits slow-rolling, while not providing any specific penalty for it. I suppose atomic wedgies would be out of place in an official rule book.
And I defy anyone to find me any set of rules or guidelines for poker that say anywhere in them “These rules are all there is. If you find some way to gain an edge at the poker table that is sneaky, unethical, and against the spirit of the rules, but not technically illegal, good for you! There’s no ethics in poker, so just keep using it until enough people bitch about it and you force us to update this rulebook. Then start looking for another angle to shoot, you smart bastard!”
As Sklansky says in The Theory of Poker, those who try to make a living playing that type of poker soon find themselves driving cabs in Vegas instead. It doesn’t make them anymore pleasant before they bust out, though.
I don’t play much live poker, but I always report anyone who acts unethically on-line. Berating fish has its place–bad beat stories and the like–but not at the table.
Oh, so ethical systems can be created at gunpoint. Gotcha.
Gunplay aside, there are certainly table behaviours I’d consider annoying, to the point where I wouldn’t play with that person again. I don’t feel compelled to make up some kind of ethical framework to justify myself, though. All your arguments assume that which you’re trying to prove.
No, silly. They’re enforced at gunpoint.
Christ you’re dense. Do you play that Bush song all the time? You know, the one that goes *“Breathe out, breathe in,” * over and over again? Not because you like the song or the band, but you know, as a reminder? Just in case?
Yeah, I thought so.
I will repeat it in the form of a question that you doubtlessly will be unable to answer: If thrust into a situation where there is no code of ethics, is it possible for something to be unethical?
Show your work, Sparky.
Of course not. What kind of stupid question is that? No wonder Rebecca_Romijn’s_Right_Ear divorced your sorry ass.
Ultimately, though, we simply disagree whether an ethical framework for the game of poker exists. To argue for the necessity of such a code, you’d have to prove that without some universal self-restraint on the part of the players (above and beyond simply observing the established rules of the game), the game itself would suffer from negative publicity and possibly restrictions imposed by an outside agency, i.e. law enforcement cracking down on all poker games because of complaints about the actions of a minority of players.
Since I don’t see this outside pressure as significant (the game of poker has in fact gained in reputation, mostly through television coverage), I don’t see the need for an ethical framework applied to poker players as I do for, say, doctors and lawyers. I simply don’t take the complaints seriously enough. If someone says “Well, I gotta split, may as well go all-in,” and then doesn’t actually leave, I don’t see any reason to take a complainer seriously. If you think you can win the hand, call the all-in. If you can’t, fold. If you want to complain, go suck your thumb in the corner.
I completely disagree with you. Poker has all kinds of spoken and unspoken rules that you are expected to abide by. Some poker rooms will enforce them, others won’t, but either way you’ll piss off the other players and find yourself persona non grata if you persist your unethical behaviour. If you throw away your hand and the flop comes up AA8 and you go, “Dammit!”, then everyone knows you had an ace, and it changes the game play for everyone. If you throw your cards away out of turn, it gives additional positional advantage to the guy on your right.
I have seen people literally thrown out of games for doing things like saying, “I’ll give you a hint if you’re thinking of calling - I can’t beat a flush.” - and then rolling over a full house when the opponent calls with his two pair.
There are all sorts of ethical rules in life that aren’t codified by laws. If I’m driving down the road and I see an old lady standing in front of a puddle, I’ll go out of my way to not drive through the puddle and soak her. It may not be illegal to do so, but it’s unethical to intentionally do something like that, and you’re a dipshit if you do it anyway, just because there are no laws against it.
Many poker rooms have had to adopt new rules for the game when a widely accepted convention like “no slow rolling” becomes routinely violated. Because that’s what happens when people go around proclaiming their god-given right to behave any way they want so long as there isn’t a rule against it.
In games like poker, where there is a lot of tension and real stakes, it’s even more important to have an ethical framework around the game that exists outside the literal rules. It’s hard enough to take a bad beat than to have to suffer people trying to lie to you, distract you, pretend they are folding when they aren’t, etc.
I once saw a huge conflagration in a no-limit game - two players were heads up, and the first acted out of turn and said, “Aw, I can’t beat a damned thing” and threw his cards into the middle of the table, face down. The other player took that for a fold, threw his cards into the muck, and reached for the pot. The other guy said, “What are you doing? I didn’t fold! You mucked your cards!” And reached for the pot. It was clearly an angle shot. The guy made a folding gesture without explicity saying, “I fold”, hoping to provoke exactly the mistake that happened. But guess what? He didn’t get the pot. Luckily, this was in an ‘underground’ club, and not a casino that has to live by the strict letter of the rules. So the manager of the club told the guy that everyone knew he was folding, and that he was no longer welcome in that club, and they booted him. And rightly so.
The result of that little piece of idiocy was that the club had to paint a yellow ‘fold line’ around the table and make a new rule that if your cards crossed that line they were mucked. So of course we’d have occasional disagreements when a card was on the line, but not completely over it, etc. Stupid, and all because some people can’t tell the difference between acceptable behaviour and literal rule breaking.
Of course, you can argue that the other guy deserved to lose the pot because he was stupid to muck his cards before the pot was awarded to him, and you’d be right. But it doesn’t matter. If players are allowed to get away with any shenanigans they can dream up that aren’t strictly against the rules, then pretty soon you’ll have a game with a 500 page rulebook, and players will have to bring lawyers to the table with them. And the game will slow down, and the value of courtesy will vanish because no one will know if you’re really being courteous or shooting an angle. Darwinian selection is already very much in play at the poker table - an ‘anything goes’ attitude makes it much worse.
And I hated to see that crap because the fish in the game are there to have fun, and when some angling bastard takes advantage of them they tend to leave the game and not come back.
Oddly, I completely agree with you, if the word “unethical” is dropped from the above quote.
Well then, since noted citations from authorites have been provided that specifically call out angle shooting as unethical, then that would therefore mean that poker indeed has ethics.
Please don’t breed.
I think what it comes down to is that Bryan Ekers doesn’t know the meaning of the words “ethics.”
Pay particular attention to definition 2c - the principles of conduct governing an individual or group.
Christ, citations have been provided that Angle Shooting is considered - quote-unquote - unethical. The definition of ethics says the word is being used correctly this way. Apparently I am supposed to suspend my belief that there are ethics in poker despite numerous citations to the contrary all because Bryan Ekers disagrees.
Actually, this could have happened in a casino as well. At the end of the day, those in charge are supposed to allow intent to be the most important thing so even in a casino, the floor could have easily said that the intent was a fold. The problem is that you need a floor-person who is able to make that correct determination instead of a drone and like in any occupation, good help is often hard to find.