Well… groovy?
1 and 5 I wouldn’t have a problem with. 1 is so general as to not have much meaning and 5 is such a ridiculous statement that there’s little chance anyone would think it was intended to unfairly influence the hand. 2, 3, and 4 are dicier. Personally I wouldn’t find them appropriate.
Regardless of whether the hand would be killed for being turned up, the player has violated the “one player per hand” rule and the appropriate penalty should be applied.
OK, just saw the Matusow/Sheikhan dust-up. We don’t see Sheikhan’s hole cards. The flop was A98 so he couldn’t have flopped a full house. Not only did he slam the table, Sheikhan started talking to the railbirds about his hand. Matusow was 100% right to tell him to shut up but Mike knew the F-bomb would buy him a penalty too.
It’s a little harsh to pop off with shit like the above as a general rule. Poker is also a game of making correct decisions. It’s very possible, even in the long run, to make every decision correctly and still lose. I went on a losing streak a few months back that included, among other horrendous beats, having pocket AA cracked eight times in a row by hands ranging everywhere from pocket 77 (four times) to 9 high. In each case I played the hand correctly and got outdrawn. I don’t really see making the correct plays over and over again equates to sucking.
He is the little girl with fingers in her ears going “la la la la la, I can’t hear you.” He admits that it quacks like a duck, looks like a duck and feels like a duck but then claims it’s a doorknob. It is not surreal as much as a farce.
Tsk, and your last post had an air of actual intelligence to it. Oh, well… you’re just the yarnball of the week, to be batted around playfully until knocked behind the fridge and forgotten.
I may have split a hair that some people can’t even see, but at least I can argue with actual skill. So go ahead and mention somebody kicking someone’s ass again. That always fits perfectly into discussions about ethics.
Puts me one up on you then.
And your arguments have unravelled like a yarn ball, so we have something in common.
Well, people cannot see what doesn’t exist.
Repeating the same wrong thing over and over again is not skillful arguing, it’s cognitive dissonance.
Some people feel it’s perfectly ethical to execute people when they commit certain breaches of ethics and law, so I fail to see that an old school ass kicking is somehow evidence of an ethics-neutral world.
You know, nobody in this thread agrees with you. What’s that thing about how if a hundred people say you’re drunk you might want to call a cab?
Well, if that’s as high as you can count, so be it.
Herein likes the problem. It’s your contention that poker is an ethical game, while mine is that it is not an ethical game. As I see it, the burden of proof is on you. So far, I find the writings of selected self-described poker experts to be unconvincing. I’ve described how I define the word ethics and find that open-table poker doesn’t meet a certain standard which is met by occupations I’d consider as having a clear ethical basis. Rather, poker is in the same category as other games and I wouldn’t discuss “poker ethics” any more than I’d discuss “checkers ethics” or “Monopoly ethics”. If you want to disagree, be my guest, though I see it as taking poker more seriously than it deserves.
Well, if you’re comparing a judicial execution with beating someone up for being rude during a card game, I can see why you would fail to see a lot of things.
Then again, your statement is ambiguous. Are you talking about how some people feel it might be perfectly ethical to execute people for relatively minor offenses, or is it a statement about death penalty supporters generally? Please clarify.
That’s simply incorrect. Loach expressed doubts about the idea of poker ethics and you even responded to him in post 22. He seems to have moved on and I don’t want to drag him back into this, so I mention him only to prove this particular statement of yours wrong. Even if he had not posted in this thread and I was alone in stating my opinion… so what? That wouldn’t prove me wrong. It would demonstrate a difference of opinion.
Does that make you want to struggle for another lame comeback? To invoke card-table beatings again? Be my guest, yarnball.
More cognitive dissonance blatherings.
When your pony learns a new trick, I’ll bother to respond.
I’m pretty sure even my pony could slap you around. But I figure in two weeks you’ll be gone, unable to afford the $14.95 after having blown your allowance on online porn, never to return.
(reverse psychology, of course, since I’d prefer you actually register and cough up the dough, since I care more about the continued financial health of this board than your presence on it)
FWIW:
It appears you agree with those who maintain there are ethics in poker, except when they use that word. If you grant that certain behaviours are unsportsmanlike, would you agree it is unethical to behave in an unsportsmanlike manner.
I agree that, while doctors and lawyers who have a codifed set of ethics, poker players do not. Ethics, though, exists before codification, and they exist in poker.
Whoops, I chimed in only after having read Page 1. Had I seen Page 2 I wouldna bothered.
I’m not so sure this is clear. First of all it says it may result in a penalty. Secondly it desn’t say anything about lying. If some guy is trying to figure you out and asks “What’ya got? A pair?” and you say “Yes.” Is that against the rules, whether you are telling the truth or not? Why is he allowed to try and pester you to make you reveal some information, but you aren’t allowed to turn the tables on him and play mind games? Clearly, this shouldn’t be allowed outside of head-to-head. Reading that rule I think it is meant to apply more to the people who are no longer in the hand. I mean the second half that rule about advising goes on all the time in head to head. “Do you want me to call you?” “Yeah, I want you to call me.” etc.
Not exactly, and it gets back into hair-splitting. A poker association (or tournament) can impose an ethical standard on its members, to which they either agree or not join. This represents a limited subset of poker players, adhering to whatever standard of poker ethics they’ve all agreed on. Outside of these associations, where every venue can choose its own standards of behaviour, what they have is too tenuous to be called “ethics”, in my opinion, and is better described by the looser terms “sportsmanship” and “etiquette.”
No, it’s unsportsmanlike to behave in an unsportsmanlike manner. It’s unethical to behave in an unethical manner. The terms overlap but are not equivalent.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, then, at least for now. If the current trend of televised poker continues for several more years (and doesn’t simply fade out like a short-lived fad), I can see the standards set by the televised tournaments becoming the de facto standards for poker generally. At that point, when standards for behaviour become near-universal and punishments less arbitrary (ethics are not limitations solely on the players - a casino that beat on violators should also be considered in violation), I could see open-table poker approaching an ethical standard, though it would have to become less like a game and more like a financial transaction, rather like a bunch of investors buying and selling stock.
At the moment, I don’t view poker seriously enough to award it the status of having an ethical basis. Others who do, will. Let 'em.
There isn’t a person in this thread who has spent time at real poker tables who doesn’t know there are ethics in poker.
Realize that, and you will all lose the desire to respond to Ekers.
Would you concede that while the game itself is not ethical, players apply ethical conduct while playing?
Whoopsie. There are those who would disagree. See, the thing is, people’s opinions on what “deserves” to be taken seriously varies wildly. Personally, I can’t see taking dressing up in period clothes, speaking in Elizabethan English, and paying to be hot, dusty and bored seriously. That’s just me. But there are professional poker players, many of them, who take what they do seriously. Who are you to say their profession isn’t serious?
Then you need a different example than Wild Bill Hickock to illustrate that point. Jack McCall shot Hickock in the back of the head while Hickock was playing poker, but McCall wasn’t in the game. McCall’s motive hasn’t been firmly established, but I have never heard that he killed Hickock for somehow violating the ethics of poker.
Not sure why I’m doing this but…
Is it bad to behave in an unsportsmanlike manner? Yes bad =/= unsportsmanlike. Yes, the two overlap. But is “bad” a word that can be used to describe “unsportsmanlikeness”?
Does ethics, in any way, address the ideas of good and bad?
Must the word “ethics” only be reserved for professional behaviour, and only those professions with chartered associations?
I dropped my pencil on the floor. I mean, yeah it fell, but it’s not physics - it’s just a pencil, and not even a member of the Association of Applied Physicists
Well, ideally we’ve all been socialized to at least a minimal degree of politeness (well, except in this Pit forum, which is practically a war zone). What individual-initiative ethical conduct did you have in mind?
I’ve never contended that others weren’t free to disagree. I’ve stated repeatedly that I expect others will disagree. I would be greatly surprised if I could say anything on any subject and not get disagreement from someone.
A person living in liberal democracy that has an established respect for freedom of thought and expression, who has paid for a membership to a message board that for the most part follows the same standard.
I don’t know what kind of answer you were expecting, but there it is.
Eh. It’s a judgement call. The example used earlier with Layne Flack…that was skating the fine line. Lying and saying you have an ace when you don’t in order to push someone out of a hand is absolutely not allowed. You cannot misrepresent your hand. Um. I hope this is the right link, it’s for the Tournament Director’s Assn. rule book, but it comes up as FORBIDDEN for me. PDF, sorry.
There’s a misconception I’ve noticed growing for a while (thought I might be wrong), but this is the first time I’ll address it directly. I’m not advocating the kinds of behaviour that many people in this thread are complaining about. Personally, I’d consider faking a fold or concealing your cards to make it look like you’ve folded, or deliberately calling out of turn, etc. to be unsportsmanlike and deserving of scorn or even expulsion (though not violence). I don’t engage in such behaviours myself and if I was in a game where it was happening, I’d find another table. I simply don’t see these behaviours as unethical and I would not accuse another player of violating poker ethics (to me, such a complaint sounds like whining); I would simply consider him a jerk. Trying to call him out as “unethical” is overstating the severity of his offense and in fact overstating the importance of the game itself.
I see (and have described) a distinction between “sportmanslike” and “ethical”, and I’ve conceded the existence of tournament poker ethics and a possible path that could lead me to recognize open-table poker ethics (elevating beyond “sportsmanlike”) in several years. Barring some compelling evidence, I don’t intend to go further. The fine distinction remains, whether others agree or not.