7 Do’s and Don’ts at the Table: Mastering Poker Etiquette
Playing live poker can be nerve-wracking, especially trying to adhere to poker etiquette standards that so many players expect. It
Should Poker Reporters Speak Up? The Debate Over Dealer Mistakes
Cards Must Speak And So Should Poker Reporters
“The writer must be a participant in the scene while he’s writing it — or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson
Hawkins’ 18th Ring Mired in Controversy
A few days ago, at the Horseshoe Baltimore, a record 18th WSOP Circuit ring was won by Maurice Hawkins, but the victory has been mired in controversy after a video was published showing him being pushed a crucial pot with the losing hand—a dealer’s mistake that sent Divyam Satyarthi to the rail in third place.
Hawkins rivered the wheel, but that card put a fourth club on the board, which made Satyarthi a flush. Nobody at the table signaled the error, but the reporter covering the final table captured it on video. This led to a heated debate on social media, with players and industry professionals split on whether the reporter should have intervened if he realized what had happened in real time rather than at his desk when reviewing the footage a little while later.
WPT Executive Tournament Director and Hall-of-Fame-adjacent poker legend Matt Savage was the most prominent voice in the ‘reporters should speak up’ camp, while PokerOrg editor-in-chief and Journalist of the Year Brad Willis was the most vocal proponent of keeping quiet.
In one sense, this is not a tough one at all. Cards were tabled. Cards speak. Anybody who cares about game integrity should want the correct outcome, however we get to it. In another sense, however, this is an extremely tough one because reporters are trained to be ‘a fly on the wall,’ are specifically told by their paymasters not to intervene, and would risk being fired should they contravene those orders.
Different Perspectives
Savage was adamant about whether a media person should speak up if they see a mistake. In fact, writing in his ‘Savage Rules!’ column for Poker.Org, he went further:
“It could be a massage therapist, a housekeeper, or somebody just walking by the table. I don’t care. I want the pot pushed to the right person when they pay to win that pot.”
Willis agreed that everyone wants the pot to go to the rightful winner but argued that nobody wants a poker reporter playing the role of umpire. He believes that allowing the media to interject when dealers and floor staff are doing their jobs creates problems:
“Imagine the chaos if the media could stop action every time they witnessed a mistake happen (or worse, a mistake they only thought happened). Imagine the player frustration and outrage. Imagine the media who mess up and call foul when there wasn’t a problem.”
What’s interesting about this controversy is that depending on your perspective, motivations, and the competing priorities of different motivations, both positions are very reasonable. Savage is viewing the situation through the lens of a tournament director. For him, the right outcome at the table supersedes everything else, so anything that happens to reach that outcome is justifiable. Willis is a journalist and recognizes that for a myriad of reasons, most journalists are loath to become part of the story that they are covering.
Impartial Observer
Bearing witness is a moral imperative embedded deeply in a reporter’s DNA. The role of ‘the impartial observer’ is sacred, and sticking to it is a vital aspect of journalistic credibility. As such, stepping out of the role of an objective observer is rare and should not be taken lightly. When that happens, it is likely a snap decision made by that reporter in the heat of the moment when he or she decides that the value of that role is trumped by the need to protect someone from imminent danger or a miscarriage of justice.
In 2006, journalistic ethics professor and media researcher Roger Simpson put forward his ‘Rules of Engagement’ to help reporters navigate situations in which they feel compelled to intervene:
“There are times when journalists must engage with the stories they cover, for the good of their craft, themselves, and the subjects of their stories, but there are also times when they must step back, allow events to unfold, and do their jobs.”
Simpson’s first rule is that if a journalist is on the scene where a person needs help and they know how to help, then they should help. His second rule is that a journalist should not intervene in situations that might endanger a life, including their own. His third, and perhaps most important, rule is about recognizing how the action of recording or reporting on what is happening can actually be the most effective way to intervene.
A Philosophical Polemic
In the case of Hawkins vs. Satyarthi, there is obviously no mortal danger, so Rule 2 does not apply. We don’t have a systemic problem in poker with incompetent dealers pushing pots to the wrong people or, worse still, a conspiracy by staff to cheat players, so Rule 3 does not seem applicable either. That leaves us with Rule 1, which does, at least at first glance, appear to fit.
The player needed help, and the reporter knew how to help him. It could, of course, be argued that the player in question was capable of helping himself but failed to do so. That’s a fair point, but then the counterargument would be that a person in jeopardy who is failing to help himself, or is unaware that he needs help, is, by definition, a person who needs help.
This type of ontological back-and-forth could go on ad nauseam, ultimately morphing into exactly what has happened—a philosophical polemic between poker’s materialists Rachel Kay Winter and idealists Shaun Deeb who are doomed to perpetual disagreement because they fundamentally interpret the nature of reality differently. Does a tree falling in the forest makes a sound, even if there is nobody there to hear it?
Duty to Rescue
History is full of examples of reporters downing tools to intercede on behalf of others in need or in jeopardy. It is also full of examples of reporters choosing not to do so, often receiving criticism or even being vilified for maintaining journalistic detachment. That same journalistic conundrum is now under scrutiny in poker.
As Barny Boatman pointed out so poetically on his EPT Paris final table, poker is not about life and death. A player’s tournament life is obviously a less precious, less important, and less consequential thing. Nonetheless, I would argue that a pot worth tens of thousands of dollars in equity is still significant. Also, since the amount is irrelevant to the principle, what if it was millions of dollars? What if it was a humongous, life-altering sum?
In tort law, there is a concept called ‘duty to rescue,’ whereby a party could be held liable for failing to come to the aid of another party who could face potential injury. Is there some overlap here? Financial injury clearly ranks lower than bodily injury, but it is unquestionably a form of damage or harm.
The reporter would not be eyeballing a robbery but he would be witnessing an accidental theft and you could uabsolutely make the case that he would have a duty to rescue that situation. According to Willis,
“The best-case scenario… is that the poker media accurately record the action, and if there is any question about what happened in a hand that an eye in the sky couldn’t document, the floor consults the media to determine if dealer/player reporting matches up with media reporting.”
Best-Case Scenario
I would argue for a different best-case scenario, one that might be found via a slightly different interpretation of Simpson’s third rule. When we think about how the action of recording or reporting on what is happening can be the most effective way to intervene, we tend to think about the long term or the broader injustice that could be exposed by telling the unimpeded story of what happened. However, in cases like Hawkins vs. Satyarthi, that simply does not apply. Either the situation gets rectified in the moment, or it’s gone.
I would like to add at this point that I am very conscious of my own bias here. To the extent that I could ever be called a poker journalist, I am a gonzo journalist, unconcerned about putting myself into the stories that I write. Nonetheless, I naggingly find myself falling back on the idea that nobody in poker should want tabled cards to be silent. If you make that your first principle, you become more malleable about how we get to that place.
Savage was unequivocal in his article:
“I would be happy to help tournament reporters understand why the integrity of the game is more important than the story. I’m telling you that, in the future, when you see a similar situation… make that correction.”
I concur. At the end of the day, after reviewing the footage, it is still going to be the tournament director who makes the final decision
How to Improve Your Online Poker Game with Training Sites
I started playing poker over a decade and a half ago when my brother taught me the basics in an
Love and Luck: The Best and Worst States for Finding Love
Does love sometimes feel like a losing game? It might not just be bad luck—some states seem to have the
