First, I've Tivoed Wednesday's WPT episode, "Poker by the Book", and have watched the first hour of it so far. The six players at the table: Caro, Sklansky, Brunson, Hellmuth, Cloutier, and... um... Sexton. It's very cool to watch. I've read the first four of these guy's books, and I never realized that Caro's almost a big a jerk as Hellmuth is, but (and this should have been no surprise) is even better at playing with your head.
Case in point, Caro and Cloutier are left after the rag flop, and Cloutier's trying to put Caro all in. Caro's got pocket Jacks, and he stares at Cloutier and says, "I can tell you've got a pair, I just don't know how big. Sixes?" Pause. "Sevens?" Pause. "Eights? Nines? Tens?" Pause. Pause. Pause.
The left side of Cloutier's thin-line poker face begins to turn up in a smirk.
"Jacks? Queens?" Pause, pause. "I call," Caro says.
Cloutier turns up his pocket sevens. The turn and river don't help; Caro wins.
Is that an ethical way to play?
1 comment:
My take is that ethical poker is like a "fair fight". A fair fight, to me, is one I walk away from having won. If I walk away from the poker table with your money, it was ethical enough for me. :)
At the same time having said that, however, I do discount physical manipulation of the cards in play as being ethical. No stacking the deck or slipping in extra bullets.
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