Whatever. If you really can't understand how integrity can be part of gambling... how stealing a pot is different from winning a pot... or the ethics of personal responsibility in making the decision to sit at a table and gamble...

...well that tells me something about your (lack of) character. End of discussion for me. I don't really need to hear anymore from you.

You shouldn't unilaterally decide what other people have moral dilemmas about. I DO have a moral dilemma playing with people that are clearly intoxicated/gambling addicts.

I use my above average skill set to win at poker, based on the rules of the game and I wouldnt want to win any other way. So I would return the pot, because I believe not doing so would compromise my integrity.

And of course the courtesy isn't extended both ways. The people that would speak up feel that by not speaking up one is being unethical, which inevitably leads to a judgement.

Keeping a pot that was obviously the other player's is fraud at best. I call it theft.


So a surgeon leaves a clamp inside you, doesn't realize it until after you have been closed, so you are okay with him staying silence?

How is staying silent effecting fair play? Does it alter the cards or the dealing in any way? Does it impare the other players ability to make a proper decision? Is your staying silent doing anything to effect the outcome of the hand? NO. Pointing out another person's mistake (who is in the hand against you) is not fair play, it is helping your opponent who is either 1) not paying attention or 2) too weak to interpret his own hand. In neither case should i be obligated to alleviate that person's own unforced error.

As to it being in the rules, i have seen an uncountable amount of threads on these boards dedicated to the concept of "I want to see his hand". Almost universally, the response on these boards is "I don't care what the rule technically says, just show your hand and don't worry about the other person showing." Under your definition of "cheating" is mucking your hand without showing when called, or not showing first cheating?

Please. We can come up with hundreds of things to show examples of this.

Let's say you are speeding and somebody complains to the police about it and they issue you a ticket the next day. Are you going to pay it without complaint?

This could be a fun game. On a road trip, a cashier mistakenly gives you a $100 bill instead of a $1 and you don't notice it until 2 hours later. Do you drive back to the store or mail the bill back?

I don't know you, but my guess is that most people would not.

But you and others have no problem making judgments about integrity.

fyp

Staying silence, in this case, means the best TABLED hand loses. CARDS SPEAK. It is a very simple concept.

Very bad example.
If I am called, I have the right to simply muck my hand. My opponent has the right to see my hand. No rules are broken hence no cheating is occurring.

Integrity CAN be part of gambling, but the vast majority of gambling is devoid of it. Stealing a pot is different from winning a pot. Just as accepting chips pushed your way is different from taking them before given to you.

Assessing character is a tricky slope.

Frankly, what you have wrote says nothing about your character except that you will judge somebody from their take on a situation and have a closed mind about it since you "don't need to hear anymore" from me.

I just wonder if you truly practice this high degree of integrity. If so, I'd imagine you always walk away from a game where the OP's situation happens since laying with pigs would just make you dirty, right?

If I'm sure it was true, yes.

In fact, driving down a road, I passed an intersection with a car waiting to turn. He started turning before I fully passed him. It turned out to be a police officer in an unmarked car. Now, in PA, it is illegal for non-state troopers to use radar/laser guns. They have to use timing strips on the road. There is no way he could have accurately timed me as one of the timing stripes was before the intersection and the other was after. I was pulled over anyways for speeding. Now the police said, "Send the ticket back pleading not guilty and get a trial date. If I go to court, he will offer me a lesser charge of just the fine and no points on my license." I did as he said and I plead guilty to the lesser charge and paid the fine.

Now I could have fought this ticket. As I said, there is no way he could have accurately timed me. I could have used a varied of loopholes to get out of it. But I didn't. The bottom line was I was speeding and deserved to pay the fine.

I have. Except in my case, it was a $20 instead of a $5 and was only a 5 minute walk back to the store as I was in a mall.

But you see, even a morally defunct heathen like myself has done that as well (probably tough for the integrity police to believe). That's why I added the variable of the time and distance to make the act more difficult to follow through.

I'm sure you are an upstanding guy who will ticket himself when jaywalking or crossing while the light is red. I'm sure you leave a $20 taped to the meter if your parking time runs out but the officer hasn't been by to issue the ticket. I'm sure all rules are followed ALWAYS.

The difference is, I don't act like I abhor the highbrow attitude while you have no problem taking offense with my attitude. People claiming an absolute integrity act almost as if they are entitled to look down on behavior like mine, which is odd because having integrity also means not being judgmental, but that thought rarely is crossed.

saw something in a tournament yesterday that made me think of this thread. guy needed change for a 5k chip, gave to his neighbor, his neighbor cut off 10 1k chips and slid them over.

For those of you that would sit there with your thumb up your ass when the pot is about to be awarded illegally under the rules, would you do the same here if you were the guy getting 10k for 5k? Fk that guy for being nice enough to make change. He should learn to count, his mistake.

What if you were at the table and saw? Don't speak up? Depends on which of the two guys is a better player?

I would say the group of players who elect to remain silent would be on average the older of the 2 groups.

Would people not try to make up hypotheical situations and pretend its the same as the OP. Next we be asking if you witnessed a murder, would you phone the cops.

Absolutely not. But I would pay the fine if caught in the act by a police officer.

If I were a tightass who only plays by the rules, I'd turn the guy in for making change when all transactions should be conducted by the dealer

And for the record, I would point out this mistake and have many times. Both in my favor and not in my favor.

I think that is completely different from having a dealer shove a pot my way.

Bravo, but so would most of the integrity bankrupt. Except for those that don't mind going to jail.

I've already said that if someone spoke up pointing out the dealer error, I'd relinquish the pot in the OP's example. I'm just not going out of my way to call it out.

lol. That is exactly the point.

In the instance in the OP the only "enforcer" of the law is us. We likely all pay the ticket when we are "caught by the police officer" (someone at the table notices the error). But that isn't what the debate is about, it's about asking is it realistic asking people to punish themselves by refusing the pot. How many people do you think will speed tomorrow and not get caught? What percentage of those people will go into a police station after and declare that they sped of their own volition?

Staying silent may mean this is what happens, by that is not the proximate cause. The reason the best tabled hand loses in this situation is 1) the person with the hand did not protect his hand, and was either not paying attention, or can't read his own cards. Neither of those things were caused by remaining silent. and/or 2) the dealer is also not paying attention and/or can't read the cards in play. Again, not caused by remaining silent. To get all biblical, I am not my brother's keeper when i am playing against him at the poker table. A person failing to correct the mistake of an opponent (through no fault of his own) does not fall under any category of cheating as i understand it.

If somone not in the hand wants to speak up and correct the dealer, go for it (again as i have said before, i think a strong argument could be made that this violates the spirt of the one person to a hand rule but thats a different argument) in fact i have done this on several occasions. Though in the interest of full and honest disclosure, i think everytime i have done so has been in a tournement, so you can argue the outcome of those hands had an actual effect on the table (and me), more so than in a heads up cash game hand. However, it is absurd to expect a player to correct the mistake and/or inattentiveness of his opponent and i see absolutely no problem with a person NOT doing so.

No, it is not the point. If I jaywalk (which I don't), unless I cause an accident, I am harming no one. But would accept the consequences if I did. Nor would I run from the scene if I cause the accident which is equivalent to staying silence in the OP case.

Staying silence while being awarded the pot with the second best hand tabled, you are harming your opponent. You are stealing from him. It is very realistic to expect people to speak up here and award the pot to the other person.


Staying silent is the proximate cause. One person noticed the winning hand, the person getting the pot which isn't his. It is theft, pure and simple. If the person ahead of you in line receives change through one of those automatic change machine and didn't take it. Would you? And what do you think would happen if that was caught on tape and the victim pressed charges?

That isn't what happened in this case. And regardless of whether or not your example is a good one or not, it isn't theft. If you were given money that wasn't yours, you would be liable to pay it back. Just like if the bank credits your account erroneously with $500, they can take it back if they realize the error.

Most people here said if the error was realized that they'd relinquish the pot, myself included. What many of us have said is that we would not volunteer that information.

And somehow, that makes us lesser people to ones who have integrity and never jaywalk. So be it.

theft
noun \ˈtheft\
Definition of THEFT
1
a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property


It is theft. And if you table the second best hand and take the pot anyways, even if you are the only person who notices, you are taking money that does not belong to you with the intent of deprive the rightful owner. And if you do not understand this, there is no point in discussing it further with you.

There is a point in discussing theft and the meaning of it. There is a difference between TAKING something and ACCEPTING something. That is why theft is a different crime than accepting a bribe.

As far as I see it, your culpability as a player ends when you table your cards. They are there for the whole table to see. If you are given the money - it isn't theft - you did not grab it, it was pushed your way due to an incorrect interpretation. For it to be theft, you have to have deliberately altered the decision(thus the felonious part of the definition), either by tabling the incorrect cards, or by grabbing the chips and taking off. Otherwise, there is no provable intent.

This is the whole reason there is a pages-long debate about the topic. It isn't my lack of understanding what theft is. it is that people are incorrectly calling something that isn't theft - - theft.

Yep. Just because you didn't ask for the pot to be shipped your way doesn't somehow absolve you from the notion of Theft. If a cashier undercharges you or gives you too much change you are still liable for the difference. If an ATM gives you too much $, you're still liable for the difference. If FedEx delivers a package to your door that you didn't order doesn't mean you get to just keep it. You don't get to just keep these things until someone realizes that a mistake has been made. Just because it hasn't been noticed doesn't mean it didn't happen and you're somehow absolved from the notion of Theft. This whole tree falling in the forest view of responsibility is exactly what defines Integrity. As I said earlier, Integrity is how you act when no one is watching. It is part of your personal code. If you think Integrity is just a word then you probably don't have it.

People seem to think that if you don't get caught and actually proven to be a Thief then you're not a scumbag.

The flip side is calling someone a scumbag for not speaking up.

A person might not speak up for fear of being wrong. For appearing to be out of order. For not wanting to have to delay the game while the muck is deconstructed. Or maybe for keeping the pot shoved his way. Silence can happen for a multitude of reasons.

If a player is given a pot they didn't earn, it isn't theft. It is an incorrect ruling. Let's say in a winner-take all tennis match, the final point is won on a bad call by the linesman. Player A takes home $1M winnings and Player B goes home empty. Is it theft? Certainly not.

Integrity IS just a word. Because integrity has different levels of acceptance. Your version of integrity would differ greatly from another person's definition that precludes any gambler from having integrity because they are taking money from someone else, no matter if it is from fair play or deceit. Tell someone from the Bible Belt that you play poker for money and see how much integrity you will be viewed as having.

Your view of integrity and mine aren't in balance, either. The difference is you have a problem with me for not speaking up, whereas, I hold no ill judgment of you.

It's silly to think that a simple acceptance of a pot can make one a thief and a scumbag.

Tennis doesn't have a rule that if you know a call is wrong you have an OBLIGATION to correct it. Poker does. You have an OBLIGATION to speak up if you know the pot is being shipped incorrectly. Even if it is to you. Your argument of "you can't prove I knew it was wrong" goes to whether you can get punished for it, yes, but not to what kind of person you are for allowing it.

If you want to use your tennis analogy, it would be like if you won the 4th set to tie it at 2-2 and they thought it was 3-1 and over, so you took the money.

wasn't a hypo, saw it yesterday. and it is quite analogous. in both situations:

1) a poker player made an error not related to a decision in a hand
2) another poker player stood to gain chips based on that error, that they are not entitled to

why would you give an opponent his 5k back if he miscounts giving change, but accept a pot that the rules say you have an ethical obligation not to accept because your opponent fails to notice a 4th heart on the board?

In fact, there ISN'T a rule about speaking up if he gives you too much change, but there IS one about speaking up if the best hand isn't receiving the pot.