A player died of heart attack last year in my regular room. Very similar circumstances except the hospital was only 1/4 mile away. The emt came and failed. If I was there I may have "overreacted?" and drug the guy out and drove him to the hospital, too many people wouldnt do that for fear of a lawsuit.

I think it's not fear of a lawsuit that stops people from doing that. It's the belief (and most often correct) that the person would probably be better off waiting for trained assistance then being dragged out to card to be driven to the hospital. (Now if you are someplace where it takes extraordinary long time for aid to reach you that may be the exception but maybe you be better served by learning CPR if you spend much time in such a place.

If I was at a table a good distance away from the situation, and the person was unknown to me , I would likely just keep on playing like most other folks would. I really don't see any reason to stop. It would be a distraction for a while likely, like somebody getting arrested or maybe a short fist fight. If it happens at your table, however, then that's a different thing for sure.

+1

Most states have "Good Samaritan" laws protecting people who try to help in good faith, so the belief that the legal barrier is significant is false.

However, a lot of first aid is not immediately obvious, and untrained people rightly fear making things worse. If your first aid training primarily comes from movies, step aside.

I've heard of this happening several times here in Florida...including rooms where I play. Luckily I haven't been there at the time except for once. Wasn't actually a poker room but was in a common area of a parimutuel. I heard gasps and frantic, mortified cries from the man's wife. Nearby patrons tried to help him. Being totally honest, when I realized the gravity of the situation I felt like I was going to pass out. So I looked away and found the nearest seat...because fainting would have only complicated the situation.

First half marathon I ran there was a guy on the side of the road being attended to by paramedics. I found out later he died. I, and nearly everyone else, kept running.

It wasn't callousness. He needed and was getting better medical attention than I could provide. What he didn't need was a bunch of gawkers who weren't doing anything to help. I didn't consider his distress something I should watch unless I could do some good.

You must be new to poker. Shuffle up and deal.

If the dead guy was playing a tournament, I think it's only fair to put his stack in the next pot as a sweetener.

I played at the MGM a few years ago and some dude tried to kill himself in the area right next to the poker tables. Cut himself pretty badly, blood everywhere, police came with tazers to subdue him etc. We asked the floor what to do and he basically said "nothing to see here, just keep playing" while there was this drama happening right in front of our eyes.

Absurd situation. I had a mega whale on my table though so I kept playing. Plus it was like 5 in the morning so I was in a daze and didnt really react normally.

What do you do if you're the group on the 8th tee? Play through?

If so,is the guy a hazard?

And do you get a drop or strokes?

It's not polite to stare. Best way to avoid staring is to keep playing.

I am not surprised to generally see that most in the poker room would continue to play oblivious or careless to the medical drama going on in the room.

During the time you were writing that post, someone you don't know, somewhere, died of something you couldn't prevent.

Yet you kept typing?

Monster?

The only difference between the guy you don't know and can't help dying in a poker room you're sitting in, and a guy doing that same thing on the other side of a wall, or upstairs in his hotel room, or down the street, or on the other side of the world is proximity.

You distribute your compassion based on something so arbitrary?

BTW, if I die in a poker room, and you guys dishonor me by breaking the game, I'll zombie up and eat your face just on general principle.

If I don't know the person, and have nothing in common with or no link to the person, how is his dying in the poker room any different than seeing on the news that 3 people died in flooding a state away? I mean, intellectually, I know something bad has happened to someone, and I am sorry for them in an unemotional way, but I really have no connection to that person, so why should it bother me?

I would have been at this casino, and most likely at the very table where this occurred if not for the casino changing their hours on Christmas. They normally open at 10:00am during the week and I had driven over there at 10:30 Christmas morning to play 2/5NL only to find the parking lot gates locked and the casino closed. (Unbeknownst to me, the casino didn't open until noon on Christmas Day only.) I then drove to another casino a few miles away.

When I played there this afternoon, I was shocked to learn what and to whom this had happened on Friday afternoon.

Played a bar Donkament like a month ago with 6 tables, maybe 60 or so people in there. Right at the start one of the regs there w epilepsy started having a bad seizure and fell to the floor shaking. Everybody stopped playing, the clock was stopped and paramedics were called. Paramedics and cops show up a little later, and take him away strapped to a rolling chair gurney thing. In total it probably delayed play 45 minutes.

Poker is not a sport; it's gambling. I saw a guy who kicked it in the middle of a hand he wasn't involved in and the table kept going after a couple of minutes of wtf. When someone has top set on a draw heavy board in a big pot, he really wants to complete the hand and so do the people drawing.

We had a charity room worker collapse during a session and his own 'fellow' worker didn't even get off his stool to see why he fell to the floor. After watching that the table kept going while waiting for the ambulance to show up.

Aside from giving 'the scene' enough room to provide the best possible solution to the issue I would think that most rooms would 'carry on'.

Unless you are trained or know the person involved I wouldn't hold it against you if you were to continue to play on. GL

This is not limited to Poker only.

A while back while I was playing in the Taj (that was way back when they had a good poker room) after walking back from the boardwalk to the poker room, I came across a guy laying on his back while CPR was being administered by paramedics as they were frantically trying to save the guy's life. This was in the middle of the casino about 20 feet from slot machines and while there was a small crowd of onlookers, most of the people were just walking by, and the people that were playing slots around him kept on playing. There was still action at the dice tables nearby also and I eventually made my way back to my seat at my table and life continued on (for me anyway, God rest his soul).

I was in the Rio a year or two back and there was a shooting in the casino. We didn't even miss one roll on the craps table.

Not to sound callous, but...

If you're in the supermarket and somebody drops dead 3 aisles over, do you stop shopping and go home?

"And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs."

"Out, Out" - Robert Frost

I saw a carps stickman laid out on the floor being worked on by paramedics. His feet were near the table and he was perpindicular to the table as though he had simply fallen straight back. There was another stickman now standing near his feet operating the game.

Most of the players slowly filtered to other tables or left ..... The guy on the ground seemed semi-conscious so while I don't know what happened to him, he did not appear to be dead on the scene.

If I die in the poker room and I have friends playing, they can toast me if they want, maybe take a five minute break.

But, if I have the ability to affect the cards from the afterlife, they better keep playing because they are going to see a run of cards like the've never seen before, and it would be a real shame to miss that.

Play on!


--klez