I played almost entirely online in the pre Black Friday days, so didn't have very much brick and mortar experience back in that era.

Started playing poker again last year, and have been playing a lot more live casino poker this time around, rather than just playing almost entirely online, and I've been enjoying it a lot and doing well so far.

But, I am still a relative novice about some of the general norms and customs when it comes to live poker, and what things are technically against the rules but pretty common to where nobody really cares, versus what stuff is a very big deal and should be taken really seriously and have floor called over and so forth.

So, here are two situations that I've been in recently, where I wasn't sure just how seriously to take it, or whether to ask the person to knock it off, or to call floor or make a big fuss or just shrug it off and let it go or what.

Situation #1:

I had sat down at a table where only 1 player at the table had played with me before. I had played like a 6 hour session with that guy before, so he knew (or at least thought he knew) how I played, but the others had no clue what my playing style was like, since I had only just sat down for a few minutes before the hand in question happened.

I get dealt pocket kings in early position and raise and get two early position callers and everyone else folds.

Just as the flop is about to get laid out onto the felt by the dealer, the player who had played with me before, who had folded and wasn't even in the hand at this point, loudly tells my two opponents to watch out, because he's played with me before and that he knows that I'm a tight player and that I probably have a big hand.

He says this loudly, straight to them in a serious, non-jokey voice and the rest of the table are all totally silent as this happens and both of my opponents clearly hear and register what he just said to them and are thinking about it as the flop comes out something like A K 9. I bet around 2/3rds pot, and both of them call. Turn is a semi-blank and I bet around 2/3rds pot again which is enough to just barely put each of them all in if they call. The guy to my left thinks about it for a little bit and then folds and then the other guy folds as well. Based on what I saw before/after that hand, I'm guessing there's at least some chance that guy's advice to them might've cost me the rest of at least one of their stacks. Maybe, maybe not, but I wasn't thrilled about it, obviously.

I wasn't sure just exactly how big of a deal this is considered to be (on HSP the tv pros all know each other and joke around about how tight or loose each other are, even during the middle of hands, but that seems pretty different from this, but not sure just exactly how bad this is on a scale of 0 to 10, like if it's a 1/10 or a 9/10 or what).

Situation #2:

I've been playing at a table for a few hours. A new guy sits down, and he clearly knows or had played before with one of the guys who had been playing with me this whole time, and they say hi to each other and ask how x y z had gone for each other since the last time they saw each other or whatever, kind of catching up with each other, shooting the breeze, etc.

Very shortly (like a minute) after this new guy sat down, I decided to go for a trap play with a high pocket pair since numerous people at the table were playing pretty loose and raise-y and reckless preflop, with shortish stacks, and with very crappy hands, and I was UTG. So, I decide to limp in hopes of trap-raising over the top of someone else's raise and hopefully some other people's flats as well to gobble up a bunch of dead money if nobody calls, and if I did get called decent chance I'd have them crushed. Well, the new guy raises over my limp, some dead money enters the pot and when it gets back to me I shove all in over the top of everything for a big overbet shove and have them covered. New guy goes into the tank.

Then, he looks at that other guy he knows (who had been playing with me this whole time for the past few hours that I'd been playing) and asks if I had done this type of move before or not. I was already surprised he would actually just plainly ask that straight and direct to the other guy right in front of me like that, and then was even more surprised when the other guy actually ANSWERED him and said that no, I had not. Again, neither of them being jokey, just really serious plain strategy advice two-players-to-a-hand-violating stuff.

Anyway, in both cases, I didn't cause a scene about it, and just let it go. I was fairly new in both casinos, and wasn't sure if they were regs who I'd have to play with a lot, and what the norms and protocols are of just exactly how bad this kind of thing is considered to be, so, in the off chance that it's somehow considered somewhat okay or normal, I didn't want to risk making some big enemies over something that for all I knew wouldn't even get punished by the floor (or worse, something I wasn't even in the right to complain about, if it's somehow allowed or something), plus the tables were pretty soft and fun and cheerful, so I figured, oh well, I'll just let it go for now until I know more about what's considered normal, unless they did it again. I'm assuming that it's not considered normal or okay though, since it's clearly giving the new player a knowledge advantage about how I play when I don't get that same in return about him, or in the other way around one, it's giving the table the knowledge advantage about a new player (me) who they aren't supposed to know anything about yet, when, meanwhile I don't get that same instant knowledge about how they play, since I just sat down. So, that seems pretty unfair and unethical, so... I'm assuming this kind of thing is against the rules...?

So, now that it has happened on not one but TWO different occasions in a fairly short span of time, I'm thinking I better find out the answer to just exactly how not-allowed or allowed this kind of behavior is considered to be, in case this is a situation that's gonna keep arising in the future, so I'll know the appropriate level of reaction or correct way to deal with it in the future.

Call the floor straight away in both scenarios ainec.

Alright, cool, that's what I figured.

Just wanted to be absolutely 100% sure about it before I caused any kind of major situation about it that would get anyone in trouble or whatever. Especially considering I was the new or new-ish guy at the room, both times, figured it would've come across extra bad of a move by me if I was somehow wrong and was overreacting all while being the new guy, like, just wandering in there and then just immediately causing a whole big fiasco in one of my first sessions at the place. Would be a really bad first impression if it was somehow me who was reacting incorrectly or something like that. So, didn't want to risk even a 1% chance if it somehow turned out to not be considered a big deal.

Which room is this?

(So I can avoid ever even thinking of going there.)

Call the floor as soon as the hand is over. Do not react during the hand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_KXhsBCLSs

The first hand is an example of what you are talking about. Player talking is way out of line.

Both scenarios they are so out of line it's not even close. People should really be temp banned for this type of behavior imo.

Influencing the action of a hand especially one you are not in is just so bad.

Sorry this happened to you. It's tilting me just reading it. Those guys are pos.

This has to be Commerce right? The avg demographic that play there are scum of the earth

How the hell didn't the dealer call the floorman himself since you didn't?

Dealers were Southeast Asian women who spoke (very) broken English. One of them was kinda cute, and both of them were nice and pleasant to be at the table with from a human (not to be confused with poker) standpoint. If this had been a higher stakes game I would've cared a lot more about the poker/money aspect than the human interaction aspect, but this was lower stakes, so, it's more of a wash.

That said, yea, they obviously were way too non-confrontational and/or not understanding the seriousness of certain rules or not paying enough attention to the table talk or something when these incidents happened.

Oh well. I figure these incidents are rare enough that I still like them as dealers compared to having some grouchy ugly old fat dude or something by comparison, if you average it all out, haha. Although then again this happened twice in the span of a couple months, so not sure if it's just short term variance or if this kind of crap actually happens this often. If it happens a third time in the next few months, I might have to reassess the math on it.

Well, anyway, in the future I guess I'll just call floor myself if the dealer doesn't. Or pull the guy aside to ask to talk to him away from the table and just talk it out with him privately to cut it out, otherwise I'll have to call floor on him, if I decide that's better than causing a big scene or getting the guy in trouble (especially if the guy is a fish or doesn't seem like an overly mean or aggressive type of person other than pulling that stunt).

No math to be done. Guys like that think it's ok. Or else they wouldn't act like that. It's not some accident. If you continue to play with them it will happen again guaranteed.

Yea, I agree.

Err, to be more accurate, most of them probably know it's not okay, but just do it anyway, and then a few of them maybe don't even realize it's not okay or to what degree it's not okay and thus do it out of semi-ignorance. Probably a 5:1 ratio of former to latter I'd guess, or maybe 7:1 or something.

The existence of the latter category is one of the reasons I'd be tempted to wait for them to get up from the table and privately talk to them about it and that I'd call floor if they did it again, rather than just insta-call floor right off the bat.

But, also I can read people pretty well to be able to notice which ones are most likely in the former category and which ones are most likely in the latter category. So if it's some drunk good natured idiot partying with his friends who doesn't see to fully get it, then I'd maybe act one way in reaction, and if it's some grumpy reg being malicious, I'd act the other way (i.e. insta call floor), I guess.

Pretty much covered so far ... really, really bad.

I can't say that I've never 'called out' a super tight Player or two at the table, but never during a hand. Asking 'advice' during a hand is a clear OPTAH issue, much less just offering it to a couple of unknowns. Obv a Reg doesn't want the fish donating to a Player that's more difficult to get chips from and the room will dictate how far these antics can go. But unfortunately is will probably change from Dealer to Dealer and Floor to Floor in some rooms.

You should definitely talk to a Floor that at least recognizes you, but don't point any fingers ... keep it as a general inquiry only ... in an effort to get a pulse of the room.

You seem have taken it quite well. You can always ask for a table change if it comes up again, but you should not be the one who has to be punished for another's issues.

Personally I would take it up to finding this guy and playing with him .. so I can show down the T5o bluff the next time he pipes up about how tight I am. GL

Yea, that was actually part of the reason I didn't make an incident about it when it happened. I figured if I tried to make some big complaint and fuss about it, it would just make all the other players at the table think the guy's comment was really accurate (otherwise why would I care), which would be bad, since the rake at the low stakes tables is extremely high, so, I can't just go full-LAG to take advantage of the table's perception of me, so, I don't want them to think I'm playing TAG if I'm stuck in a scenario where I can basically only profitably play TAG or semi-TAG if I want to be longrun +EV given the rake structure.

Not to mention that it would harshen the table vibe which was pretty good and juicy, if I made it suddenly get super serious and call floor, or have some spat with the guy about playing tendency advice givage and all that in front of the whole table.

So, decided to just shrug it off and request a table change, which came pretty quick.

Ideally the low stakes games would have time-charge rake, or at least percentage based rake, instead of this giant-flat-drop style rake where you get massively penalized for seeing too many flops, and then I could just play the way I would actually like to play, which is pretty damned laggy, and then none of this would even turn into an issue to begin with. C'est la vie...

If I was going to be a reg in the room, I would chat to a floor next time I was in check it's not OK with the room and then call a floor next time it happens.

Stuff about harshing the vibe and so on is valid when faced with minor issues - or moderate issues from a guy who is punting stacks at you - but this is egregious and very clearly a case of bitter low-stakes regs trying to run a table for their benefit by cheating. I'd bet a green chip that if the dealer was a gruff 30-something Anglo guy they wouldn't have said anything during the hand.

Guy in the first incident was a terrible player. He was a blatant degen and was always going broke, hanging around trying to scrap up some money to just barely buy into a game, and then have to hang around in wait, after degening off his min rebuys over and over until going broke again. He was a very rough, tough, intimidating ghetto street-world type of dude who clearly had been in a ton of physical altercations, and would even brag about the various arrests he'd gotten into, fights with cops, etc. Didn't want to make an enemy out of him if there was any way around it, for obvious reasons, considering I'm most likely going to be playing there on a frequent basis, and he'll probably be physically present there in some way or another a lot of the time as well, albeit not as a winning player.

As for the second incident, don't know much about the guy who had just sat down, since, well, like I said he was new to the table and hadn't played with him before, and I table changed after that happened. As for the guy who answered his question, on the other hand, he was quite a character, lol. I actually almost liked the guy in a weird entertaining-dbag sort of way (the way Tony G can be enjoyable even though he acts like a dbag a lot). He had sort of a brash NY/NJ ****-talker vibe. Seemed to actually be decent at the game, although probably not in a formally trained fine tuned internet-nerd sort of way, but more like a scrappy strictly-live player who learned from trial and error and had enough smarts to figure out the most basic blatant fish-leaks to not do, and develop an intuitive feel for when to bluff, or exploit fish a certain way, so maybe was longterm +EV, or if a losing player, then probably not by much. The guy who just sat who asked him the question may have been even stronger than him though, given that he tanked with a pretty strong hand that most fish would've probably snapcalled with, and clearly understood that there was a serious chance I was trapping with a monster hand given what I'd done.

So, I would've been a lot less hesitant to call floor in the 2nd incident than in the first one. That said, given that I was starting to develop some back and forth vibe with the answerer guy, and getting involved in some of the trash talking convos he was having when he got into trash talk with some of the other players (he didn't trash talk me, but I'd make occasional side-remarks to him whenever he'd make an absolutist statement about something someone else did, offering various abstract devil's advocate scenarios that countered his point, but in a way where he realized I'd made a good point, and thus didn't turn his trash talk onto me, and would veer his trash talk into some new avenue with whoever he was arguing with or dissing at the time). So, I would've much preferred to just have him as some sort of nemesis rival type thing where it would be fun to try to stack him and talk trash to each other and stuff like that, rather than "tell the teacher on him" if I could avoid it. But, yea, that kind of one player to a hand violating stuff is pretty bad, so if he pulls that again, I'll probably be forced to put and end to it, especially since he doesn't seem like the type of guy who would knock it off if I merely warned him I'd call floor if he did it again. If anything, based on his personality type, I think giving him a warning would just embolden him to do it way more and go way more over the top with it. He seemed to care more about pissing everyone off than he did about even beating the game, and he clearly cared about trying to beat the game, so that's saying something, lol. Anyway, he was a funny, douchey sort of a guy, with serious personality problems. Ideally he'd be at my table every time I played poker, just for the entertainment value, so long as he didn't try to do blatantly rule-violating stuff like that.

Only read the 1st scenario. This is totally out of order. Involve the floor. Any casino staff/manager worth anything will put a stop to this. The dealer should really be intervening straight off the bat and advising the player that there's no speech play allowed in a non hu pot.

Didn't read the long posts in full but seems he figured out the right things.

I'm always amused when a player thinks they have me all figured out just from observing like 40 dealt hands. Whenever they give scouting advice about me, it's laughably bad and it usually backfires against whomever received the advice.

But where I play, even 1/2 players don't have the nerve to do what you described during a goddamn hand, and if they did, the dealer would put a quick stop to it.

Such players tend to be good for the game, so I understand OP's concern about killing the mood. Probably the elite play in such wild-west games is to joke it off like, "You know, you should listen to him!" or perhaps, "You wanna take advice from that guy? Be my guest!" And then later, when the coach is in a hand you're not in, give good advice to their opponent in a joking manner.

But calmly calling floor is of course the standard move and you'd be 100% in the right to do so.

Why educate them to think better at poker? Let them continue being arrogant. Educate them by taking their money; lessons aren't free.

When live low-stakes players talk strategy, there are only two correct ways to react:
a) Jerry & Elaine nodding to the low-talker.
b) The way you act when a toddler just showed you their drawings.

Lol, as far as the latter part, there was definitely no deep or useful strategy-talk stuff going on. More just caveman-style trash talking (like Luke Schwartz/Tony G type of stuff, but even less strategy-related and more balls and cojones and why would you wear that type of attire or have that type of facial expression or answer your girlfriend's phone call or random stuff like that). He found a reason to start ****-talk of various random sorts like once per minute, continuously the whole time we played. I was in a chatty mood, and he was never targeting me with the trash talk, so I was coming in from a perpendicular angle every so often (as in, not siding with him or against him, but kind of just making side comments that went sort of vaguely against his trash talk, but in a humorous sort of way. I dunno, I guess you would've had to have been there to see how it was playing out).

Anyway, yea I am the same way as you as far as never educating the fish, as far as actual poker strategy type of stuff. I also try not to give away the fact that I even know anything about poker strategy for that matter. I.e. if I get asked if I played online in the past or know anything about online poker, I pretend that I don't. If they ask which casinos I've been playing at a lot, I act like I'm brand new to it all (that part is at least somewhat truthful, lol - when it comes to live poker anyway), and so on.

Well, if their standard is something like 90% VPiP 40 hands are probably enough to figure you out as a tight player.