Monday, February 13

Poker Blog # 2: The Ipod Players

Ipods have become increasingly popular in KPT, on any given Sunday game you may see 4 to 7 players (sometimes including myself). While it is a cool toy, its a bit of a distraction, usually retarding the Poker game when a player doesn't realize its his turn to act. I'll be honest i've been guilty of this myself. But i am completely and utterly befuddled by players who never post blinds or have no clue of the amount, not until another player reminds him or players who always have to be reminded that its their turn to act. Are you not paying attention, is your mind always wandering?!? What about players who ask "where is the button and who is first to act?", this normally is an okay question but with only three players remaining.... its just baffling!!! Anyway anyway, sorry for the slight digression. These little quirks are okay i suppose, besides were no professionals...

Back to our Ipod story. On Sunday, Season Six Game 5 Scott had on his recently purchased MP3 player, a non-Ipod. I guess that makes him a non-conformist or just cheap haha kidding... Other than occasionally forgetting the Blind structure, Scott's head is always in the game. However this evening he seemed to be out of focus. First he went on a smoke break on the small blind position, we had to call him in to check his cards and not to mention an un-shuffled deck (small blind shuffles). I didn't really think it was a big deal at this point because Scott is aware there is a standing house rule that a player not in his seat gets auto-mucked, so i figure maybe he just lost track of the positions, besides he is not the kind of guy to slow down a tournament. Well a short time later he missed his deal because of another smoke break, the hand was delt by Marco who was on his right. Then the very next time he was on the button he went to a bathroom break, the hand was once again delt by Marco. This was starting to become a pattern and he was slowing down the game. I reminded Scott that he had missed his last two deals and asked him not to leave his seat while on the button or blind positions.

Then on his ensuing deal MP3 player in tow, err plugged, at an ungodly decibel with 3 players in the hand Scott burns and deals the turn before all the players were able to act. The turn would have given Jee who was first to act, a straight, but because of the mistake both the burn and turn cards had to be re-shuffled and re-delt. However only the turn card was re-shuffled into the deck further skewing the matter, as a result we jointly decided (including me) to chop chop, not a misdeal, yes an unorthodox move but the game had to continue... Jee as you can imagine was more than just perturbed. The debate took at least 10 minutes

This incident incited an unwelcome morose atmosphere, you can sense that players became tense and overly cautious when dealing. Being cautious when dealing is not necessarily bad but such incidents and misdeals can be avoided if the dealer is consciously aware of how many players are in the hand... MP3 player anyone?? Yes it is ONLY a home game, but still, there is almost $500.00 in the game pot, so lets try to fucking pay attention, alright?

I don't want to go as far as banning the use of Ipods or MP3 players, that would seem very tacky. However if the game continues to be slowed and many more hands misdelt because of your blaring ear piece, i might have to.....

But anyway congratulations to Scott, i'm happy to see you finally win a tournament in KPT, its been a long time coming....

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