RESTRICTING THE STAKES

RESTRICTING THE STAKES<= /span>

by Bob Ciaffone

Here is an excerpt of an email that I got from a= poker dealer in Deadwood, South Dak= ota, who is a member of their Poker Dealer Association. It concerns the restrict= ion of law on poker stakes in that town.

“The city of Deadwoo= d, South Dakota legalized gaming in 1989 with a five dollar maximum bet until 2001, at which time the limit was raised to one hundred dollars. The town has twelve to fifteen tables with five card rooms. Montana card rooms (dealers and players ) set the standa= rds we practice today. Through the years this foundation has become inconsistent. = With the growing popularity of poker, we would like to incorporate standard guidelines for all Deadwood poker rooms, for both tournaments and cash game= s. Is there something on the subject you could suggest that would help us beco= me more uniform?”

Here was my reply (slightly edited). “I am= happy to help you in any way that I can. You are more than welcome to use my poker rules in your cardrooms. That is why I wrote them and make them available a= t no charge. Note that Version 5 of my rules is out now, Whi= ch I believe to be the best set of cardroom rules anywhere. I am going to writ= e an article on this subject for Card Player magazine as a result of your questi= on. I will email you a copy of it. Thank you very much.” So this article = is for those people who are looking for some assistance in limiting the size of poker games in a reasonable manner.

There is no such thing as a standard way of regu= lating the size of poker games. Personally, I believe that the size of a poker game does not need to be regulated, because water finds its own level. By this, I mean the players in a $1000 buy-in game can afford the stakes they play for about as well as the players in a $100 buy-in game, or for that matter, a $= 10 buy-in game. However, I understand that not everyone feels the same way--particularly legislators. A legislator often wants a way of reassuring= the public that people are not going to lose more than they can afford. The num= ber of people who need this reassurance before okaying poker may not be so large. However, to insure that a piece of legislation w= ill pass—whether by a vote of the populace or a vote of the legislating body–it may be necessary to reach out to this group of people.

Political realities often override the optimum m= ethod of doing something. People who have little knowledge of the subject being v= oted on have a vote that counts just as much as someone who is knowledgable. In fact, their vote in certain situations in a sense counts more. Take a look = at the typical voter who was still undecided in the last week of our extremely close presidential election. My opinion is that such a person’s poker equivalent is the player who holds up the game deciding whether to play a jack-deuce. Whichever way you voted, I am sure nearly all of you felt that = you knew enough about the situation to have an opinion before the eleventh hour= . You see the outrageous things each candidate’s campaign did to reach out = to the still undecided voter. It should not be a surprise when a legislative proposal contains an unwise restriction on poker stakes. It is not in there= because the poker players feel it is helpful or needed. It is to get the vote of a person who may well be ignorant about poker.

Although there is no standard way of restricting= the stakes poker is played for to keep it within a certain boundary, some ways = of doing this are better than others. Lets discuss = some possibilities, looking at methods that have been used in certain places.

The worst method of restricting money swings in = the game that to my knowledge has actually been employed by a regulatory body is limiting the size of the pot to a specified amount. In Florida, there used to be a state law limiting pots to a maximum of $10. This was asinine–and not just beca= use the amount was ridiculously small. The method was awful. It interfered with= the natural way of playing the game to prevent a player from protecting his han= d by a bet at a point in the middle of a hand. To control the pot size, it is necessary to either retract bets if there are so many callers that the legal pot size is exceeded, or simply end all betting even before the $10 limit is reached by stopping the betting if a bet called by everyone would exceed the legal pot size.

Another method of controlling the amount of money changing hands is to set a limit on how much you can bet. Apparently, this = has been done in Deadwood by setting a maximum bet size of $100. I think both t= his method and the actual size chosen of $100 are quite reasonable––= ;for limit poker. However, the poker form that everyone is flocking to these day= s is no-limit hold’em. At that game, any restriction on the bet size chang= es the essential character of the game. Don’t get me wrong; playing a ga= me with spread-limit betting of from $5 to $100 is a decent way to play poker––but no-limit hold’em it ain’t. So simply limiting the amount you can bet puts a crimp into playing the country’= ;s most popular poker form. How can we control the swing at no-limit hold̵= 7;em and still preserve the basic nature of the game?

No-limit hold’em is extremely popular on t= he internet. The sites want to offer the game, but do not want to see too many= of their customers losing large sums of money and busting out of action. In sh= ort, they have the same interest as the lawmakers in limiting losses in the game. Maybe lawmakers can learn from seeing what a business that specializes in p= oker does to accomplish this.

An internet site that spreads no-limit hold̵= 7;em controls the size of the game in two ways. First, they keep the size of the blinds fairly low, compared to limit poker. There are far more limit games = with a big blind greater than $10 then no-limit hold’em games with a big b= lind greater than $10. Second, they limit the maximum you can buy in for. There = is no set standard size, but I find the most common numbers to be either 50 ti= mes the big blind or 100 times the big blind.

A $50-$100 limit game has a buy-in of a thousand dollars. So does a $5-$10 blind no-limit game. T= here is no question that a $50-$100 limit game is bigger than a $5-$10 blind no-limit game. I would judge it to be at least as big as a $10-$20 blind no-limit game. So here is my suggestion. Control the size of a poker game by controlling the size of the buy-in. Putting the maximum buy-in size at a thousand dollars is a good way to control the size of both limit and no-lim= it poker. Note that you are never allowed to buy chips that put your stack siz= e greater than a grand when using this method. This prevents multiple buy-ins from doing what one buy-in is not allowed to do.

There is another virtue of this method I suggest= of capping the buy-in size. We have so far been talking only about money games, but there is also tournament play to consider. I think limiting the buy-in = to a thousand dollars would work well here also. Tournaments with a $1000 entry = fee would have to be no-rebuy events. A tournament with a smaller entry fee cou= ld allow rebuys, but cap the amount any player can spend in one event at a gra= nd.

Let me emphasize that the preferred way to treat= poker under the law is to simply legalize the game without trying to control the stakes. However, it is the nature of successful politics to compromise when necessary. If the stakes must be controlled to obtain legalized poker, limi= ting the amount of the buy-in is the appropriate method in an era when the prefe= rred poker form is no-limit hold’em money games and tournament events.