REVIEW
Rules are what separate civilization from anarchy, and this is as important at the poker table as it is in any other aspect of life. Every card room where poker is played publicly has a set rules by which they conduct their games, but although some of these rule books are publicly available, before now none of these have been widely published. Roy Cooke is a well-regarded professional poker player and who often collaborates with poker enthusiast and writer John Bond. In Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, these two propose their recommendations for poker rules as the game is played in a casino setting.
Even though Cooke hasn't managed a live action poker room, he does have many thousands of hours of live poker experience under his belt and a reputation as a thoughtful player who acts to advance the world of poker as a whole. Consequently, he is more qualified to write a set of rules than one might at first think. He has obviously put a lot of thought and effort into this work, and it deserves to be taken seriously.
Cooke bases his rules on four guiding principles. These are fairness, efficiency, simplicity, and tradition. Where these are not in conflict, he believes that rules that encourage action are to be favored over those that tend to inhibit it. These are a reasonable set of criteria to serve as fundamentals on which to operate a card room.
Cooke encourages the standardization of poker rules. Standards are good in situations where the industry has matured. Once the development of poker rules has largely stopped, then standardization should improve efficiency. I'm not sure poker is there yet, as in many ways it is still an evolving game. I believe a certain amount of experimentation is a good thing in this case, although I certainly agree that making rules available to players is critical, especially if those rules are nonstandard.
Cooke's Rules of Real Poker are quite comprehensive, but there are still some gaps. Cooke's poker focus is as a limit cash game player, so it's no surprise that he emphasizes these games in his rules as well. He fairly elects not to cover tournament situations, except by comparison, but I feel that big-bet poker was slighted. This is especially true of the newly popular capped buy-in no-limit hold'em games. These sort of games demand careful consideration, but there's no mention of them in this book. This is unfortunate, because I believe there's a generally shortage of well thought-out rules covering these games.
There will always be disagreements about what should and shouldn't be part of the rules of any game, and having these disagreements is fair. I believe, though, that there are a few places where Cooke just plain makes mistakes. Just as one example, in rule 16.15 "Telephones at the Table", the authors advocate limiting phone calls to two minutes in length and no more than six total minutes out of any hour. This is a silly rule. First, it's not appropriate to have a dealer or anyone else track the length of phone calls for each person at the table. Second, we can't expect card room employees to keep track of exactly how long each player has been on the phone over the last hour, especially when a dealer down will be on the order of 30 minutes. Tracking this is tough, and disputes about enforcement of this rule are almost certain. I would prefer a simpler rule, "If you talk in a phone at the table, you will be dealt around. If you are in a hand, your hand will be declared dead." This is simple, enforceable, easily understood, and doesn't slow down the game.
As I look through this book I get an appreciation for just how many rules to public poker there are. There are a lot of pages here, and there are a lot of rules and special situations that could have been included but weren't. It seems to me that the level of complexity of poker rules should be a significant concern to the poker community. I believe that going forward, one of the chief goals of those who write poker rule books should be to simplify the game wherever possible.
Overall, though, Cooke's Rules of Real Poker are a pretty reasonable basis for a poker rule book. Cooke has clearly put in a lot of hard work, and a poker room could do a lot worse than to adopt Cooke's suggestions. I don't agree with everything in these pages, but this is a reasonable set of rules that is now available to a wide audience.
Capsule:
Cooke's Rules of Real Poker isn't the best poker rule book I've read, nor is it the most comprehensive, but it's pretty good. Finally, a poker rule book has been made available in print for a wide audience, and that's a good thing. I don't agree with every rule in the book, and I believe the book contains some significant omissions, but those interested in poker rules will probably find this effort to be worthwhile.
Nick
Christenson
Gambling
Book Reviews
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