A few days ago, the much-loved poker pro David Lappin tagged me on X after he was given a one-round penalty for acting, in his own words, "petulantly." It's the first one-orbit penalty he's ever received in his career.
You can watch David explain what happened in the video below, but here are the cliffs. A player immediately to the left of David was pounding the table routinely. As David said, "A bit of celebration is good, but punching the table incredibly close to my fingers... I didn't really appreciate that and got a bit wound up... He was also the kind of guy who would throw his bluffs at people on the other side of the table, really ostentatiously. And that also had me seething."
On the first hand of Day 2, David flopped an open-ended straight draw against the player, called a flop bet, checked through the turn, and folded to a bet on the river after he missed. The table pounder slammed the bluff right in front of David ("my side of the line," according to David), who picked the cards up and flicked them back at the player. "One of them went up his arm a bit and went off the table. The dealer immediately dobbed me in," said David.
The floor was called and ruled that it would be a one-round penalty for David and nothing for his opponent.
David asked me what I would have done.
Pounding the table
In Costa Rica in the early 2000s, casino owner Don Luis forbade table pounding and made the staff issue an automatic one-round penalty if you pounded on the table.
A player at the table continually pounding on the felt is annoying, disruptive, and unnecessary. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with it.
- The first action should always be to alert the tournament director. Any good floor person will handle this disruptive player and get them to stop.
- David's reaction to throwing or āflickingā his cards is what got him into trouble. This could definitely be a penalty. It's like an NFL or NHL game, where the action never gets caught, but the reaction gets the penalty.
My Savage Ruling
If I'd been called to the table, I definitely would have taken David off the table and spoken to him. I mean, does he think heās Phil Hellmuth and can get away with anything without a penalty? It really would have depended on the reaction of the table pounder, the other players at the table, and the dealer.
If he had thrown his cards at the player, he would have definitely have gotten a one-round penalty and maybe more. If he just flicked them, and they touched the opposing playerās arm, I probably would have talked to him. It would have made him perhaps miss one hand, but that would have been it.
What would you do? I want to know what you, the players, and the fans think. How much of a penalty should David have been given? Was the one-orbit penalty warranted?
Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
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Matt Savage is the WPT Executive Tour Director, founder of the Tournament Directors Association, and a much beloved and respected member of the poker community. Matt is a five-time GPI award winner and a nine-time Poker Hall of Fame nominee.
