Basically I only expect Tom to be completely obsessed with this issue, but think it’s interesting anyway for all my non-poker playing readers.
The background some of you may need is that in online poker, sometimes people’s internet is not reliable enough to consistently meet the poker server’s requirements. While this isn’t often the case for most pros because in their homes they make sure to have the most reliable internet possible, when people play out of coffee shops or hotels while on the road it’s more of an issue. Anyway, on the site in question when a person is disconnected due to faulty internet the poker site gives him some period of time (around a minute I think) to reconnect and act on his hand. After this grace period, the player is marked as “sitting out” and his hand is immediately folded IF AND ONLY IF his opponent bets. Now, on this site every player has a time bank that allots him a certain amount of time to think about what to do with his hand beyond the standard 15 seconds players normally get.
So in the situation I’m about to link you to, Krantz and Ike are playing a 50/100 (10k buy-in) match when Krantz’s internet goes out. He doesn’t reconnect in time and is marked “sitting out.” There is a $16,000 pot and Ike bets $100, the absolute minimum, which he knows is all he needs to do to force Krantz to fold and thus win the pot. Some people are saying that Ike should have waited and used some of his time bank to give Krantz a chance to reconnect and act on his hand. It’s pretty obvious what I think, but I’m curious what you guys think. Leave some comments and I won’t really argue with them too much because I’m about done with the topic, I just want to see how a non-poker player reacts to this situation.
And also, every time people say “this is fine, it’s online poker,” please don’t interpret that as indicating that online poker players are generally unscrupulous. On the contrary, I think online poker players normally are well above average in terms of the extent to which they try doing the right thing. It’s just that most of them also don’t have much experience philosophizing and come to accept standard practices that aren’t too offensive to their inclinations as ipso facto ethical, as opposed to considering them to be unfortunate practices that can’t be dealt with.
With all that said, here’s the link:MinbetMadness
