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 he Guardian G2 Poker Column |
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| Victoria
Coren |
| Monday April 23,
2007 |
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It
occurred to me, as I warned Clare Balding to fold, that charity tournaments
play by different rules. You have to be nice. You have to let people string-bet
and act out of turn. You can't turn up, all smiles, to demonstrate your kind
munificence, then savagely penalise poker novices for making a
mistake.
It is an important area of etiquette, because charity
tournaments are very popular now. They have spread outside the immediate poker
community, which has always been generous. Acquiring their money in lucky
windfalls, poker players have always used portions of it to help struggling
colleagues or worthy causes - in stark contrast to, say, City traders, who seem
to use their own windfalls purely to drive up property prices and ensure that
nobody but themselves can afford to live in London. |
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Last week, I went to the Betfair.com Fifty
Spring Festival, in aid of Cancer Research and the Irish Youth Foundation. It
was a great evening. Generous provisions were made by the venue (Fifty St
James), the sponsors (online betting firm Betfair), and the brilliant Irish
chef Richard Corrigan, who cooked dinner. It would simply not be in the spirit
of this or any other charity tournament to play with the usual keen eye for
advantage: mistakes should not be penalised as they are in ordinary
competitions.
I also found myself cheering out loud when Sam Torrance
(who'd moved all in with A7 and got called by AQ) hit a flop of A-K-4-6-4 to
split the pot. There were only seven of us left; at that stage, standard form
is to look sympathetic while secretly delighting in anybody's exit. In a
tournament for Cancer Research, it feels more natural to delight in survival.
The other big etiquette question involves donations and tips. I'll deal
with those next week, as well as explaining how to organise your own charity
poker event.
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