I spent the better part of this evening hovering between the tables occupied by 1995 world champion Dan Harrington and 1983 world champion Tom McEvoy. They provided an interesting contrast in styles. McEvoy, wearing a bright yellow shirt and his famed gold bracelet, was happy to mix it up whenever he could. When I arrived at his table he was all in against another player who had flopped a set of 7s. Fortunately for McEvoy, he had flopped a set of 9s, which doubled him up.
Ten feet away, Dan Harrington sat like the rock that he is. He was wearing his lucky green Red Sox hat and folding every hand. Despite this, he had a healthy stack of chips in front of him. How does this man accumulate chips when it seems like he never plays a hand? That’s the magic of “Action” Dan. On one of the few hands I saw him play he limped in from the small blind after Bruno Fitoussi limped from the button. The guy in the big blind who had previously said to his buddy, “The guy on my right [meaning Harrington] is keeping me in line,” raised 1.2k. Fitoussi folded, and Harrington gave the man a withering look. “Do you want a call?” he asked. The guy told him that he would show his hand if Harrington folded, which was all the information Harrington needed. “I don’t need to see it,” he said as he mucked his cards.
As if this strong stable needed any more star power, David Singer was relocated to it after the dinner break. After some French guy named Michele limped in, Singer raised from the button. French guy called and the flop came K
74
. French guy led out for a bet, and Singer moved all in. As the French guy was deciding what to do, his cell phone rang and he pulled it out of his short pocket, turned the ringer off, and put it back into his pocket. Singer immediately lodged a complaint. The rule says No Cell Phone Use at the Table. As the floor was called over and the other players at the table injected their two cents, all hell broke loose. Singer kept demanding a “higher ruling.” Steven Frezer assured him that he was the man in charge this evening and asked why Singer was protesting. “I gave away information about my hand,” Singer told him, “after he broke a rule.” It was clear that Singer didn’t want the man to call him. Nolan Dalla intervened. “David, what advantage did he get by turning his phone off?” Frezer ruled that the man’s hand wasn’t dead. Because he didn’t speak English, Fitoussi translated for the man, who ended up calling and showing KJ. Singer flipped over 54. Singer didn’t improve his hand, and he was suddenly gone from the tournament.
The consensus at the table was that they thought the French guy’s hand should have been ruled dead. “The line is fuzzy,” said Dalla. “We obviously need to make it clearer. We say no cell phone, but at any give time 30% of the field is text messaging someone.” The players at the table thought that cell phones should be completely banned from the tournament room. One man, obviously a family man, protested. “What if there’s an emergency at home with the wife and kids?” “There was a time before there were cell phones,” said Harrrington, putting in the last word.
The gray area created by a rule that is rarely enforced has caused unnecessary controversy on the tournament floor this evening. I imagine and hope that Harrah’s will be addressing it this winter and implementing a stricter rule. When they do, I bet it will come to be known as the David Singer Rule.
