Poker Players Need to Self-Regulate

It seems that poker players tend to risk their money without thinking too much about it. In this column, guest writer Barry Carter meets with our coach Jared Tendler to try to find reasons for that.

This is an official guest article written by Barry Carter. Barry Carter is a poker journalist and the co-author of "The Mental Game of Poker" with PokerStrategy.com Coach Jared Tendler.

Girah, not an isolated incident

In a game where money is a way of keeping score, and most of us would work incredibly hard to increase our BB/100 by ¼, it is remarkable how willing poker players are to put their money at risk away from the table.

One would assume that the average poker player (degenerate gamblers aside, which does significantly shorten the field I admit) is very shrewd with their money, but most good players are complete fish with any other money matter.

The two recent cheating scandals which have emerged in the last week clearly demonstrate this. In one scandal we see groups of players willing to let a coach have access to their hole cards while they play (and a wider poker community believe he is a 'prodigy'). In another case, we see a player with a proven history of not paying back loans still able to find creditors in the poker world.

Are these isolated incidents? No, in fact they swing over to the other side of the barometer to actually being quite common in poker.

I'd love to say I was writing this article from the standpoint of someone who knows better than to part with money so easily, but I have also been the victim of several incidents where I have made my money vulnerable in situations which, in hindsight, were always going to end badly.

Americans cashing in at "risky rooms"

Cheating and lending money to less than reputable players are just two examples of things we see every day in poker. Right now hundreds of Americans are desperately sticking their money on the tiny scraps of poker rooms remaining that will accept them. Rooms which, let's be honest, look destined to be closed down or shut off from American players any time soon.

It's not just the little rooms either; it is quite remarkable that Ultimate Bet managed to stay afloat for four years after a cheating scandal that would have seen its demise in any other industry. Then of course was the sucker punch that was the downfall of Full Tilt Poker, which in fairness none of us saw coming.

A November Niner lost his cheque for $1 million

The readiness in which players will risk their money is not restricted to online poker either. EPT Berlin, for example, was in hindsight an armed robbers dream. The fact that it took place in a hotel, rather than a safe heaven of a casino, meant that hundreds of young poker players were readily walking round with $10,000 in their back pockets, an accident waiting to happen.

EPT Berlin robbery, easy game?

We all have stories of poker players being ridiculously flippant with their own money.

I know of a November Niner who lost his cheque for $1 million the day he made the final table, I know a poker player who sold a car with £10,000 in the trunk, and last year a high stakes player used my laptop to check his sports betting account, only to stay logged in and leave £300,000 staring at me when I returned to it (I logged out and told him about it, but was hypnotized by it for more than 20 minutes before I finally did).

Reading all these incidents out loud, they sound ridiculous and exaggerated, but the reality is things like this happen every single day in poker - no exaggeration. What do we do about it? Nothing.

Other than getting reprimanded on forums, we usually let the dust settle and after a month act like nothing happened. People still played on Ultimate Bet, known cheaters both live and online are still allowed to play at other sites and casinos, people who coach poker or otherwise are in positions of responsibility are subject to no background checks, and people still lend money to Chino.

Poker is in desperate need of regulation

Poker players continue to make the same mistakes, much in same way that battered women go back to the jerks that abuse them.

It wasn't until I started working with mental game coach Jared Tendler, an outsider to poker from golf and psychology, that I realised just how terrible poker must sometimes look to the rest of the world. Jared is currently working on some best practice guidelines for people looking for a poker coach, so hopefully that will help people out.

Poker is in desperate need of regulation, especially now when it is more vulnerable than ever before. But, while we wait for that mythical governing body to rescue us from the days of the Wild West, we have to meet them half way and start acting like responsible adults because a lot of the problems in poker right now could easily have been avoided.