Everybody Settle Down

I have a cool job.  I write about poker.  Sure, the money I make doesn’t compare to what many of my MBA classmates are likely making right now, but I get to work in a fun industry, I have gone on some great “business” trips, and the job allows me to work from home and not miss a day of my kids’ lives.  Being Mr. Mom during weekdays in addition to working is tiring, but it’s extremely rewarding.

But there are days when I get really tilted by certain aspects of my industry.  Recently, what has put me on edge is the immaturity and small-mindedness of many people in the online poker community.  Since I am on the internet a lot for my job, I see the same tired act week in and week out, most recently in the first week of February.

Many of you may have already heard about it, but there was recently a bizarre incident on the Cake Poker network where a pot was shipped to the wrong player.  In a $0.02/$0.04 No Limit Hold’em game, the player in the big blind and the player on the button were all-in pre-flop, the big blind with K-K and the button with A-Q.  Once all the community cards were dealt, four hearts were on the board, giving the button the best hand, an cce-high flush.  Shockingly, though, the player with K-K was given the pot, even though he had just a king-high flush.

Of course, the internet message boards exploded once someone posted the hand history.  Players were renouncing their accounts at Cake Poker, players were claiming the site was rigged, that an investigation by a third party should commence, that Cake employees should resign.  The sky was falling!  The sky was falling!

I don’t know if it’s the young average age of internet message board posters, the overdone distrust of online poker rooms, or the ease with which one can make bold proclamations online that one would never make in person, but something causes mass panic and outrage when any little issue comes up at a poker room. It just tilted me to no end that more people flew off the handle than actually remained calm and thought logically.

Just because a computer is running the game doesn’t mean that it’s impossible for a mistake to happen.  “But, but, but, Dan,” you may say to me, “if a life-threatening mistake like this could happen once, why should we assume it has never happened before?”

Well, I guess we can’t assume with 100% certainty that it has never happened before at Cake Poker, but considering how glaring an error it was and how quickly it was caught, I think it’s safe to assume that if something so obvious had happened previously, it would not have gone unnoticed.  Believe it or not, most people notice if they had the best hand and did not get the pot.

Fortunately, Cake Poker’s Card Room Manager, Lee Jones didn’t panic.  He quickly addressed the poker community, confirming that the mistake did happen, and vowed to get to the bottom of the matter.  And guess what?  The software team figured out what happened and it really was a “once in a billion” type event.  I won’t get into the gory details, but basically there was some sort of lag between a player’s client and server that caused the game to think there was a side pot between that player and the person with K-K.  The player with K-K won that pot and since there were no more chips for a main pot, the hand ended.  It was truly a freak occurrence and the bug has been fixed.

Jones has gone a step further in remedying the situation, though.  For their troubles, Cake is giving the player with A-Q $500, the person who reported the error $250, and the rest of the players at the table $250 combined.  Additionally, the poker room will give $500 to anyone who finds a future instance of this bug.

After Jones announced all of this, there were a good number of people who gave him the kudos he deserved for the professional way he and the Cake team handled the situation.  There were also a number of people who still wanted heads to roll, for some reason.  They just didn’t understand that no matter how rigorously programmers test the software, there may be an unforeseen convergence of rare events that could still cause a glitch.  In this case, there was really no reason for any to expect this sort of error to happen.

There were even people criticizing Jones, essentially implying that he was being disingenuous and that the monetary offer was just a way to appease the mob.  One person actually asked anyone who was reading if they would be praising a bank manager for being honest about a glitch that caused a customer’s money to go to someone else’s account.  Uh…yes.  If a bank manager was upfront about what happened, apologized, assured me that the problem was fixed, and gave me 50 to 100 times the transaction amount to make up for it, then yes, I would extol his virtues to anyone who would listen.

Things happen sometimes, everybody.  Whether it is a software bug, a typo on a poker room’s website, or a simple miscommunication, not every little issue you encounter in online poker is a huge deal.  If everyone would just act like reasonable adults and allow those who make the mistakes to correct them, we would all suffer fewer headaches and enjoy the game more.  And if you are one of those people who can’t settle down, then just tell me your poker screen name so I can sit at your table, put you on monkey tilt, and watch you spew chips in my direction.