In the May 26th Card Player Magazine Bob Ciaffone wrote a column where he detailed his play at the WPO $1,000 Pot Limit Omaha Tournament. Before I begin, let me say that “Coach” Ciaffone has the utmost respect from me as a player, teacher and especially as a poker author. His “Improve Your Poker” is in my top three best poker books of all-time. He says that in one hand during the tournament it was down to him and one other player (Bill Moseley). They went all-in but “Before we showed our cards, I asked Bill if he would like to deal twice, and he agreed. Dealing twice means that the pot is divided into two halves. The dealer burns and turns the last card, but for only half of the pot. Then the card is set aside, and the dealer burns and turns again, dictating who wins the other half of the pot. In this manner the luck is divided into two separate cards instead of one card determining everything. This reduces the big swings in Omaha Pot Limit by a significant amount.” This procedure may be appropriate in a ring game when a hand is down to just two players at the river. However, I have serious concerns about its use in a tournament where other players are definitely affected by a procedure that REDUCES the probability of one player being eliminated. Am I confused or out of order???

Answer 1:

If Bob and the other player were the last two left at the final table, I don’t see a problem. Otherwise I agree that it probably shouldn’t be
allowed, for the reasons you mentioned, and also because it will low
down the game if everybody starts asking for double deals whenever two hands go to the river, which happens with some regularity in P/L Omaha. Besides, I think if you can’t live with getting snapped off in Omaha, you should play a different game.

Answer 2:

I certainly don’t think you’re out of order. Imagine that there are 11 players left and the top 10 players are paid, and two all in players
tried to work a deal like this. The tournament staff would have to bring in riot gear if they let it happen. Why should these rules
change just because we’re at the final table? They shouldn’t. However, since both players did agree, I have trouble with you calling this an ‘ethics’ problem. It seems more like a rules problem to me.

Answer 3:

I just re-read the article, and I believe he was talking about live play, although it isn’t absolutely clear from his writing. He talks about the tournaments, and live action, then tournaments again, then live play, etc. I can’t imagine this being allowed in a tournament. It is, however, very common in big bet poker to deal twice, or have insurance. You might just e-mail him for a clarification. His e-mail address, at the bottom of the article, is listed as coach…@concentric.net. Knowing Bob’s reputation, as well as the professionalism of the people running the tournament, I’d be shocked if this actually happened in tournament play down there.