Explaining 'third man walking' rule

By Mark Lasser

I recently got an e-mail asking about a poker rule often posted in card rooms. The rule states that the cash poker games have a “third man walking” rule in effect. Yesterday, I encountered the ruling in actual practice. I had been playing the 2-5-100 cash game at Ameristar in Black Hawk and hadn’t taken a break in a few hours. I got up to get a drink and the dealer notified me that I’d be the fourth man walking.

What this means is that three other players were away from their seats and I’d now be the fourth person walking away leaving the game short handed with only six players. The ruling states that when a third person gets up from a table and there’s a list of players waiting to get in, the floor manager can pick up their chips and put a waiting player in the game, unless the third man walking returns to their seat in 10 minutes. This keeps the game full and prevents players from popping in and out of games while others are waiting to get in. The fourth man walking can only miss his blinds before he gets picked up. Since I was getting up just before my big blind, I got the warning. In general, I advocate this rule. The problem is it’s rarely enforced with any degree of consistency. Also, the rule can be enforced with slight differences in each card room.

By notifying me that I’d be fourth man walking, the dealer implied that my chips would be picked up. I thought this was unfair because she had not notified the third person to get up. Two of the players kept going in and out of the game taking long smoke breaks and food breaks and a third was on his cell phone at an empty table in the room. He would come to the table, play two hands and then get up and make another call. He was away from the table for at least 30-45 minutes and no warning had been issued.

The poker supervisor told me he was going to pick up my chips as well as the third man walking. Now I was upset. Why should I be penalized so harshly for a short break when three other players had been gone for most of the last hour? Had the appropriate warning been issued to the third man, I wouldn’t have had this problem.
In the end I decided to cash in a nice winning session. The poker supervisor and I have since discussed the situation and we both agreed it could have 
been dealt with better.

So here’s my advice to players and dealers. First, if you’re a player on a long waiting list, there’s nothing wrong with watching tables and asking the floor to enforce the rule if it will get you in the game. Also, if you’re at a table and the dealer does not issue a third man walking warning to a player, you have every right to ask the floor manager to enforce it if it will keep your game full.

My advice to dealers is just to be consistent. Don’t treat the “regular” customer who takes 10-minute smoke breaks every hour any differently than a once-a-month player from Denver or a once-a-year visitor from out of state.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday and give thanks for aces and kings that hold up, flopped flushes and nut straights, made boats over flushes on turns and, of course, quads losing to bigger ones when there’s a good bad beat jackpot. Be sure to look for our special holiday gift guide on Dec. 4.

~Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. His work has appeared in Bikini Magazine, Blue Travel and Warp. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.