Table Etiquette Online and Live

Assumptions: This lesson applies to both the module's default game (100bb 6-max online cash at $0.50/$1) and a live $1/$2 9-handed game; examples state which setting they use.

Etiquette in poker isn't politeness theater. Every rule in this lesson exists for one of two hard reasons: it protects the integrity of the game (information stays where it belongs), or it protects the economics of the game (recreational players keep showing up). Break the first kind and you're giving or taking unfair advantages — floors and sites punish it. Break the second kind and you're burning down the building you make your living in. Here's the code, with the two violations beginners commit most walked through in full.

Always act in turn

The action moves clockwise, one player at a time, and every action you take out of turn — folding, calling, even visibly reaching for chips — broadcasts information to players who haven't acted yet. Acting in turn is the single most important etiquette rule because it's really an information-security rule.

UTGunknown

HJ

10♣♣10♣

4♦♦4♦

COunknown

BTNunknown

1. 1.UTG is still thinking
2. 2.HJ (hero) flicks his cards toward the muck and announces 'fold' before action reaches him

Notice that the hand was unplayable — T♣4♦ is one of the worst holdings in the game — so it feels harmless to muck it early. It isn't. The cutoff was deciding whether to attack the blinds, and "how many players are still live behind me?" is exactly the variable his decision turns on. Your early fold answered it for free. The same applies online: clients physically prevent out-of-turn clicks, but the auto-action checkboxes from the interface lesson create the equivalent leak through instant timing. Live, repeated out-of-turn action gets dealer warnings, then the floor. Wait your turn with every hand, including the hopeless ones — especially the hopeless ones, since they're the tempting case.

While we're securing information: don't discuss a live hand you've folded. "I folded a deuce!" while two players fight over a 2-2-9 flop changes the hand's math for both of them. No commentary, no grimacing at the flop you would have smashed, no confirming or denying what you mucked until the hand is over. The formal rule is one player to a hand: nobody gets help — not from spectators, not from folded players, not from friends on the rail, not from a phone.

Never slow-roll

A slow-roll is deliberately delaying with the winning hand — tanking before calling a river all-in with the nuts, or pausing dramatically at showdown before turning over the winner. It's not against the written rules in most rooms. It is the single most despised act in poker, because its only function is to manufacture false hope and humiliate an opponent who's already lost.

BB

7♦♦7♦

7♣♣7♣

COunknown

Flop

7♠♠7♠

Turn

Look at the river decision honestly: hero's quads are 100% to win — not a metaphor, the computed number against any holding — and the opponent has shoved. There is no information to weigh, no pot odds to compute, no decision tree at all. Every second of delay is pure theater at the expense of a player who is already drawing dead. Call promptly, table the hand face-up right away, and say nothing clever.

Two boundary clarifications, because beginners overcorrect. First, taking real time with a real decision is never a slow-roll — tank all day with a bluff-catcher, that's poker. The offense requires holding a hand so strong the decision is automatic. Second, at showdown, if you've won, show immediately; making the loser show first when you know you have the winner, or rolling your cards one at a time with a grin, is the same offense in showdown form.

Don't berate the fish

Someone limps J3 offsuit, cracks your aces with two pair, and scoops your stack. The amateur response is a chat-box lecture ("how do you call there??") or a live sneer. Understand what that lecture actually does:

• It teaches them to play better, free of charge, reducing your future profits.
• It makes the game unpleasant, so the losing player — who is, economically, the customer — quits the table, quits the site, or quits poker.
• It marks you to everyone watching as someone who can't handle variance.

Recreational players who call too much will outdraw you regularly — a favorite is not a lock, and getting your money in good means losing a meaningful share of the time. That's not injustice; it's the entire revenue model. Bad calls fund every winning player's profit, and they only keep coming if losing feels fun. The professional response to a bad-beat from a weak player is, sincerely: "nice hand." Then keep playing your game while they keep making that call.

The same principle covers general civility: no profanity directed at players or dealers, no throwing cards, no smashing the table, no commentary on anyone's play — good or bad. Live, abuse toward staff or players gets penalties up to ejection; online, chat bans arrive fast and repeated abuse risks your account.

Live-only etiquette

Beyond the procedural rules from the last lesson, live rooms run on a few conduct norms:

• One player to a hand, restated, because live it has extra surface area: don't show your hand to a neighbor mid-hand ("show one, show all" — anything you show one player must be shown to the table on request), and don't ask for or offer advice during a hand.
• English only (or the room's declared language) while a hand is in progress. Speaking a language some players can't understand during a hand creates exactly the private-information channel the rules exist to prevent. Between hands, rooms relax.
• Tipping: in most US rooms, dealers earn primarily through tips; $1 on a normal-sized pot you win is the baseline norm, more for big pots, plus tipping servers for drinks. It's customary, not legally required — but stiffing dealers all session marks you faster than any strategy error. Factor it into your live winrate expectations.
• Keep your big chips visible. High-denomination chips go in front of or on top of your stacks, never hidden behind towers of small chips. Opponents are entitled to assess what you're playing for; concealing your real stack depth is treated as an angle.
• Keep the game moving. Act when it's on you, don't watch TV mid-hand, don't phone-scroll into your timeout. Live poker is already slow at under 30 hands per hour; the table notices who makes it slower.

Online-only etiquette

• Treat chat as optional and read-only by default. Nothing good comes from typing while tilted. "Nh" (nice hand) and "ty" cover 99% of necessary communication. Sites enforce chat conduct with mutes and bans, and berating in chat is the most-reported offense.
• No bad-beat broadcasting. Posting hand histories in chat, moaning about the one-outer, narrating your cooler to the table — it tilts you further, bores everyone, and tells observant opponents your state of mind. Take a breath or take a break (the sit-out button exists for this).
• Don't stall. Using the full timer plus time bank on routine decisions to needle opponents ("slow-playing the clock") is the online version of slowing the game and can draw site action if habitual.
• Never collude or ghost. Colluding — playing partnership poker with another player at the table, sharing hole cards by message — and ghosting — having a stronger player guide your decisions in real time — aren't etiquette violations; they're cheating, full stop. Sites detect both with sophisticated tooling and respond with confiscated balances and permanent bans. The bright line for beginners: during a session, nobody else sees your cards and nobody else makes your decisions. Discuss the hands afterward all you want — that's studying, and it's how you should use this site.

Showdown manners and the questions you don't ask

Showdown has its own micro-etiquette beyond not slow-rolling. If you're the last aggressor — you bet or raised last and got called — convention says you show first; do it promptly, both cards face-up, and let the dealer read them. If you called and the bettor shows a hand that beats you, you may muck face-down without showing (online, the client handles this; live, slide your cards forward face-down and they're dead). What you should not do is the showdown stall — waiting, cards in hand, to see if the winner will show first so you can muck in secret while having been the aggressor. Tabling promptly in turn keeps the game honest and fast.

Two questions to delete from your vocabulary. "What did you have?" after an opponent mucks — they paid for the right not to show, and pressing them is begging for free information they're entitled to keep. And "why did you play it that way?" in any tone, to anyone — at best it's coaching your opposition, at worst it's a thinly veiled insult. If you genuinely want to discuss a hand, do it away from the table or after the session with players who've opted in.

Angle shooting: legal-ish and worse than rude

Between honest play and outright cheating sits angle shooting — technically-legal moves designed to exploit the rules' seams. Classics include: deliberately acting as if you've folded so an opponent reveals their intention, "accidentally" under-calling a bet to see a reaction before completing it, hiding your biggest chips behind small stacks so opponents misjudge your depth, and announcing a raise amount ambiguously, then "clarifying" to whichever number works out better once reactions are visible. Online, the equivalent is disconnect abuse — faking connection problems to see free cards on some sites' all-in-protection rules.

Angle shooters usually escape formal punishment the first time; what they don't escape is the table's memory. Regulars warn each other, floors start ruling against habitual anglers on every judgment call, and the profitable seats quietly close to them. As a beginner you mostly need the defensive lesson: when something an opponent does feels like a trick — an ambiguous motion, a miscount in their favor, a "joke" fold that wasn't — say nothing, protect your cards, and ask the dealer or floor to clarify the action before you respond. You're never obligated to act on an opponent's theatrics, only on verified action.

The instinct behind all of it

Strip away the specifics and almost every rule above derives from two sentences. While a hand is live, information flows only through the actions the rules require — act in turn, one player to a hand, no folded-hand commentary, no foreign-language sidebars, no real-time coaching. And the players who lose are the reason the game exists — so beat them, thank them, and make sure their seat is the most comfortable one in the room. Hold those two principles and you can derive the right behavior in any situation this lesson didn't list, online or live, from your first session to your ten-thousandth.