Tournament Directors Revise Official TDA Rules

The Official Tournament Directors Association (TDA) Rules are followed by most poker tournament directors worldwide and are in effect in all World Poker Tour and Word Series of Poker festivals. The guidelines have recently been revised, for the first time since 2011, and they now clarify situations that have arisen in the past years in major tournaments. The particular list of important changes is as follows.

• Rule #2: an extensive list has been compiled what the TDA expects players to claim responsibility for, for the sake of the game. These include protection of hands, making their intentions clear, knowing and complying with the rules, following proper etiquette and, in general, contributing “to an orderly tournament.”
• Rule#7: late registrations and re-entries will receive full stacks, instead of blinding them off.
• Rule #13 B: mucking hands, thinking you have won, is done at your own risk. If your hand is not absolutely positively identifiable and you were wrong, with other players still in play, the floorperson can rule that you have folded and have no right to claim the pot.
• Rule #14: at showdown, non-tabled cards can be pushed forward, face down, without being automatically killed. As long as the dealer does not kill them and they are identifiable, the player can still decide to table them; that is, without a mucking line or forward motion rule in effect at the given event. This will require players to make sure the one before them has indeed mucked before acting, or be at risk of a slowroll or angle shooting.
• Rule #16: without all-in or spontaneous tabling of the cards, the order of showdown can be enforced; if there was betting on the final street, the last aggressive player has to table first and if there was not (for example, the last betting round was on the penultimate street and players checked the last), action must follow the order of a normal betting round (for example, the first player on the left of the button in flop games must table first). Unless the house policy requires otherwise, hands can be mucked.
• Rule #18: players not active in the showdown or mucking face down have no right to see hands.
• Rule #24 C: if your hand is alive, you are required to keep your cards and chips in plain sight.
• Rule #27: if the clock is called on a player, the given amount of time is lowered to 50 seconds from a minute. Once the time expires, a 10-second countdown follows, after which the player’s hand is declared dead, if they fail to act. The 50 seconds can be lowered on the floorperson’s decision.
• Rule #29: players now have to be at their seat (that is, within its reach) when the first card is dealt to the first player, otherwise their hand is dead. The player’s antes and blinds are posted (and the bring-in, if applicable, with additional cards dealt to the dead hand if required) but the player is not allowed to look at their hand.
• Rule #30: As long as there is further betting action remaining, players have to remain at the table. “Leaving the table is incompatible with a player’s duty to protect his hand and follow the action, and is subject to penalty,” the rules state.
• Rule #37 A: undercalls (that is, betting less than the current call amount) are mandatory full calls “if made facing an opening bet multi-way on any betting round, or facing any bet heads up.”
• Rule #38: out of turn actions are binding, unless action to the player who acted OOT changes, i.e. it is binding in each case of other players checking, calling or folding. An out of turn fold is binding. Players skipped by OOT action must defend their right to act.
• Rule #44: players are encouraged to verbally declare their intentions if there are chips left in front of them from a previous bet, not pulled in, and they face a raise. This is to avoid confusion about whether a player calls or re-raises.

As is apparent from the samples, the rules generally apply to requirements and suggestions towards players, as well as to what they can expect from the floorperson and the gameplay in general. For a full review of the revised guidelines, check out the original document at the official TDA website.