There was drama recently in a Houston poker room where well-known poker player Sammy Farha allegedly got into it with a dealer. Farha was accused of physically assaulting the dealer, and the dealer ended up going to the hospital and filing a police report.
A video subsequently circulated online, but it doesn't establish exactly what happened. We don't know if it shows the entire incident or if it's been edited.
But physical altercations do happen inside poker rooms – I've had to deal with incidents like this many times in my career as a tournament director. And the incidents can be player to player, player to staff and staff to player, unfortunately.
Obviously, we have to hold our employees at the venues to higher standards because they're the ones being paid to be there. They're the ones who are supposed to be controlling these types of situations.
But I also want to say that the people running poker rooms and dealing games are all human beings.
A lot of times these are super high-stress and super intense situations. We ask them to put up with a lot. And every once in a while, human beings do what human beings do – they lose their temper and things happen.
How to stop a fight before it starts
When I'm present when a physical altercation happens, or is about to happen, my goal is to do everything I can to avoid a confrontation, because it usually doesn't go from zero to a hundred.
What happens is the situation goes from zero, to 20, 50, then 80. If you can catch it when it's in those middle stages, you can do something to prevent it from happening, such as separating the participants as quickly as you can.
If it's escalating, I get the dealer out of the box and the floor person away from the table. You do whatever you can to prevent it from boiling over.
If you have a player who is hyper-aggressive and instigating confrontations, you need to get them out before it becomes a problem.
If you don't do this because you're afraid of upsetting somebody, or losing a regular player, you may end up in a situation which is even worse – where you have to ban a player for life.
A little intervention can prevent a lot of trouble
We’re all human. Poker's a competitive game. Tempers can flare and things like this will happen.
What I would encourage everybody to do is this: If you see something like this happening, do everything you can to keep it from getting to the point where people feel the need to put their hands on each other.
With regard to the situation at the Houston card room and Farha, I'm not saying I know who's at fault. I don't know the full story. And I don't want to make claims I don't understand right now.
But I do have some experience dealing with these types of altercations. And I know that if someone had been able to get involved a little bit sooner, the situation might have been avoided.
Physical altercations have no place in this game. We're all humans, but laying hands on someone should always be met with swift action. I believe, as a poker community, we should try to discourage physical altercations and stop them before they happen whenever we can.
And I hope I don’t see more videos like this in the future.
Justin Hammer is the Live Events Director for PokerAtlas, an online tournament director for the Texas-based poker app Hijack, and a tournament director at Thunder Valley Casino Resort. He also works as a consultant and is a minority owner of Desert Bluffs Casino in Kennewick, Washington.
For more info visit PokerAtlas.com, HijackPoker.com, and bluffs.poker. Follow Justin on X.
