The aspect of my game that make this an issue is that we have 2 or 3 players who are constantly away from the table smoking, and it would be extremely unfair to everyone else to call them over and wait for them to get back every time they're not at the table.
The club (think VFW kind of place with its own bar) used to allow smoking, but we didn't allow it at the poker tables, so they'd be at a nearby table and would often try to run back and play a hand, and it was hugely disruptive to the game. We'd repeatedly run into spots where players delayed the game because "Adam's right there!" Whether a player would want to do this could vary from spot to spot, depending on the player's hand or how much he likes the absent player.
This happening once per tournament is no big deal, I guess. Even a few times a game, meh. But as it was, it was substantially affecting the pace of the game. When I asked around about it (I'm the new host and a lot of rules are informal), I was told that the ordinary rule was that your hand is dead if you're not there when the second card lands, but people were willy-nilly about enforcing it. It's a little unusual—especially in light of these responses to my poll—but I decided to roll with it moving forward, and enforce it strictly.
I'm still not really sure if it was the right call.
The smokers have dealt with it very maturely. Most players have. But one player last game got his hand killed and was really unhappy about it. He's not a smoker and isn't often away from the table, but during one hand at a fairly high level (2,000/4,000 blinds, very significant relative to stacks), he stepped away before or during his BB hand.
From my angle, it looked like he was signing up for Super Bowl squares or settling a bar tab, about 8 feet-ish from the table. All the cards got dealt, and he still hadn't sat down. The action got around to the SB, and he still hadn't sat down. His attention wasn't even on the game. Everyone folded to the SB, who called and said "He's not at the table. His hand is dead," which was of course correct. It should have been killed as soon as the second card landed, by the rules, but the dealer just hadn't pulled it in yet.
When we finally got his attention after half a minute of the entire table openly talking about it within earshot of him, he came back to find that we were killing his hand, but everything was still in place, i.e., retrievable. He was pissed. "I was right fucking there! It's my big blind!" And indeed he was, and indeed it was, but we'd been strictly enforcing it against everyone else, every game for like 3 tournaments at that point.
The dealer hesitated to wrap up the hand this way without my say-so, and so I made the explicit ruling that his hand was dead. It would be too unfair to have killed a dozen other hands that same game for not being there the moment the second card landed, but let his hand live when he was absent all the way through his action.
I get that it sucks to lose 4,000 chips that way, but at the same time, he did it to himself. Even if we were using the most generous rule in this poll (hand is killed when action gets to the absent player), his hand would have been killed. In a cash game, a little patience is fine, but we're on the clock and levels are only 13 minutes long. He chose to walk away when he knew his BB was coming during a high blind level. He chose to take his attention completely away from the game; he didn't even notice when his hand was dealt or the action had gotten to him. I would not want this kind of thing to happen with any frequency, especially when the blinds are large relative to stacks.
All of this said, I feel like maybe I should switch to the less stringent rule that your hand is killed when the action gets to you, given how overwhelmingly favored it is here. I'd still like to be strict about being physically at the table, though, because it's just too disruptive otherwise, and unfair to the table that's repeatedly stuck waiting for absent players who are "right there."
