String theory

There was an incident near the very end of my session at Caesars Palace Monday evening. A woman in early position raised to $10. I called, holding the two red jacks. The player to my left was on the button, and reraised to $30. The blinds folded. The dealer gathered in all of the bets except for the $20 raise, which was left sitting in front of the button, as that was now the amount that the remaining players would have to call if they wished to continue in the hand.

The original raiser announced,"I'm gonna reraise." She picked up stacks of four red chips with each hand and pushed those forward. She then went back to her stacks and repeated this move, bringing out a total of $80 in this way.

A couple of other players howled their protest. "String raise!" "She can't do that!" The dealer said it was OK, because she had announced "raise" first. I thought this was damn peculiar, since that announcement doesn't change her obligation to stop putting out chips as soon as she has committed enough to constitute a legal raise, and since she did not announce any specific raise amount.

The floor was called, and he made the obvious ruling that her initial move of putting out $40 in chips was the extent of what she could do, because that was a full raise (even if a minimal one--$20 for the call, plus another $20). After he had walked away, the dealer said, "That's a new one. Must be a Caesars house rule."

Caesars Palace is in the midst of a big tournament series, so they have brought in a bunch of temporary dealers to supplement their usual staff. This guy was obviously one of them. However, as one player vociferously (and correctly) pointed out to the dealer, this is not a Caesars house rule. Rather, it is the standard rule, and would be enforced exactly the same way in every poker room in Vegas.

The dealer shrugged his shoulders and said, "That's not how they do it at the Commerce."

In the midst of the initial confusion, before the floor had been called, I had heard another player inject, "This isn't California, dealer." The combination of that comment plus the dealer's observation make me think that perhaps it is done differently in at least some California casinos. If readers have personal experience to either confirm or refute that, I'd like to hear about it in the comments section.

Anyway, it was very strange to have a dealer not know what constitutes a string raise, as it is one of the most common violations that a dealer is called upon to enforce. I don't think I've ever before encountered one who didn't know that rule.

For the record, you essentially have three choices for putting in a raise. (1) Announce the amount of the raise (or the total amount you are going to bet; i.e., the sum of the call and the raise), in which case it doesn't matter how many moves to your stack you make to get the right number of chips into the pot. (2) Say nothing, and push all of the chips you wish to bet (the call plus the raise) forward in one motion. (3) Announce "raise" without an amount, put out chips to constitute the call, then with one additional movement forward put out the additional amount of the raise.


While I'm on the subject of dealers not knowing basic rules, a few days ago I was playing at the Riviera. There were three players left in the hand on the river. (I was not one of them.) The player who was to be second to act went out of turn, moving his entire stack forward. When it was pointed out that it was not his turn yet, he apologized and took his chips back. The first player then checked. This second player then checked behind.

I immediately asked the dealer, "He can move all-in out of turn, and then check when it's his turn?" She said, "Yeah, sure, it's no problem."

The last player checked, too. It seemed that nobody who would be directly affected by the action cared to contest it, so I didn't argue further. But a little while later I headed over to the counter, described the situation to the floor guy, and asked him if the Riviera used some non-standard house rule to cover that situation. He said no, and emphatically agreed that the player should have been held to his all-in bet when it was checked to him. He was surprised that the dealer had handled it incorrectly. He said he would have a chat with her at her next break.


There are some obscure rules in poker that cover rare situations. Even after having been to dealer school, even after having read a couple of poker rule books cover to cover, even after playing most days of the week for four years now, there are still occasionally situations that come up for which I don't know a rule, and have to look it up later. For example, a dealer friend recently emailed me a question about the so-called "fourth-street rule" in seven-card stud. While both he and I knew the rule and its usual application, neither of us was sure how it should be applied in the situation he described to me. My initial guess was wrong, as I discovered later when I checked my published sources. As another example, during a mixed-game tournament at Treasure Island in March, I made an error with respect to posting the bring-in with an oversized chip during a stud round. An off-duty dealer (and reader--hi, Pete!) playing at the table pointed out to me that somebody being nitty could hold me to having made a complete bet rather than just the bring-in amount. I hadn't ever thought about it before.

But string raises and out-of-turn action are things that happen not just every day, but many times a day. It is hard to understand how a dealer--other, perhaps, than one on his or her first day on the job--could not know how to apply them. It's not quite as bad as not knowing whether a flush beats a straight, but it's close.