I was playing at Planet Hollywood today. Here's the situation that came up:
Four players to the flop. Player A goes all-in for $55. Dealer announces the all-in and tosses the little "all-in" button in front of A.
Player B pushes all his chips in, total of $17. Again, dealer announces it and tosses another all-in button to B.
Player C is the table big stack. He verbally announces call.
Player D says nothing, but puts out $17.
The dealer points out to him that because of A's action, it is $55 to call. (Player D is in seat 9 of 9, next to the dealer, while A is in seat 2, less easily in his field of view.) D reconsiders, decides to fold instead, takes back his $17.
Player A says that those chips have to stay in the pot.
The floor is called, situation explained. Ruling is that the $17 has to stay in the pot.
I think this is wrong. Yes, Player D certainly should have been following the action. He had plenty of warning that the bet was $55 to him: the chip stack, the dealer's verbal announcement of two all-ins, plus two buttons tossed out. Also, he could have asked what a call would cost if he had any doubt. I am generally unsympathetic to people not paying attention, not doing their due diligence, etc., and believe that if the mistake costs them money they will be more inclined to learn to do things right.
Still, in this particular situation, nobody had acted behind him. In fact, nobody could act behind him (unless he raised), since he was the last one in order. Nobody was misled by his mistake. There is no way he could have gained any advantage by doing this intentionally as some sort of angle-shooting; if there were, I would consider that a decent argument for making the bet stand, as a deterrent to such shenanigans. But here, I think it's a "no harm, no foul" situation.
My rule books don't seem to be especially clear on this point. The best I can find is from Cooke's Rules of Real Poker, p. 66, rule 10.06:
A player who bets or calls by making a forward motion and releasing chips
into the pot is bound by that action. However, when facing a raise, if a player is unaware that a pot has been raised and places enough chips in the pot to call an unraised bet only, the dealer shall advise the player that the pot has been raised, whereupon the player may reconsider and change his action, provided that no one has acted behind the player. If someone has acted behind that player, that player has the option of forfeiting the chips he has released into the pot and surrendering his hand, or calling the raise he faces.
Admittedly, this doesn't exactly fit what happened here, but I think the general idea is the same. Misunderstanding the amount of a call is conceptually no different from misunderstanding a raise as a bet. (Cooke doesn't explicitly say that he's talking about limit games, but you can sort of guess that that's what he's thinking about. After all, he is almost exclusively a limit player himself.)
I can't see that it should make any difference whether the $17 all-in came before or after the $55 all-in. Either way, the guy misunderstood the amount of the bet, changed his mind when the action was pointed out to him, and the result was no different in any way than if he had correctly understood the bet and just decided to fold in the first place.
I didn't speak up, because (1) this is not a situation in which I'm confident of what the standard rule would be, and (2) floor people are not generally inclined to care what my opinion is, especially when I'm not involved in the hand.
But I'm curious what others think the best ruling would be.
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6 comments:
Let him take the $17 back. This is along the lines of "spirit of fairness" that floors reserve the right to make subjective decisions about. PH is a pretty rookie oriented game anyways, so just educate the player, let him take it back, and move on. No need to make a newbie feel sour about poker just to get his $17.
Robert's Rules of Poker seems to support your interpretation (Rule 14.12, available here at http://www.lasvegasvegas.com/poker/chapter13-14.php#8):
"12. Because the amount of a wager at big-bet poker has such a wide range, a player who has taken action based on a gross misunderstanding of the amount wagered may receive some protection by the decision-maker. A "call" or “raise” may be ruled not binding if it is obvious that the player grossly misunderstood the amount wagered, provided no damage has been caused by that action. Example: Player A bets $300, player B reraises to $1200, and Player C puts $300 into the pot and says, “call.” It is obvious that player C believes the bet to be only $300 and he should be allowed to withdraw his $300 and reconsider his wager. A bettor should not show down a hand until the amount put into the pot for a call seems reasonably correct, or it is obvious that the caller understands the amount wagered. The decision-maker is allowed considerable discretion in ruling on this type of situation. A possible rule-of-thumb is to disallow any claim of not understanding the amount wagered if the caller has put eighty percent or more of that amount into the pot."
Now some poker rooms (Mandalay Bay leaps to mind) have a strict rule that chips in the pot always stay in the pot, but I think that approach is overly harsh. Also, when you factor in that 1/2 NL is the "intro" NLHE game, I think rulings need to be more "player friendly" where possible. Nobody gains when an inexperienced player is unhappy about an overly strict ruling.
In the best interest of the game I say let him take the $17 back.
The key here is that nobody suffers any prejudice here if the player takes back his $17 (yes i know the winner gets $17 less or $55 less if he calls and loses). But the point is that if the player had known the bet was $55 to begin with he wouldn't have put $17 in the pot.
So the eventual winner of the pot is getting exactly what he should have gotten if Player D had known that the bet was $55.
And in this case player D didn't get any advantage by his original action. This would be different if there were action behind or if his action closed the betting and players exposed their hands.
I say let him take the $ 17 back so our humble blogger gets a chance at getting that money in a subsequent hand!
Actually, the fact that it's neither a call nor a raise means he should get the money back...
I think the best ruling would be to let him take the $17 back. And I think that in most occasions where I've seen this or something like this that's generally what happens - by table agreement.
But if a floor is called, most rooms I've played at will rule that the $17 has to stay in the pot but that if the hand is still live (e.g. hasn't touched the muck - a good dealer will simply hold the discarded hand, not muck it), the player may decide to call with the knowledge the $17 is not coming back to him if he chooses to fold.
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