+1 on the correct ruling. Yes, significant action has occurred. If UTG wanted to bet, he should have said so before.


If you're folding to either bet, I'm with DK. You can probably just get on with your life.

I might just let it go as well, but the problem with that is if it's really happening a lot and you only say something when you're interested in the hand, it could both show you have a hand you're interested in, and people might think you're an angle shooter.

Get better at rules. Better for protecting yourself, gives you "soft" options to remind dealer and players "doesn't significant action matter here?" for example. Play it by ear from there. By the rules should be the default but when you're not affected, getting on with it is a fine outcome too.

I don't fault your speaking to management either way.

Totally agree that it is in your best interest that the rules are correctly and fairly enforced all the time. In practice, being table captain may not pay off.



I like your polite suggestion method in most situations.

One thing you should be aware of, which people alluded to, is not being taken seriously because people think you have an ulterior motive.

1. Choose incidents where you specifically don't have a stake in the outcome to make your point. Specifically, I disagree with the "if you're gonna fold just move on" attitude - that is where you have the most credibility, where basically you're like, "I'm going to fold either way but this isn't being handled correctly."

Also pick a time to complain when you're up f9r the session to avoid "he's just mad because he lost" dismissals.

2. Bring up that you've played a lot and this is a recent phenomenon. Unless you've been frivolously complaining for years (in which case go read the boy who cried wolf), that you've complained 4 times in 10 years and 3 of those were in the past 2 months should carry a lot of weight.

3. Emphasize that your complaint is primarily about the procedure, not the outcome (this is why it's easier if it's clear you had no conflicts of interest). A little flattery may help - point out that the dealer isn't equipped to handle theae complexities and only the floor can save everyone from eternal doom.

Maybe they changed their policy so dealers get in trouble for too many floor calls.

tl;dr don't cry wolf so often is what I'm gathering

A thing that I've 'had' to do so frequently that I can't put a number on it: There's a dispute, someone asks the dealer to call the floor. Dealer resists and I come out with: 'A PLAYER CALLED FOR A FLOOR! YOUR JOB NOW IS TO CALL A FLOOR!'

I'd rather waste the time than have to listen to the back and forth which is usually over some nit-picky thing.

One thing that isn't indicated here is kind of the "flow" of the hand. I think it's entirely possible that UTG was thinking and didn't notice the action was moving around the table without him, especially if the checking is happening kind of fast. A lot can happen in 3 seconds. It's also possible that button bet, then UTG bet (not realizing what happened) and MP folded thinking that UTG called and it was back around to his action.

So there seems to be a reasonable collision of mistakes causing this to play out.

I'm somewhat surprised that the immediate consensus was that button's bet stood and that action should proceed from there. If UTG never actually checked, and he acted in a reasonable amount of time (again, time not specified in the description of the hand), then the decision might also wind back to UTG's bet, but that button's money is committed to the pot (can't fold) as if he called out of turn.

You should not try be the rule-enforcer. That's not your job, and you don't want that job. It does you no good to be "that guy."

It's entirely possible (I would say highly probable) in this case that button would have "pulled back" his bet to allow things to play forward after UTG's bet and would have just called. And then life goes on.

In your situation, I would have just folded my hand and let play continue based on what the table felt was fine. It looks to me like it was just a mistake. And I wouldn't have said anything more unless button decided to fold. I might have made a comment, "You were going to bet, but now you're going to fold?" or I might have just let it slide that time. But in both cases, I make a mental note.

The second time something like that happens is when I'll start to make a point of it and possibly involve the floor. Unless someone is doing something like this consistently, it's not an angle. It's just a mistake. And this is even more true at the lower level games, because those people make lots of mistakes. The game is not ruined if that one player takes back that one bet that one time because there was confusion at the table.

I've said this before, but I don't know if I have ever asked a dealer to call the floor. I just stand up and yell "FLOOR!". I don't like the wasted time either; I'm louder than most dealers anyway and almost always get their attention. That's what I'd recommend in the future.

That would be an improper ruling in pretty much every room I've ever played in; at least any with standard rules. It is up to the player to protect his action. Even if he never checked, and even if it happened pretty quickly, 4 people have acted after him. In most rooms, if there have been 3 people who have acted out of turn behind you, you're out of luck.

Yes, 3 players is a common ruling, though I don't know if it's universal.

That being said, I know that I've been at a table where players are rapping the table to check even before it's their action, which is a cascading failure of out-of-turn-ness. That's kind of the picture I have in mind here (which may or may not be accurate to the reality of this situation).

I actually remember a hand I was in where this sort of thing was happening. It was a super passive game, with hands being checked around a lot. As soon as the flop hit, UTG started tapping the table, and it went around very quickly.

Neither SB nor I had done anything, and we were both the "whoa whoa" guys. Everyone kind of just looked around and shrugged, and we started back at SB. I don't actually remember the action from that point, but I do remember looking at SB and two of us did the "WTF?" look but then kind of chuckled and shrugged it off. I don't remember it being a problem after that, but this was years ago. (We're talking mid-2000s.)

In the example you gave, I think the SB would / should be out of luck, but you should definitely be allowed to bet if you want to. I don't think you can ever lose your action if the player before you hasn't acted yet. That is an unusual circumstance though.

I agree it can happen very quickly. I remember once years ago playing in a loose 6/12 O8 game at the Bicycle Club. I was first to act, and I'm pretty sure that the flop and turn were checked around. On the river, I made a backdoor straight, but I wasn't quite sure at first, so I quickly picked up my cards to look at them. I immediately hear people behind me saying "check", "check", "check". The floor was called, but I wasn't allowed to bet and was told about the 3 players rule. I still think those guys were angling the out of towner newbie, but rules are rules. Since then, I've always been careful to not let people act behind me while I'm thinking. Sometimes I can't stop them from acting, but as long as I have yelled before 3 people have acted, I will still get to act.

The moral of both this story and getting a floor to come to your table is to YELL LOUD!

Won the largest pot of my life today, in terms of number of chips in the middle. 8-16, straddle on the button, capped at five bets nine ways preflop. Literally zero folds. I had AKo on the AK5-K-8 board. Nearly 300 little $2 chips when it was all said and done. Got carpal tunnel stacking them. It was awesome.

Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk

Winning almost 40 bets = def awesome . . . for a session. Getting it done in 1 hand is a level or two above awesome, I just don't know the word for it. nh

Awesome...just curious, what room has a button straddle in a LHE game? I've never seen that.

King maker pot, indeed.

I disagree that it is best to immediately call the floor rather than "wasting time" going back and forth with the dealer. Give the dealer the chance to get it right. Nobody likes having their supervisor called on them. The "soft" approach mentioned by Munga can resolve a lot of situations without anyone feeling like they screwed up.

Of course, if two players in the pot disagree on the decision, the floor should be immediately involved.

Things like this are why judgement calls require judgement rather than hard and fast rules.

If the dealer forgets that SB is in the hand and UTG is banging on the table, and SB speaks up immediately, I'm open to letting SB act even if a billion people have checked in the five seconds it takes to stop the action (I advocate stopping the timer at when someone begins to speak up, not when the action actually stops, but that's a different fight).

On the other hand, if SB is hiding his cards so it's not obvious he's in the hand, and action is moving slowly, and he pauses before calling stop, I think 3 people acting behind is too much.

I'm inclined to make the window of opportunity larger for unusally large pots (5-bet kill pot 9 ways gets more time than 2-bet button raise / BB defend) and unusual cards (K83r-2 gets less time than AKQm-A).

You can go to the tapes NFL Instant Replay style and look up time stamps, but ultimately the question you need to answer is subjective, not objective: did people try to act in a reasonable manner? If they tried, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Palace in Lakewood, WA. Only button straddle I have seen in LHE, too. Sent from my Moto G (5S) Plus using Tapatalk

Lots of good feedback in this thread as usual. Cali - your thinking is spot on to me. It seems best to intervene (softly at first) in situations that were mishandled which don’t really affect me.

I have zero desire to be the table captain. Zero. But I also don’t want to get negatively impacted in a situation where the dealer screws up and refuses to call the floor (see instance #1 when this happened).

A few additional pieces of context that are helpful as to why I was frustrated and asked for the floor.

1. The action after UTG missed his action took several seconds. He was busy on his phone and didn’t notice the action had passed him. He is a regular and this seemed to be an honest mistake.
2. MP was a non-native English speaker who seemed to not know the rules. When the dealer initially decided that the button action stood, he said something like “but I fold already”. Theb the dealer decided to roll the action back to UTG.

I have no idea why this is happening more frequently. I don’t think the room is discouraging the dealers from calling the floor.

One last note. I am one of the few players in the room who plays everything from 6/12 to 50/100. It is the same dealers that rotate through these games and it is painfully obvious that they treat them differently. This situation would almost never had occurred at a high limit game and if it did, I am almost certain this dealer would have handled it differently. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

True, but it's almost certain that dealers attribute more value to high limit games versus smaller games because, well, more money is involved. Does that make it "right?" No. Does that make it common? Yes. Also, the players in the big game usually get more preferential treatment than the lowly low limit players. Sad!

I agree that you should be willing to take a stand (sometimes) if you're on the negative side of a bad ruling. But this wasn't one of those times.

There was no way that you were going to be negatively impacted by this decision, no matter which way it went. And it's not even clear whether *ANYONE* would be negatively impacted. So even though you have "no desire" to be the table captain, the moment you made that decision you have taken on that title. You're not really defending anyone or anything. If everyone else at the table feels okay with the decision, I would say that it's not your place to fight for the "right decision" to be made.

Incidentally, nothing about the table actions you've described seems "out of place" to me. There are things going wrong, but nobody seems to be acting intentionally badly. People aren't paying attention, accidentally acting out of turn because of misreading what's happening, and nobody seems like they're turning this into an angle of some type. All of this would make me even more inclined to just let things go because it just doesn't matter.

I like everything callipygian said. If the table snap checks out of turn, I feel one way. If UTG is not paying attention, time passes, and the table misinterprets disinterest as a check, I feel another. It depends.


now I feel like significant action has occured and his not paying attention cost him the chance to act the first time.
Right or wrong, high stakes games are different. Sit down at 50/100, you have to be a "special player" to get a pass for not knowing the rules. In a 2/4 game, dealers have to assume that most anyone needs to be taught the basics.



I'm with Aaron here, too
It is good when the game runs correctly. I'm not sure I'd stop a game to get a floorman to change a slightly wrong "it didn't much matter" to a absolutely correct ruling in a pot where I was already folding to any action. I wouldn't have the inattentive dealer on my "tip generously" list, though.

My main room has a button straddle now. It’s bad ass. Makes the game so much better (if it needs to be better) if a number of players are doing. Also allows for five bets pre.

Edit: I didn’t even notice where the original post came from. Radio Mike is one of my top blog characters!