Ray posted this in the open thread, and I thought it was thread-worthy to stand on its own.

ISWYDT


And sure, it can be okay to go south in a LIMIT game, when you have 3x or more of the standard buy-in on the table.

NL or PL, you're going to need a special group, a special understanding AND no real risk of someone trying to play games with that "understanding" in the future.

But, I pretty much said that already.

Awww, I was hoping for an epic thread-splitting.

This is why only degens are invited to my home game... we don't stop until somebody has all the money. No cashout necessary.

Actually its not the money, its the princpal of the issue. At a home game like you described, I would not alowwed him to buy back in, unless it was for the full amount. He needs to understand he is playing with friends and that means giving friends a chance to win their money back.

Oops...I guess I missed the opportunity to learn something there.

In my opinion, it's bad form to do this at any point. This is especially true in a friendly game. Other responders have already noted that there is an implicit agreement to let the other players have a chance to win their money back in a friendly game rather than pulling it out of reach and continuing to play.

Of course if everyone at the table is okay with it, then that just lets the rule of general consensus for the game take over. However, as a general rule, I'd be against allowing it to happen.

I am not a big fan of this, either, and we have never allowed it. One of our players had a nice run recently, and asked to pull some money off the table. He was between jobs at the time, and I understood why he asked, but we said no. If he couldn't afford to lose the money, he shouldn't have played in the first place.

But Ray's situation adds a touch of gray. How long should someone sit out before they can re-buy lower? 1 hour? 4? 24?

And are you better off having someone cash out rather than keep playing? If you allow him to rathole some of his winnings, and he then loses his stack, he will possible re-buy, so the money goes back on the table anyway.

Once you allow this sort of thing, where does it stop? What is your justification to the next guy that asks if you tell him no? This is just a recipe for disaster and hard feelings. Therefore, no, it is never OK.

I think 45 minutes or an hour is okay. As long as it's not a regular thing, I don't think it's much of a slippery slope, especially not if it's associated with, "I don't really want to encourage this, but okay this one time." I've had some leave in order to take friends home, stop by to pick up burgers, and come back to the game and buy in for less. I let it slide because he's a regular player and a good guy and he gave me some fries.

What I really don't like is people loaning money from stacks. If someone's busted, loan money from your pocket. THAT's something that's a lot easier to have slide into the same $100 being pushed around the table all night, which just isn't fun at all. But there are exceptions to that, too. One game I play, most people are out of cash by the end of the night, and the loose players tend to borrow money from the tight players. With only an hour left to go in the game, I'm much more likely to get those chips from the loose player, especially if the alternative is that the loose player goes home, so I'm okay with the tight player going south a bit.

you can be bought cheap.

especially if he's deeper than most/all the other players, which is generally the case if he's giving chips away.

We all have our price. When I've been drinking and smoking, fried salty things are good as gold.

Ayup. Tho' I do usually comment that I prefer cash to be loaned first. And I don't allow it in my own game, regardless. Not only do I not want to set the precedent, I think it's a lot easier for someone to keep borrowing chips, shoving, and borrowing again. I don't want someone to run up a huge debt and avoid my game because of it. If everyone's out of the cash they set aside for the game, just go home and come back next week. (The ATM near my house closes at 9:30.)

agreed on all points. I often bring extra buyins specifically to help (certain) people keep playing without that trip to the ATM, but that is a double-edged sword. The next week when they drop 2 or 3 buyins to me before even playing a hand isn't ideal.

I too, expected eneely to split it off. Its fun mod powers!

In any case, I was definitely curious how many people were like "No never." I think this (like most) scenarios, was very player dependent. If anyone in the group were taking this all seriously, or I was concerned that anyone was going to be looking to abuse this, I would seriously lean against it.

The intoxication/casual party level, plus the fact that these are all people who I have known for 10 years plus pushed me towards doing it.

There are possible advantages when someone goes south. An ultra-aggressive player that is up early in the night that goes south can continue his/her aggressiveness w/o needing to protect their stack. Making a person play deepstack is part of the game when someone is up.

i don't think that the table stakes rule has anything to do with letting people win their money back. But aside from that I see a bigger problem here.

What I am seeing is a player who comes to a friendly home game and then says I'm taking this money off the table .... with no regard for the friendly home game. If people who are ahead are allowed to take this money out of play you are going to break the game..... And a guy who gets out of the game becaus ehe is winning is going to break the game.

I don't have the same concern in a casino because there are more players....


But if I invite you over for an evening of poker and you accept the invite then i expect you to stay for the typical time we play for and make everybody's game a good game. If you get busted out well i understand why you are leaving.

If you really need the money .... well i don't want to invite you to come gamble if you are that hurting for money. Its not fun to take my friends rent money.

I can't get behind the chance to win the money back theory. If getting your money back is the theory then keeping the player there should be the goal. Allowing him to rathole keeps him playing which is better than him leaving. If he leaves there is no chance to get your money back. If he stays he might bust and decide to pull out some more.

But I'm against the whole going south to begin with. It creates a very slippery slope in a small home game. I can see setting a time limit that a player must be out before coming back in for less but even this can create problems. The bigger your game - having players waiting for a seat - the easier it is to enforce and implement something like a time limit. Player is up and wants to go south, expecting to get back in later will find his seat taken where in a game with no players waiting seat just sits open while he has a smoke, gets a quick bite, or just takes a nap.

The one scenario not mentioned yet, which is a great tool for explaining why it's bad, is the extreme example of players doing it on every hand. If you could take money off at any time wouldn't you take it off when you're in early positions and then put it back on as you got closer to the button. Pretty soon every player would do this. The ultimate conclusion would be every player having the absolute minimum allowed to be in play. Players only need have enough in play to cover other players. (eg. player in the BB pulls off everything but bb amount so he's all in everytime he's in bb. SB could do the same)

I didn't realize this was "Ray's Thread" or I would have posted on it earlier.

I showed up late, having slept all day from playing 13 hours of http://SingleDollarBlind.com the night (and morning) before. By the time I show up, people are drunk. Not just drunk, but bold, italicized drunk. Well, not everyone's drunk, but it's 10-handed, pay attention, stop eating the some-rib-meat Dinosaur Chicken nuggets and it's your turn to act sort of poker.

The player who wanted to go south is, by training, a lawyer. He countered with "Well, at a casino, I can leave and come back all I want." I gave him the standard -- well, if you take a short break, you leave your chips on the table. If you leave for dinner, you generally satisfy the casino's requirement for a "reset" of your buy-in, and obviously players are allowed to leave on Tuesday and come back on Friday and not have to buyin for what they left with. Eventually he understood that there's some point where you reset to a new player.

The signal/noise ratio of the event precluded a more detailed discussion about the nuances and subtleties of why one would short-stack. I wouldn't have wavered from not letting him buy back in. Or I would have told him something (functionally) punitive like NO SOUP! TWO HOURS! He gets it.

I have no problem with "minor" goings south, like paying for dinner and tipping the cocktail waitress, but this was a classic: "I've won a lot, and I want to play more, but I no longer wish $80 of my $100 to be at risk."

Ray's too nice.

Of course, nobody cared, and everyone was drunk. Except Ray's wife who, if you read elsewhere on these forums, is a raging pot-head.

I do agree that's not really the reason, but it's an easy reason, and one that casual players understand. In their minds, they DO want a chance to win "their" money back, so it's speaking to them on their terms. Besides, let's be honest, most people only get one night a week for poker (if that), and they're not going to just decide to pick up and leave, but they WOULD probably try to secure a win (or at least a break-even) by squirreling away chips.

I touched on that in the original thread, but eneely failed at splitting.

I went south before. It was when there was a topless dealer. Crap wrong thread.

Actually my wife was annoyed that I was arguing the point with our southbound friend. She thought I was harshing the groove of the party.

Aye, I am too nice tho.

I think the correct question now is.... in our now fully sober mode, should I even try to bring this back up to him to educate him? It feels like it would just be nittish...

He's a lawyer. Pretty sure he is predisposed about being nittish about everything. So I would not sweat that.

If you expect that he will want to play again where the groove of the party is poker instead of booze/partying, then I would explain it to him now that you are both sober. Because, if he goes south when everyone there is to play poker, he will ruin the groove of your poker game.

He was rat holing. IMHO, the fact that he did it to a group of friends who had been playing together for a decade only makes it worse. In the friendliest of games I have ever played in, this would be a serious breach of etiquette. Its cool to play for fun and I have done it hundreds of times, but when its among friends and the money is meaningless (which I am guessing is what is going on here) when someone makes it about the money, it becomes a dick move on that guys part.

Letting him cash out and deal I'd be cool with sort of. It would irritate me, but he is a friend and he wants to cash out up, drink and have fun, and "pay" for it by being all time dealer. When he tries to buy back in, though, he buys in for his full amount.

The biggest threat is that this becomes a precedent that some other player invokes in the future.

If there is no possibility of that happening (e.g., because all the other players are regs/vets) then there's no problem. However, if there are other new players, especially beginners, present, they will feel unjustly treated if they also want to take money off and you say no.

So beware of who is seeing the ratholing take place.


There is a loophole, however. Instead of allowing the fish to rathole, declare the game a cap game up to the amount the fish wants to play (with the other player's permission, of course).

The player didn't understand that he was breaching etiquette. ...and the intoxication level plus the general signal/noise ratio at the table didn't lend itself to much of a discussion about why.

...but he took us at face value, and cashed out completely.

He wasn't trying to make "a dick move" on the table.