Playing in our home game that meets a few times a week, we are 6 handed but suddenly the game gets down to 5 handed as the guy cashes out for $100(a pretty decent result since the game is .25/.50). The host leaves his buy-in on the table, pretty far away from the players near the edge of the table. Ten minutes later, I become involved in a pot against a weak player in which I check raise him on the turn and bet big on the river with a made flush and he calls. The pot should be around $120, which is pretty big for the game's standard. I rake in the pot, but it seems the villain has stacked all the red chips from the pot and all of the chips from the guy's stack who cashed out and puts them in the center of the table. I notice the stack of red chips is large, but I think nothing of it since the pot is huge already.

A few hands later I'm in a hand against the host in which I call him down with second pair and lose, which ends up being a $45 pot. My stack is huge at this point($250) and feel like I can make the light call since he could be on the flush draw and that my stack is enormous. A few minutes later someone points out that the guy that left chips were off the table and the host asks me to take $100 from my stack and give it to him so the pot isn't off. I oblige, knowing it was an error. However, now my stack is less than I thought it was and thus affected the stack sizes of the last hand with the host, knowing if I had $100 less I'd probably not call him down that lightly

I was wondering what would the proper action would be if I went all-in or raised the host thinking my stack was larger than it was and lost. Would the all-in still stand? And what would the proper action be?

So, we got sloppy and put some cashed-out chips in a pot which you won. The host and the other players clearly have some cleaning up to do...

You should have spoken up when you dragged that big pot -- you said yourself it seemed wrong.

You're not playing a tournament and this isn't a craps table. Letting your too-big stack ride is gambling, plain and simple. It shouldn't have anything to do with fixing the error.

It sucks that you're being asked to fix the cashout error, but you all seem to know when the error happened, so politely help make it right. Such is the price of playing poker in someone's kitchen.

The "proper" action is pretty subjective. It's not like there's a rule that discusses what to do when you've called someone light after accidentally scooping dead chips and then being asked to put them back...

The pot was big, but I honestly did not notice the villain putting the other guy's stack in or else I would've said something of course. It was kinda late at night and I just took in the pot without a second thought. But I'm saying, if I went all-in with $100 and the guy calls me and had me outstacked and then the host noticed the error what would've happened? Does the guy have to give the host my all-in?

At some point, the host is on the hook for the $100. The guy who pushed you the red stack next to him is potentially responsible, too, since he in essence stole chips that didn't belong to him. THIS time, I don't hold his feet to the fire, because he didn't actually wager with them.

Fortunately for the host, it's relatively easy to undo the damage. Your stack is over by $100, we know where the chips came from, and you haven't even wagered the excess yet. Put the chips in the bank where they should have been for the last several hands.

Calling "because my stack was enormous" is bad thinking. It's hard for me to even say this out loud because I'm so used to encouraging my opponents to think this way -- it's one of my favorite leaks for them to have. In a cash game, every chip is worth exactly what it says it is. The chips on top are won't cash out for any less than the ones on the bottom, so the decision to call closing the action is simply one of pot odds, no matter how many chips you have behind.

Goes without saying, of course, that host should take this as a message from the gods that he shouldn't leave chips on the table after cashing them out.

In this case, the error was thankfully caught before you lost your stack to someone else and then he lost part of it to someone else and then a you have a huge mess. It's pretty clear to me that it was handled the right way. You still had all the mistakenly gotten gains and so of course you had to relinquish them. If the money had been distributed about the table by the time the error was discovered, I'd say that the person responsible for the mistake is in for another $100.

And what Gedanken said. If it was a mistake to call with $100 less, it was a mistake to call with $100 more in a cash game.

Meh, I called out the gambool early, but I clearly wasn't eloquent enough, as per usual.

The host is actually pretty lucky. He's responsible for paying out the guy who had a stack on the table -- and he's responsible for paying out everyone else. If the chips got confusing, he might have had guests who volunteered to take a smaller cut (see a hundred old threads on the topic) but ultimately he'd still have about $99 worth of problems. [Joke away, please...]


Solution #1
http://www.spinettisgaming.com/Acrylic-Play-Over-Box/

As the others said, give the $100 back to the host. I know what you mean making a light call when you have a big stack. It sucks but you can t change anything withit.

KITN for the villian pushing the extra stack in
KITN for the host leaving the stack on the table

When others are running the game, they are much more lax about keeping extra chips around. It's only a matter of time before something gets messed up, and as far as I'm concerned, it's on them.

The error was obvious enough, and caught early enough. To paraphrase another poster... it's not a problem until it's a problem, then it's a big problem.

Once, I wasn't careful cashing out an early departing player, and ended up spilling chips into my stack. It bothered me not knowing how much the bank would be off later, although I knew nothing was really off. I did make sure to leave more chips out than I thought I had, lest I accidentally go south. Now I'm super careful about moving chips into the covered racks, and doing it away from existing chipstacks.

I disagree. The host should take the hit for not following basic cash-in/cash-out procedure.

+1

only a few hands passed, the same guy had all the chips. This was a mistake that was correctable without harming anyone.

Just take the chips back

Plz re-read the post to which I was replying. He was hypothetically saying what should happen IF the chips had been spread around and I was disagreeing with THAT.

oops, your right, I stand corrected

all good.