The people who dont believe are just trolling. This is not a hard to believe spot... its stupid and bad and clearly a terrible MB house rule.

I agree and I would bet dollars to donuts that the angle shooting reg has done this before and gotten the same results. I don't think this was a one time thing where the floor made an innocent mistake. Rules should be posted in various spots in the poker room since they go against the norm of all other poker rooms. ALL VERBAL DECLARATIONS ARE ALWAYS BINDING.

It really goes to common sense though. Case scenario Angle shooting pos Mandalay reg: If I stack you will you run around the room naked?

I don;t believe this happened exactly the way Op said. It doesn;t make sense. And no I don't believe that MB has a house rule that says if you say "Ill probably call $80" before your opponent bets that you are bound to call $80.

I do believe they have a rule that verbal is binding, and that OOT is binding.

But I am very much inclined to believe that the underlying facts are not necessarily as OP would have us believe.

My experience both at the Poker Table and in Life in general is that people do not always hear things the way the speaker said them, do not always recall what it is they have said (I can;t tell you how many times that I have had people deny saying the things which they in fact said), and do not always speak clearly.

What I believe is that this ruling was made by a floor person who did not believe the OP said "probably."

There are a number of reasons why the Floor may not believe that.

1) The floor might not have heard or understood from the dealer and/or players that the player said "probably"

2) The floor may have heard conflicting accounts and made the factual finding that player did not say "probably"


It is of course possible that it was just a bad ruling. But my gut feeling is that that the floor person and OP have different versions of the factual basis of this ruling.

+1
unbolivible..

Even if op didn't say probably , what reason would reg have to ask him how much he would call?

As soon as you take the "probably" out of here this becomes a different matter entirely. While I would not like to see that statement be binding .... I understand that in today's poker world there are a lot of rooms where saying anything like that would be considered a call. Theres a lot of people including floor people who would argue that it should be binding .... we see these threads fairly frequently. Because of this .... I would not make these kinds of statements because I understand that it not uncommon for them to be ruled binding.

What reason would reg have to ask him how much he would call? Well its the sort of thing that people do. They think they are being clever ..... I hear **** like this all the time.

If you really think that Reg was angleshooting by making that statement you are way off base.

You think that Reg ... wanted a call ..... asked the OP how much he would call thinking that OP would answer with an amount that Reg would want to bet, and that it would be an amount that OP really didn't want to call with .... and that the floor would rule it binding ..... that's way to complicated.

Reg is saying stupid stuff .... its table talk. OP responds (i think it should be considered table talk as well) with his own stupid stuff, but you are convinced that this is some elaborate plan and it just doesn't hold up ....


In my room the regs usually aren't the ones trying to get stuff like this held to be binding (probably because they have realized it won't) But it is not uncommon for tourists to try to get these sorts of things ruled as binding .... and I don;t think its because they are angle shooting .... I think its because they are used to playing in games where these statements are held as binding.

just wear earphones and don't say anything so can't be angled is a good rule of thumb based on this thread lolz

I will operate under the assumption OP is telling the truth, and frankly I see no reason to doubt him. But his version does not conflict with what you just wrote. Both scenario's 1 and 2 are consistent with him saying probably but due to any number of possible reasons, some malicious on the part of the villain, others not malicious on the part of villain/dealer, the factual story told to the floorman did not adequately (if at all) convey that he said "I will probably call" as opposed to probably.

That said, I do believe that there is a high likelihood that the floorman was informed that he said "probably" and did not give that the adequate weight it deserves.

My best guess: Villain shoots angle. Calls floor over. Tells story that "he said he would call $80". Dealer confirms this without thinking about the emphasis of probably. Floorman then turns to player to explain rule, but player begins to explain that he said I would probably call. Floorman did not fully comprehend this critical fact because by then, the floorman's focus and attention are on explaining the overall rule. Thus the floorman was talking about the rule itself, and all the relevant parties probably also were conversing on that part of the story, and as a result, the entire scene played out with the focus on the rule, and the floorman simply didn't process the key part of that fact.

So you have scummy reg shooting angle, purposefully omitting (or simply a forgetful person who happened to luckily benefit from that) a key fact, followed by a dealer and a floorman who have very little critical thinking skills or multitasking skills, and thus once they begin to focus on explaining the house rule, the important step of hearing OP's side and focusing on that key factual difference gets skipped over altogether.

But it could be that the floorman did do that and determined for himself that OP did not say probably. It's certainly a possibility. But I personally always err on the side of stupidity and forgetfulness when determining the cause of a person's 'mistake'. And the vast majority of times it turns out that it was stupidity or a lack of critical thinking. When in doubt, follow PT Barnum.

The angle isn't as complex as you make it out to be. The angle is simply reg knowing that he can ask a fairly standard poker-banter question in such a fashion that a tourist or even a poker player not familiar with a non-standard poker rule would respond with a fairly standard poker-banter answer (that may or may not actually be what the 'victim' is thinking in his head/may or may not represent his actual intents) that ends up giving the reg a possibly quite useful tool to make money.

Reg doesn't have to bet it. It's just an option. He doesn't know what hero will say, but we also don't know exactly what reg has at this point. If reg is contemplating a bluff, he can ask this question and if hero says something like 30, reg can quietly bluff big, and if reg has the nuts, and hero jokingly says $200, reg can call floor over and get paid. If reg has a value hand that is looking for a call, he'll take whatever amount reg says and get the floor to enforce it.

It's not an angle to produce the specific result of an forced $80 call. It's an angle to give the scummy reg the ability to force hero to calling a specific bet. Whether or not the reg will use that ability depends on what amount is stated, and whether that amount is a useful bet to bind hero to. And it prays on the fact that it's a fairly unknown rule that comes about when a player answers a standard poker banter meaningless question with a standard poker banter meaningless answer that should never be used to hold the player to it. And yes, it's a non-standard and very not well known rule. I've played in 15-20 rooms in Vegas, Chicago, LA and Atlantic City off the top of my head and I only knew of one place that had such a rule, so either I'm right in that it's a very small # of rooms that have the rule and most players will have no idea of its' existence or even the concept that it could exist, or I've managed to pick out a 15-20 room sample that somehow missed the other 25-100 rooms that do have this rule in play)

Even if we can't rely on OP's narrative, we have Lattimer in the first reply saying that the ruling is correct at Mandalay Bay as the situation is described by OP, complete with the word "probably".

Maybe OP got stupid lucky by describing a terrible and non-standard rule that actually exists exactly where he says it does. Why does that matter to the discussion?

Both of these posts are as creepy weird as they are dismissive. We have independent confirmation that at least the first hand is not at all unbelievable and actually is very likely.

The OP said:

It looks like the OP made more than one argument. The OP clearly would have been better off ignoring the issue about who the action was on. If the OP just focused on the fact he said the word "probably," I suspect the floor would have made a different ruling.

This is just a guess but I can imagine this happening:

OP says: "Action wasn't on me and I said I would probably call."

Reg keeps shouting: "He said he would call 80!"

Floorman hears: "Drunk guy who doesn't know the rules said he would call when it wasn't his turn to act."

I think the OP could have made a stronger case. That reg was probably whining really loudly and I could see him being more forceful while making his case and claiming that the OP said he would call. And I could see the floor trying to appease the reg because sometimes people who whine a lot get treated like they are special.

I also suspect that the OP did a better job of stating his case in this thread after he had some time to think about it. And it helps when there isn't an angle shooting reg trying to cause confusion in the thread.

Horrible ruling. He wasn't declaring action. He was answering a speculative question.

Did this person actually say that if a player says he will probably call 80, that they have to call if the bet is 80?

I know that verbal actions are binding there. But so what? The OP didn't say that he would call.

Yes that is what that person said because as she explained it to me verbal actions are binding In the poker world Since it happened recently as op mentioned, she advised me to call the graveyard shift but why bother after speaking to her?

If you had read the OPs post about the hand where he had J6, that he said happened right after the first post, then you would understand. My point was that Ops first post seems unbelievable, because everyone here agrees having the word "probably" would make it nonbinding practically everywhere. OP said he was drunk at the time, so maybe he thought he said probably, but didnt actually say it. Then it would make more sense why the floor ruled the way he did. But the floor very well may have made the crappy ruling the OP described.

But then OP describes a hand where there is a premature burn and turn, and according to the OP, two separate players, both with top pair on the flop, with one having TPTK, simply get up and leave the table, forfieting the money they have in the pot, because they are so upset that the floor made a routine ruling. This is so unlikely to have happened as described that it puts OP's recall of the details in question, since he was drunk.

This then also calls into question the accuracy of his recall of the details of the first hand. Being drunk has a way of making you think you remember things clearly when in fact you dont.

It's nice (though a bit weird, IMO) that you called MB, but I dont doubt that you did. And of course they say OOT action is binding. But that doesnt really get to the heart of this matter anyway.

But just to be clear, I'm in no way suggesting that the OP is lying in any way. I'm sure he is posting the hands exactly as he remembers them. I'm just not sure how he rememers them is exactly how they went down. But they may have both played out as OP says, and he had an amazing night where the fllor makes a terrible ruling against him, but then the Poker Gods even out the karma by causing two players with better hands walk away from the pot giving the money back to OP. Weird **** happens sometimes.

Didn't read that hand only read the one of relevance which was the angleshot of 80 dollars. I didn't believe op either which is why I called the poker room and the action was indeed corroborated by woman manager I forget her name but notated it in previous notes. Getting really tilted with this thread, im out.

It's just as well since naming names is against the rules here. I somehow missed it previously, time for me to go edit your posts!

Anyone who doesn't believe the OP has probably never played at Mandalay Bay. I stopped playing there because of rulings like this.

From this thread, I learned MB had a poker room.
From this thread, I learned MB had a poker room that is every bit as crappy as I would have imagined if I could picture MB having a poker room.

I played in Mandalay Bay the night they opened and a few times after that, but it was a dreadful experience, and that may years ago.

I never liked the room after seeing some really strict interpretations of rules (they had a rule that if you moved chips past your cards it was a bet or call and I watched them rule it a bet when a player who had a chip sitting on top of his cards lifted his cards to look at them and the chip slid forward off the card), but I understand that in the past several years they have loosened up from that sort of thing.

Did you ask the specific question of whether "I will call" and "I will probably call" would be treated identically?

Having multiple sources would stop several posters from doubting the veracity of OP's account.

Wow. You witnessed this? Thank you for reinforcing my previous decision to never, ever play poker at Mandalay Bay. How nice of them to deign to loosen up on this particular rule.

Does this room purposely assist regs exploiting tourists with angle shots, or do they actually think they run an attractive poker game? Why would any recreational player knowingly sit down there?