That game goes every day, 24 hours wouldn't be much of a penalty.

Rush, you didn't answer my question. If you had confirmed his lie/joke with the dealer and learned the truth before losing any money, would you still expect the casino to ban him?

To address your badeucy question, we're not talking about a noob in a game. We're taking about a person who is clearly familiar with the game in question. But, I would still expect that noob to get his info from the dealer if he expects it to be reliable.

i think the dealer is in no way responsible. if u want him to be u have to ask him. It's not his job to get involved in other peoples conversations and usually when they do speak up in situations like this people are talking about a home game or a game from a week ago or something stupid. Usually they seem to miss more of the conversation then they hear. (this is from a players perspective so might be too forgiving though)The player who said that should make good on w/e bets u wouldn't have paid (i'm guessing the river and maybe half ur bets on other streets since u had half the equity u thought???... idk i feel like if u played the hand exactly how u would if it was 8b u should just tell him he was a dick but asking for $ is reverse angling) if he's honorable and if not be warned or if they feel like it was an angle kicked out for the day as well. I don't think u can make him pay anything or really do anything more/different. also I think u should talk to him 1st... if u think it was mean spirited or he's being unreasonable then go to the floor.

Personal responsibility. I have no sympathy for OP.

No, they shouldn't ban him. The fact that monies was lost due to his joke, is the sole purpose for the penalty. Your scenario(although it may seem to be close to the real scenario) is the total opposite of what actually happened.

Let me rephrase my earlier question(which you hadn't answered yet): What would be so different if you and I were in a hand together...you and I were "friends"...but on the river when you called my bet, I announce "straight" and for some reason you just take my word for it and wind up mucking top pair only to see me then table my Jack-high? Should I get a penalty of some sort? What if you didnt prematurely muck your hand and it didnt cost you to lose the pot...should I get a penalty? Now explain what the difference is between this situation and the OP's situation. Yes, one may be a written rule and one may not, but I'd like to know how one is more severe/wrong over the other.

I made my opinion clear two posts above, but let me suggest a different scenario. Let's say OP asks a friend/regular who replied "There's no qualifier." But let's also say that this friend was genuinely mistaken for some reason.

What then?

As I said, personal responsibility, something far too many people have a problem claiming. Their mistakes and failures are someone else's fault.

If you tell a reg in a mixed high-limit game that the game changed, then he's going to believe you (if this is a reg you have no problems with and you confirm with him it's not a joke). High-stakes mixed games constantly change, sometimes after one rotation, so I'd believe a guy that I have no issues with (especially someone I'd consider friendly).

Combine that with not a single person saying otherwise, then I would have done what OP did - play without the qualifier. OP calling the floor, checking with the dealer, other players, would be unheard of in this circumstance. Small player pool high-stakes games play more like a home game.

I don't know what his friend was trying to accomplish by joking about the qualifier, but it seemed to work. As Rush17 points out, joking about the rotation is on par with joking about misdeclaring your hand at showdown.

If larceny by deception is being perpetrated within a game that house is controlling and collecting a rake, then they have a responsibility to protect the game and it's players.

Again, I was taking the view that OP asked his question loud and to the entire table including the dealer. If he was purposely misinformed or deliberately ignored then the dealer/casino helped to facilitate a scam IMHO.

I am 100% in favor of personal responsibility at the tables, protecting yourself is a hard lesson to learn and often an expensive one in poker. The nature of how these games are run, and the fact that often an unconventional game is introduced makes this a unique situation. Also, had OP jumped into a game outside his local casino and been told this he would have clarified with the dealer/floor, however he had/has good reason to believe what information he was given.

Of course its the opposite. Its also the proper way to handle the situation. You want the guy to be penalized by the casino because the hero in the situation failed to be responsible, failed to protect himself. He verifies, he loses nothing. As played, he loses money, and people want the other guy banned. This is result oriented and irresponsible.

The entirety of my point is personal responsibility. I protect myself 100% of the time at the table and therefore wouldn't be a victim like that. But for fun I'll play along. I don't expect you to get a penalty, I expect to get the pot. Per RROP your deliberate miscall is subject to forfeiture of the pot, not a penalty. Now when the floor comes to the table, the angler in these cases usually gets a warning unless he has done it before or is a known angler. V will plead his case citing that he had misread his hand. Sometimes true, sometimes not.

As a floor person, I have to look at what is in the best interest of the game. Personal responsibility is rapidly trying to remove itself from the poker community. Everyone refuses to see their own mistakes and how if they had just protected themselves, they would have never had a problem in the first place. But it is much easier to blame everyone else. Just look at the B&M threads. Half the time we have a thread involving a dealer mistake, it would have never happened if the OP had just paid attention and protected his hand/action. Several people will bring this up and several more will be offended by the very notion that someone is telling the OP he bears some fault in the situation. Hell I've lost count of how many times someone has used the "look both ways so you don't get hit by a car" analogy.

What's best for the game is for everyone to start focusing, paying attention, questioning things and protecting themselves at all times.

Do you play mix games? I'm guessing not, and yes I him that's relevant to our ability to understand how OP did nothing wrong.

Fair enough. No I don't play mixed games very often. I predominately only play NL and O8 and PLO.

And how did that work out for him? He didn't do anything right either.

If you sat down in a nl/PLO game and somebody at table informs you that it's a must straddle game, would you straddle in or stop and check with the dealer then call floor over to confirm.

I would at least check with the dealer. I don't know why you would ask this after I've said pretty much this same thing throughout the thread.

I can certainly understand a dealer not saying something in this situation. Maybe he wasn't really listening, maybe he figures you guys have an inside joke, maybe a lot of things. People are right that in this kind of game you have no reason not to believe a trusted reg when he tells you the game type.

In a "mandatory straddle" game I think it makes a bit more sense to ask the dealer, since that's something players often try to impose on a table. I'm not going to be captain buzzkill on that one, but if a player asks or seems genuinely unsure, I'll speak up. For the most part I assume people entering these games understand that it's not procedurally mandatory, so I let them sort it out.

Back to the OP, as a dealer, I like to think I'd say something just because I've seen so many problems and I'd rather have them mad at me than have someone make a mistake. But who knows how I'd react in the moment or what I'd even hear/think.

I can't find a way to make the casino responsible for anything, but I certainly have no problem with a week ban. You ask what if he earnestly was mistaken? Well, that's different context. Rules allow for variation like that.

tl;dr: your friend is a douchebag

But of course the big caveat to this is "If you heard it". But you know as a dealer you don't hear every little snippet of conversation between two players. I can't imagine a dealer who if they did hear it wouldn't speak up....

But there is something else. This sort of thing also appears to me possible because the players don;t insist on proper game plaques. There was talk of the use of an Omaha button. But if this game sometimes goes with an 8 qualifier and sometimes with no qualifier then there should be different buttons (even if the house has to improvise by writing on paper and taping it to the button).

One day i sat to deal in a mixed game. The game changed and I pulled the next game plaque it said Stud Hi-Low. I had never seen them play without a qualifier before .... but I had never seen a plaque in our room that didn't indicate the 8 either. So I asked the players "Are you guys playing without a qualifier?" 7 players indicated I was a moron ... of course Stud High Low has an 8 qualifier and one player indicated that I was the only dealer that had the sense to ask this inmportant question. I then called the floor and asked for a proper plaque and the floor guy didn;t understand what was wrong with the one I had. Now while I think every dealer should have noticed this and said something. I also think the players should have spoken up and demanded a proper plaque (when the floor blew me off the one player who understood me actually went to the box of plaques which was sitting out and got the proper plaque)

In my case i understand why the players and floor didn't see it as an issue. They never played this game without a qualifier .... probably some of them never even heard of such a thing. To them Stud Hi-Low meant Stud High-Low 8 or better.

If in OP's game they really do sometimes play this without a qualifier then they need proper plaques or buttons. So that the players and dealers just sitting down will have some idea of the game. And I would say that if the players have tolerated not using proper plaques or buttons that the players have contributed to this problem. Because now when the game has the proper button the players still can't be sure.

I actually do agree strongly with the second part above. Of course we should all try to act prudently to protect ourselves at all times (though not always easy).
But failure to do so does not relieve the other party of responsibility for acting incorrectly. (Your failure to look both ways does not exonerate the speeding drunk.) There's a difference between saying that you could have prevented the problem by acting to protect yourself, and saying that you caused it or should be directly blamed for it, or that the other party bears no responsibility. (This is especially true in the case of a deliberate act by the other party, as here, as opposed to an unintentional mistake.)
I would also point out that mixed games often involve some unusual variant games and rules, and often the players are more familiar with what's actually going on than the dealer is. Being told by a reg and "friend" that they were playing HiLo without a qualifier (which is not a rule change, but a different standard game), and then having him confirm when asked if he really meant it, would make it pretty easy to accept without further verification.
If the dealer actually heard this and said nothing, I would fault him, but it's easy to imagine that he didn't.
However, despite the above, unless the "friend" has a real history of misconduct, I would not expect the casino to do much about it (perhaps a warning, at most), although I would not be unhappy if they did give him the night off.
As far as the "friend" is concerned, while I suppose that this was just a joke which went sour, the "friend" should acknowledge that his "joke" cost OP money, and make it up to him -- if he's any kind of a guy.

This seems that like all you can do. If he doesn't make it right I guess he wasn't a friend.

The situation would be more interesting if you had gotten scooped by the reg.

Unless the dealer didn't hear it (which is perfectly possible, I'm sure you guys pay a whole lot less attention to our boring conversations than we would like to think) I can't think of a good reason not to clarify this.

If its some sort of weird inside joke, fine, no harm done by clarifying. I think the dealer should be subject to some kind of discipline if he heard and didn't clarify. Managing the game is such an essential job function.

I think I would be more inclined to agree with you on it being a greyish area in the straddle example. Although I think it depends on what is being said-- there's definitely a line. If people are lying to new players about the game structure I think the dealer needs to correct it. Even if it is something the player "should" know.

so i think we've all established that OTR isn't owed anything due to not being clear enough with dealer/floor/etc

fellow reg is a douche and owes a douche tax, which i would define as the amount of money you lost thinking it was no qualifier. if you play the hand the same if its o8 then he doesnt owe anything.

the guy opened the dialogue with a lie and cost you money, he owes you a nice meal at minimum. if he didn't go out of his way to make amends for the situation immediately, then he sucks.

Not to beat a dead horse, but ^this doesn't actually tell me the *differences* between the two situations(the player who deliberately miscalls his hand and the player who deliberately miscalls what game is being played). Both people in question voiced an act/actions that were deliberate; an attempt to screw someone over. Now, one may argue that the guy who misinformed his friend about what game was being played was really just joking around, and to further that(and to what you're advocating so strongly) is that personal responsibility goes a long way and that the guy who was playing this mix game should've known better and thus should've gotten some sort of clarification. But, can't we say that's true for the player who deliberately miscalls his hand? How do you know who is joking and who is not? Why do you get to decide who was really the dick and who was just jokin around?...

Forget the fact that one is in the RROP book and one is not, because, when it comes down to it, it's the only thing that really separates the two.

The player who miscalls his hand does get a penalty...he forfeits the pot! Why you view that as anything but a penalty is beyond me. And, he only gets the absolute penalty because it says so in some rule book. But, why is it a rule and why is this player being protected by it? Doesn't he have personal responsibility just like the other guy(OP) apparently should have?

Answer this: YOU tell me it's the wrong game...I don't get further clarification of it(because quite frankly, I never thought there'd be reason not to believe you because it's just a simple question about what game is being played jfc). Anyway, you and I go heads up the very next hand and I wind up playing out the hand as if it was X game opposed to the actual game that it really was supposed to be. And, due to that, I lose a 1k pot to you. A pot that I never even would've gotten involved in had I not been misinformed; had you not intentionally miscalled the game to me. But, you should receive no sort of penalty for it, right? Both scenarios include a person who deliberately tried to screw someone over. And both scenarios leave the angle shooter/dick with the pot. How convenient.

Regarding the player who miscalls his hand and causes the winning hand to fold: the fact that money was lost is exactly how you punish the guy. But, according to you, and regarding OP's situation, you say that I'm being results oriented, because, had OP not lost any money(and it resulted in nothing more than a little "HA HA" joke) then everything would be ok and what type of penalty should this guy even get?! Well, it's the same penalty that the other guy in the other situation should get: NOTHING. A warning perhaps. But, when money is lost, a penalty should occur. Call it what you want, you wanna call it a "forfeit of the pot"?, go ahead. Bottom line, a forfeit of the pot is about as severe a penalty you can receive, but, OP's situation is not in a RROP book so we're seeking just a little bit of "justice" another way.

Lastly, I do agree with you about personal responsibility (I'm about as old school as they come), but I've never appreciated players who deliberately tried to remove the good spirit of the game and I've never tolerated an angleshooter. So, there just has to be some penalizations at the poker table, otherwise, the fish and the true novice will soon be gone. Please don't say that the 'reg' should know better, everyone is entitled to a fair shake, because, when it comes down to it, we all make mistakes.

I agree that this is egregious. It certainly becomes even more complicated if OP and villain are in the very next pot together. Messy.

The distinction between the rules is that one occurred during a hand I in play by a participant and the other did not. In the rule on the books there's a resolution that is possible to enforce every time. In the OP's sitauton there isn't. It sucks and it's bad, I don't disagree, but we can't take unwagered money from him.

For example, a short handed 5/10 game. Semi-reg sits in, they say, "We're doing a mandatory straddle." They tend to sort that out themselves.

And that's ok, and I agree with that(although, if the guy was a stand up guy, he would offer OP a couple of bets), which is where the 24/48 hr temp ban comes into play. It's just something that tells this guy "This room isn't going to tolerate this type of player/behavior."

Actually. I don't view forfeiture of the pot as a penalty, I view it as the pot going to the actual winner of the hand. But, if you recall, whenever this topic comes up on these boards, there are some that feel this is a bad rule and the player that mucked is SOL. I'm not saying I agree but the topic is at the least, debatable.

I, not being an *******, would pay you back for your losses in the hand. But failing to do so does not require the casino to act against me. And this brings up another question for me. Why is no one looking to penalize the player that OP lost the hand to? The OP states that everyone at the table heard his question. So the guy who scooped the pot is fully aware that the OP believes they are playing without a qualifier. Isn't it unethical for him to not speak up when they play against eachother? How come no one at the table spoke up? Aren't we all under an obligation to say something when we observe something happening incorrectly at the table?

Meh, I'm glad we agree about something. And I recognize the possibility that I might be wrong (or at least hold the minority opinion) on this issue. Perhaps my vision is clouded by my rage at the erosion of personal responsibility I observe every day.

I hope the OP learned a valuable lesson from all of this. It certainly was an expensive one.

What? You expect the player to say, "Hey guy, it looks like you're drawing to a 9. This is stud 8"? For all the player knew, he was drawing to only a flush.



You are absolutely wrong. This is super common in mixed high-stakes games. It's a non-issue. The issue here is the guy lying about the game. I like to make jokes at the table (not these kind of jokes), and if I turned white because I realized the reg didn't know I was joking, I'd make his stack look like it did when he first sat down without any hesitation.

It's an integrity issue. Stop trying to apply the "erosion of personal responsibility" you see everyday in small-stakes games to somewhere it doesn't apply. I do this all the time. I sit, get dealt cards and ask someone next to me, "So what are we playing?" and that's that. I don't ask the dealer is this really 5x2 or is it really 27?

I do wish OP would come back and tell us everything that happened after he got scooped.

Yes, but let's be fair. JD's point is that this guy heard the conversation before this hand went into play; the fact that he chose not to chime in and say:"No, this is Stud8, he's just messin with ya" says that he's absolutely at fault. Just because he may not be forced to make good on some of the loss, doesn't take away from the fact that he chose to sit there and be a db just like everyone else.

What comes around, goes around.



Actually, to be fair, I didn't see the part where OP said that he was certain that everyone at the table had heard the conversation he had with his friend. And, when the hand is over, I would have absolutely said to the guy who scooped me: "You heard Joe tell me that they took the qualifier out and you thought it was ok not to correct him?" (Pause) "Do you enjoy winning money like that?" I would hear what he had to say but more than likely he's not going to make good for anything because anyone who chose not to speak up in the first place, is less likely to all of a sudden have a conscience. But, I'd wait for an answer. I'd actually demand an answer. Then, I'd ask the rest of the table why they chose not to speak up, however, you'd be surprised that, even though OP says that everyone heard his conversation, it's not necessarily true that they did and it's a bit difficult to prove, but, I'd go ahead and ask anyway, because, I'm likely to find out if they were lying just by their overall demeanor. After that, I'd call the Floor over; very quietly and without losing my cool. And, even if nothing came out of it, I'd still get some satisfaction from it.

If I were a spectator in the game and heard the conversation between OP and his friend, there would be ZERO doubt in my mind that I'd jump in and correct him before he put a single ante in front of him, but not before I told the friend: "That's pretty crappy of you."