In those cases, you're better off taking the less aggressive action since a sweeping motion with a hand is not a clear indication of anything. In any case, he is lazy and got whatever possible consequences come out of it.




The warning will come and be quickly learned when he, in fact, is not allowed to go all-in because the words in question are nonsensical and the only chips that will be used are the ones he initially put in before he started stringing his bets.



But maybe you play or work in rooms where players use phrases from Hollywood movies while stringing their bets.






There are plenty more floors that appreciate dealers following and enforcing rules than those that let them slide in hopes in getting tipped extra.

haha you're insane if you think I don't play in rooms where players use lines from Hollywood movies. The posters here generally enjoy money.

What we don't like is floors who make up extra interpretations of phrases that literally nobody shares as a way of punishing the aforementioned recs and forcing a convoluted point about verbiage that literally nobody cares about. They just come off as grossly incompetent and desperate. But you do you!

It's the floor's job to enforce the rules in place. When you allow actions to stand based on assumptions, you open up a wide range of possible angle-shooting opportunities. Yes, everyone knows what he meant when he said what he said but that does not mean an action automatically stands. And sometimes you have to make a mistake and reap the repercussions for them in poker in order to learn one of the most important lessons in poker: Protecting your own action.

If you can come up with a second possible and reasonable interpretation of "shove-a-rooni" when said by a player who is acting in-turn by moving his chips into the pot and you can articulate why it is in the best interest of everyone that it be anything but an all-in with a warning not to do it again, we'd be eager to hear you out. Right now you come off as "rules is rules" incarnate.

This is the equivalent of "stop hitting yourself". The repercussions are artificial, created to teach the player a lesson about repercussions.

It's a philosophical argument, but I would argue that the floor's job is not to enforce the rules in place, it is to make rulings that are as fair as possible to all players.

One thing that helps narrow the gap between those two interpretations is that rule 1 is always some variant of "1. Management reserves the right to make decisions in the spirit of fairness, even if a strict interpretation of the rules may indicate a different ruling."

Bonus rule: "8. The same action may have a different meaning, depending on who does it, so the possible intent of an offender will be taken into consideration. Some factors here are the person’s amount of poker experience and past record."

It is irrelevant what the "possible and reasonable interpretations" are. It is a term that holds no meaning as far as the procedures of betting or raising in a casino setting are concerned. As already stated, understanding the intention of a player when they make an action is still irrelevant if they make a mistake in the process of performing the action. The table knows what a player means by the term "same bet" but many casinos will still not allow such terminology to be used and if the player throws in an oversized chip while stating it, there is a high likelihood he will be held to a bet for the entire amount. There are scenarios involving the one chip rule in which a person is obviously trying to raise when facing a bet but his actions force him to just call.

The OP stated a word that has no meaning in poker. Hell, people don't even say "shove" when referring to themselves as the person who is trying to push all-in. He could have protected his action by pushing all of his chips in at the same time but, as he stated, he didn't do that either. He has seemingly learned from his mistake and may be more careful in the future. You seem flustered by the fact that I am promoting enforcing the rules in place, which is sorta what the house is supposed to be doing to begin with.

Nobody has suggested that the rules should not be enforced. This just a variant of the age-old "spirit of the law" vs. "letter of the law" debate. In other words, most posters in this thread believe that the rules should not be interpreted in such a strict/draconian way so as to lead to results that are seen as unfair or absurd.

Your first argument (this allows angle-shooting) is your classic slippery-slope fallacy (hence my rock climbing joke). Granting leeway to a first-time offender with no evidence of malicious intent is a far cry from declaring it open season for angle-shooting. Clearly we can distinguish Mr. Ship-a-Rooni from an angle shooter.

Your second argument (the casino's job is to enforce the rules) begs the question of what the rules are and how those rules ought to be enforced.

Shove has no meaning?

If it's my action and I say "shove" am I committed to shove all my chips in?

Does "All-in-a-rooni" mean anything?

That is holding me up too. Context should only ever add or change meaning. It can never remove all meaning. Here, it is claimed that the context of a casino setting removes all meaning. Why then does everybody here know exactly what it means in that context?

Not sure if the "I get that" comment is sarcastic or not, but I actually do think that is true and I actually do get it.

When the ratio of poker watched on TV to poker played IRL is high, there's a really skewed sense of what is cool or not. Few shows bother televising hands that go fold fold fold fold raise fold fold fold fold. Few shows bother televising table talk about the weather. Basically every hand is people trash talking each other and going all-in for a million dollars.

When one hasn't played very much, jokes about "two pair - eights and eights lolololololol" are still funny. Pulling off your first big bluff gives you a huge rush and of course you want to show your hand and jump up on the table and point at your crotch vigorously. After a while, for better or for worse, we kind of lose that excitement. We forget exactly how many times we've made quads, and after we pull off a big bluff we're noting the hand so we can go home and sim the equity.

There's something to be said for acting like poker is still new and exciting and every hand is an epic battle that the bards will sing about.

Of course, being unclear just pisses everyone off.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't find saying "shove a rooni" all that bad. Or "all you can eat baby" or whatever else people want to say. Just push all your chips in at once.

Tldr: You have to do at least one of the two - either make a clear verbal declaration or make a clear action. Doing both is fine but I can understand people who think it gets boring.

OK. I verbalize to avoid misunderstandings of my intent. Still can happen, however, just cuts it way down.

If folks don't want to verbalize intent or say "wiity" table talk that can lead to misreading intent, I don't consider it outrageous or out of line. It sometimes leads to needless trouble and table delays and players need to realize that. When that happens I just wish they would make themselves clear in the first place so we can play on.

Saying "Kalamazoo" and pushing all your chips in would likely be ruled an AI most places , but likely there will be some few occasions where a player or even a dealer/floor might challange the intent. This is the silly delay that can/does occur , not to mention the small possibility of the player losing value or the hand.

"I get that" means I think I understand why some folks do this even if I think it is NOT cool. They mean no harm , but from time to time some harm can occur

+1

I am a poker child of the Moneymaker effect and played online for a long time before I ever stepped foot in a poker room so I have no idea what it was like prior to the boom in the early 2000's. I like to believe at some point, common sense and intent were more part of the game than the legalistic games of gotcha that seem to be en vogue now. I also play golf and it reminds me of those *******s who watch golf on TV, see some incredibly minor infraction that has no impact on the result nor was used to gain an advantage but they call in to make a big deal out of it and costs a player a victory.

I was playing a best-ball match a couple of months ago and my partner wasn't as versed on the rules as the rest of our group. He's helping me read a putt and, while holding his own putter upside down, he touches a spot on the green with the grip where he thinks I should aim, which is a violation of the rules. But he didn't tamp down any spike marks or in any way improve my lie. If he had hovered his club 1/8 of an inch above the ground, it would have been fine. One of my opponents starts huffing even as I am telling my partner he can't touch the intended putt line. He apologizes, clearly didn't know the rule, had no intent to alter the shot and his actions had zero impact on the shot but our opponent didn't want to let it go. He would have rather won the hole based on an honest mistake that had no impact than be satisfied that the offender learned a new rule.

This is an imperfect analogy but I think of blackjack dealers and their facilitation of low-stakes tables. It's nothing for them to take 5 seconds to clarify the intent of a player who does or says something ambiguous rather than attempt to divine intent and issue a ruling or stop the game to get someone else to issue judgement. The game moves along fine and everyone still has fun.

In this case:

"Shove-a-rooni!"

"Stop. Do you mean you are all in?"

"Yes."

"Player is all-in."

or

"No."

"Then since you have put chips in the pot, the bet is..."

P1: "I shove!" (or even "Shoove-A-Roony!")
P2: "I call!"
P1: "No, wait, I haven't acted yet. I check!" (and then folds to a bet) ...
I take it you'd automatically support P1 here.....?

The rules exist and should be enforced so as to produce a fair game, not for their own sake.
In cash games especially, non-standard terminology is sometimes used and may be enforced. Ambiguity may be held against the speaker, but may not always be.
Effective flooring requires the use of judgment, IME, and experienced and well-run rooms generally apply a healthy dose of common sense, in addition to using Rule 1, to discourage (rather than) reward angling (or "Gotcha"-playing by rules nits).

And exactly what cash game rule sets are you referring to, in which the only effective poker action terms are defined for us?

Quite true.
An awful lot of current players learned online, and I think that many of them would like to try to reproduce online's lack of ambiguity in live games.
First of all, no universally accepted set of poker rules for live cash games even exists. But even if one were written and accepted, it would still not eliminate every possible ambiguity in a live game played by human beings.
But the real problem with trying to eliminate ambiguity by rigidly adhering to all rules in every case, is that it tends to produce as least as much unfairness and/or angling (and IMO often more) than does the judicious application of common sense. This is why Rule 1 exists (as it should).

We agree. I mean the best scenario is people being aware of when's a good time to joke and when is a bad time.

Like one time (in LHE) UTG raised, UTG+1 3-bet, UTG+2 capped, and 6 calls lol. It's on me in the BB and I've got like 53o or 52o or something truly awful and a fellow 2p2er sees my indecision and starts yelling "DO IT!" and "ANY TWO!"

I mean yeah technically this is against the rules but it was funny as hell and when it's 10-way with $1,020 in the pot preflop with action pending, you are / should be allowed to break the rules a little.

I was witness to a massive argument playing 40 one time and learned that "take it to level three" is in fact not a verbally binding way to make it three bets in LHE. I was surprised that was the ruling, tbh.

-hf

In LHE there really is no excuse. If you put out +/- 38% the correct number of chips it gets rounded to exactly the correct number of chips.

The word used is irrelevant. The action by the player is the fact he pushed all of his chips in in one motion. No floor that I have ever come across would ever rule that as anything but an all-in if the player pushed all his chips in one motion. The issue in question in the OP is that he used was string betting in the process of trying to put his chips in.





During your hand, randomly say "shove" and see if a house would ever commit you to an all-in. Not really too difficult to figure out the answer to that question [Which is no, simply saying the word "shove" with no context is a non-committal statement.

That's simply not true for a large swath of rooms, if not the majority. The numbers skew even more if we limit it to the set of rooms that we agree to be legitimate or well-run. (Not to mention, there is context. You gave the context!)