Now that I think about it, maybe we are all just getting trolled. That is the only thing that would save this thread and actually make it interesting, lol.

I understand why someone might ask if a player is allowed to bring all those chips into the game. But that is very different from questioning whether chips on the table play.

Major problem at the Wynn everyday then, nobody pays attention to buy in limit and nobody cares.

FWIW ... there is at least 1 Las Vegas poker room whose $1-$3 NL game max buy-in is uncapped.

There is no reason to ask if a stack or rack is in play, this is no limit so its implied. In the rooms I play the floor wouldve required the stack be in play if he lost, invalid stack or not. This thread is stupid if the op didnt even have a deep stack. Very stupid to not take the 50 credit.

Lol...absolutely no reason? Just wait until you play at a different room with a different policy, and you will find yourself in a pot vs. someone who you thought had 200 bbs, but now only has 20 bb.

There is no harm in asking. I always ask people at my table if there is something a little different happening (ie, someone playing out of a rack, someone brings a black chip to a 1/2 table, etc).

If you want to not ask, and hope the rules regarding racks are enforced properly (assuming you know the particular rules for the particular room), then so be it. I am going to take 5 seconds to ask.

Name one room where the official policy is you can keep chips on the table that aren't in play.

Obviously you always risk a bad ruling like in the OP but I doubt there is any legitimate poker room where the rules say a player can keep chips on the table that aren't in play (don't bother telling me about using a single foreign chip as a card protector).



Sure you can go through life with that attitude but just how stupid do you want to be. You can walk into the post office and ask "is this the Post office" because there is no harm in asking but let me ask you is there any benefit in asking? To make sure you didn't walk into a replica post office made as a movie set?

Its not a rule about racks its a rule about chips on a table.

Just out of curiosity are you going to ask about everything?

A player acting in turn bets by putting out 5 $5 chips in the betting area.

"Dealer .... does putting chips in the betting area consitute a bet?"
"Dealer .... Are those $5 chips in play?"
"Dealer .... if I call the bet will he be allowed to change hs mind and take it back?"
"Dealer .... If I call the bet will there be a river card or are we stopping at the turn?"


Now I'm not saying there aren't any circumstances where a player may legitimately have a question about whether chips at a table are in play. But They would be very specific circumstances....

Suppose a player pulls out a bill as the dealer is dealing out the hand ... and you aren't sure about whether or not it was taken out early enough to be in play ... and maybe the dealer missed it. Thats a legitimate circumstance to ask about.

Your in a casino you haven't been in before and you don't know whether bills play. There is one player who has a single bill sticking out from behind his chips .... Hey go ahead and ask "do bills play." because maybe the dealer didn't notice the bill.

But if at this table most of the players have multiple bills clearly visible in their stacks ... there is no reason to ask "do bills play?"

Well this is the problem.

When somebody brings more than the maximum buy-in to the table I always ask if they came from a broken game and verify that it is the same game (like a 2/5 NL broken game would be no good if I am playing at a 1/2 NL --- which has happened).

Its not that I think the player is not playing a stack or rack. Its that there is a buy-in limitation that may be violated. And the extra rack is not allowed on the table.

For a player to place a rack down in a NL game and think it doesn't play is lol. If I was the Floor and the guy was all in and then claimed it didn't play I would rule it did play because it was accepted by all the other players and dealer without challenge.

This is a very different question. I have no issue with a player asking this when the new player comes to the table with what would otherwise not be a legal buy-in.

As a player I don't ask because I don't care but I don't think its absurd for people who care about it to ask at the time the player takes his seat. Not hours later.

This is exactly what I meant when I said I would causally ask ( if a large stack or rack was being introduced) if it was all in play. NOT much later like in the rather silly OP. Sorry for the confusion

But I think that the wording here is an issue. If I sit down and place $800 down in the game which has a $300 max buyin and you ask me or the dealer if I am coming from another game or if I'm allowed to bring in $800 --- that is the question I think is reasonable.

You might think they are the same question but I think you must preform a mental gymnastic routine to get from one to the other, I don't want to sound like I am insulting anyone here. thats not the point. I am just saying the direct question is a better question for you to ask because I am going to answer the direct question ... I have no idea you wanted a different question answered.

I'd like to hear about how the floor should actually handle this situation.

Seems clear to me that the money is in play if it was on the table at the start of a hand, but what happens after?

Should the floor force and/or allow the player to remove the chips from play?
Seems to me after some period of time those chips should stay in play. Does it matter if the chips were actually used(say he started with $800 and doubled to $1600)?

I think the money has to play for this hand. After the hand:

1) First the floor should make a determination whether this was done intentionally by a player who knows he wasn;t allowed to bring it all in. And if that is the case the player should be invited to leave (and I would be inclined to restrict them in the future)

2) If not then I think the circumstances of the game wshould be viewed as to whether the the money comes off now. How long has it played. How big are other stacks. How has his stac k size changed.

3) I think the decision should be case by case. I don;t like the idea of telling players that if they violate the buyin rules and play X number of hands that they get to get continue with the violation., but I don;t like the idea that after a long time they get to take money off and change the game dynamic.

Why do $100/$200 players get free food? Why do most casinos put $100/$200 players in areas that have more room and plusher seats? It seems to me that casinos spend more money trying to attract and please $100/$200 players than they do $1/$2 players. There has to be a reason for that -- and that reason has to include $$ which equates to value.

I have only played in 2 poker rooms in my short live poker career. I feel like I have seen people play out of a rack less than 10 times. If I saw someone playing out of a rack, I would confirm with that player or the dealer if that money plays, solely because I wasn't sure. I have also seen a ton of situations described on B&M where rules vary by room, so unless this is a standard rule, I would probably ask just to clarify.

I also have a vague recollection of a discussion between a player and a dealer trying to play out of a rack on the railing of the table, but that was probably a discussion of "rack must be on felt vs rack on railing"

If I walk into a post office, and it seems like a post office, I usually won't ask if it's a post office. If there is a director in the background, a bright light on top of me, and the person I'm talking to gives me a witty response followed by a cued studio audience laugh, I may indeed ask if this is a post office, just to clarify. If they say that it is a movie set, but they wouldn't mind mailing my envelope anyways, I might take them up on that offer.

To address the other part, I don't care how stupid anybody else at the table thinks I am. If there is a piece of information that I feel like I need to clarify in order to help my decision making process before I am about to risk my hard-earned money (ie, my opponent's effective chip stack), I am going to ask, regardless of how stupid my opponents think I am by asking.

No, I won't ask about these. These all seem like pretty mundane questions, and nothing seems too out of the ordinary for me to clarify anything. Hopefully that satisfies your curiosity.

Indeed. I have been at a 1/2 table where a player sits down with 7 physical chips (<-- Not ordinary, right?). Upon further review, I've noticed that he has a couple black chips. Is it bad to ask him how much he is playing, or at least how many black chips he has? (I don't care about whether you think it is bad or not, because I would probably ask anyways, just curious about what your opinion is on it).

No, I probably would not ask if bills play. However, I might end up asking people "How many bills do you have there?" if I get into a pot with them and I feel like the info would be relevant

I would 100% of the time if the player joins the table while I'm sitting there.

"Is that in play?" 4 words that would have saved a tonne of trouble for every body including the casino.

In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, if I'm coming to a table and I see chips racked along with a another smaller stack outside a rack. I'm asking "Is that in play?" at that point too.

If the chips are unracked, I think that's self-explanatory but racked chips are an unknown constant that I want clarified.

I understand that there are places where players aren't allowed to have racks on the table. And in many if not most places where racks are allowed on the table players aren't supposed to play out of the rack. I understand when someone doesn;t know what our house rule about this is.... But whether you are allowed to have a rack on the table is irrelevant to whether chips play.

If racks aren't allowed on the table and you sit down with a rack of chips. What happens is you are told that you need to take the chips out of the rack. they don;t let you sit with the rack of chips but tell you the chips don't play.

You are confusing two entirely different issues.


And that is my point. Chips on the table are in play is a mundane question.

No I don't think asking that is out of line. Because its obvious that you aren;t able to tell the denominations and number of chips he has. Suppose he tells you he has $245 does it really make sense to you that you should follow up with "and how much of that are you playing?"

I'm not saying that asking a question about a house rule like "whether black chips play" is a bad thing. Maybe you want to know because you want to know whether you can color up to black chips. Or maybe you think the dealer might have missed the fact that a player brought out a black chip. (this I think would be a bad question if there were a ton of black chips on the table)

What I am saying is that there are basic rules of poker which players should not have to ask about and whether chips on the table are in play is one of them (barring special circumstances).

And if you do ask this question it is rather bizarre because it is self evident.

Again you make my point. The fact that the bills play is self evident. How many bills he has is not.

Have you ever played in a poker room where the rule is that you can keep out of play chips on the table?

On what planet?

I knew 100-200 regs all had private jets, but interplanetary private jets?! That game really is too rich for my blood.

Psandman, you have >11k posts and you have your occupation listed as dealer. Safe to assume that you spend a lot of time around the live poker tables. What is considered "basic" or commonplace to you, may be new to others.

I had played many sessions before encountering someone playing out of a rack. In that moment, that is foreign to me. (and I'm assuming, many others who aren't playing a ton of hours).

I know that in your previous response to me, you equated someone playing out of a rack on the same occurrance level of someone betting chips over the betting line, or the river card being dealt after the turn card. I think we both can agree that the frequencies of these events aren't equal.

Bottom line: if something is new/interesting/speculative to me; I am going to ask about it. It's gonna take 3 seconds. "Are those chips in the rack at play?" "Yep." "Okay."

OP: Have you tried pulling the stick out of your ass?

It just amazes me that everybody is hung up on the rack. I fully understand that some of you never saw a player allowed to keep a rack on the table. I get that. I really do. The part I don't get is why you think the rack is relevant to whether the chips are in play. Why is that the question you would ask .... instead of "Hey, are we allowed to have racks on the table?" or even "Hey does it mean something that he has his chips in a rack?" I deal with people all the time who aren't used to racks on the table. They ask me about it. Sometimes they even complain to me that I would allow such a horrible thing to happen.... But i still haven't had a player indicate to me that he was confused and thought that chips in the rack were out of play.


Could the OPs situation have happened without a rack? Sure the rack makes it easy for him to say these chips here are different somehow from the other chips over there .... but could that have occurred without a rack? could he have put a bunch of chips off to one side. And then later said ... "hey no those chips aren;t in play..... Those were the chips I had that were over the buy-in" The rack is just something that makes it more convenient.

Now if he put those chips off to the side ..... you might reasonably ask ... who do those belong to ... because you aren't certain whether they are his or the next player over's. But you would expect that they were in play.

Instead of voicing your concerns on this forum, because you want attention like a baby needs his bottle, why don't you just contact the NGCB and file a complaint and handle the issue like an adult?

Bad ruling. No damage. Bad decision to pass on the free buffet.