game is 4/8 limit Omaha

5 players see the flop.

1st to act action is in question

there are 4 checks, dealer prepares to burn and turn, 1st player says i havent acted yet, i bet.

I am not in the hand, and wasn't paying 100% attention so I do not volunteer an opinion.

Floor rules a check, or series of checks, is not significant action player 1 can bet.

I feel player has obtained too much info, and had ample oppurtunity to protect his action.

What are peoples opinions here?

result: player 1 bets the nut blocker, still gets called by a weak flush.

Three checks is (significant) action. put out the turn.

agree with dinesh, most rooms say that significant action is 3 or more checks, however there are a few rooms that have different rules for what SA is and claim only if there is money put into pot as a bet or a raise is SA realized, I (and a bunch of others) do not like this rule but it is the rooms choice

Floor was wrong. Unless they have a nonstandard house rule.

Tell the floor that "Checking" is an available action, same as betting or raising would be, and, neither of these three actions trumps the other two regarding "significant action." Ask the floor if Player 1 has a possibile gain when he see's that the whole field has checked behind him; there lies your answer and what should've been his (correct) decision opposed to the uninformed answer that he spewed. Any room that states that chips have to be placed in the pot to warrant significant action is a room that knows little about the game.

Well, action is 3 checks, or 2 actions that include a non check, so they actually are a little different.

I love how non-scalable the floor's reasoning is. 99 checks followed by the dealer preparing to burn and turn? Doesn't matter — Player 1 wants to bet now.

Floor is a moron.

Checking is an action but you're correct that when determining 'significant action'(which is what we're trying to determine here) I should've said "with the exception of"...

OK, I was on my phone last night while posting, which I need to stop doing when I want to quote RRoP, because I end up ****ing it up.

In RRoP action occurs after the deal after 2 players make any action - call, check (a post), fold, or raise doesn't matter:
I know some rooms do use the "3 checks, or 2 including a non-check", but I guess I was wrong about it being in RRoP.

So partial apologies to Rush, but do note that this is the rule for determining whether there's been too much action to call a misdeal after the deal only.

In fact... this is the wrong rule to apply to this situation. The rule on protecting your action when people act behind you is that you have to call Time before 3 players have acted behind you:

In over 15 years of live play, I have only seen rulings like the one you posted. However I only play in AC, occasionally Parx, and NY home games, so that's a very limited perspective. I'm not saying it's the correct ruling, but it's the common one.

For argument's sake, I have also seen a row of people insta-checking while the first person to act is still looking at his cards. This doesn't leave enough time for the player to object until it's too late. It seems exploitable if you count these 3-4 checks as significant action. They'll do it every time they miss a flop.

The rule is that you may lose your chance to act. If it is instachecked behind you, or the dealer can see that you're looking at your cards while this is happening, he can try to stop the action and/or explain it to the floor. Moreover, floors aren't idiots. If it happens three hands in a row, they can tell the 3 bozos to ****ing cut it out or find themselves excused for the night, so it's not like it's infinitely exploitable.

Finally, the OP is talking about flop play. It's not like a player might not recheck their cards on the flop, but it's a lot less likely that this is what causes them to miss the action behind than it is pre-flop.

Most of the rooms around here go with the 3 checks or 2 seats acting when one of the 2 opens. There are certainly exceptions if the dealer believes that action moved too fast to correct.

One 'famous' ruling was when the floor deemed that a player in Seat 10 'would never angle like that' during a button straddle and the whole table had folded around to the B in Seat 9. B wanted SB hand declared dead but floor allowed SB to flat or fold, not raise. B was pissed and shoved a 50BB stack into SB's JJ and lost. The aftermath wasn't pretty. GL

Of interest is that RRoP actually doesn't specify what the penalty is for failing to protect your action. So it could be argued that "flat or fold" is the proper way to treat someone who did that, particularly when they are the SB and have money committed to the pot already so killing their hand adds insult to injury to an innocent mistake.

Yah, I just read through that myself. It states that the offending player loses their right to act, but flatting is an action. Murky waters for sure .. GL

Indeed. Checking is also an action, and I think fewer people would advocate killing a hand in EP who raised a stink after it checked through behind them.

It would be ideal if RRoP mentioned what the penalty was, but I don't know that there is consensus amongst players and floors about what the penalty should be either, so maybe that's putting the cart before the horse.

The TDA rules state:
So they at least mention that the floor rules how to treat the skipped hand, but there is no guidance (in the rule, or in the addendum) for how the floor should rule or even what factors to consider.

BTW, the TDA rules also call significant action 3 checks, or 2 actions including 1 that puts chips in the pot, so that must be what I was thinking of earlier.

FYI this rule has evolved over the years..... At one time, the standard definition of Significant Action was any 3 actions, or any 2 actions involving chips...