Hi guys, like to get your thoughts on this situation:

10/20 game, run in a casino (so prob no cheating), but one guy runs the game, makes the list (he's a big roulette player also, so the house let's him do it). I'm not a regular in this game, but once in a while can play when it's short handed.

Hand:
- 3 way pot, every body is really deep (10K or more), i have 8K
- i open UTG with AKK10 (with nut hearts) for 70, the game owner calls, now one super whale 3 bets on the button for 290, i call, the other guy calls, pot is 900
(i don't like to 4bet here oop, because once in a while even the bad guys have the goods, and then i play kings vs aces oop really deep)
- Flop is AK10, rainbow, 1 heart

-> Check-Call? Lead out and call a raise? Check-Fold anybody???
The whale's range is super wide, but the game owner knows what he's doing, so when i get raised here i could easily run into a made straight, blocking my full house outs completely, so i decide to check and call one bet

- it goes check check, now whale leads very small for 320, i call, no owner raises to 850, whale calls, i call
- Turn is another 10, now i have second nut full house, blocking quads and also blocking nut full house with one ace

- i check, owner checks, now whale asks the dealer how much is in the pot. Dealer says 2450 (wrong: it's 3450), but before i could correct him, whale already announces pot. Now i mention that's it's actually 1K more, the dealer says, yes, you are right, anounces the new number, now the whale doesn't want to bet pot anymore. Normally the pot anouncement would stand, but with the higher amount, but the floor together with the owner ("protecting" his whale) rule, that because of the dealer mistake the whale can make a new decision and he decides to check now (Crazy, i know, but what can i do) ... so it's check, check, check on turn

- River: J
I'm 95% sure i have the best hands now, so i decide to lead small for 1,2 K (get some value, or give him the opportunity to raise bigger just in case.
Now owner reraises full pot (would put me allin), whale thinks for a while then folds

Any chance i can lay that down? Only hand that beats me is AA for a higher boat, and since he was ok with helping the whale to check the turn (instead of betting), that makes it even stranger.

Thoughts?

Don't think we can fold here, sounds like the villain raising you here can mix it up and perhaps value raise worse - taking this line with bad aces is not crazy, just don't know enough about villain to say its correct.

Checking flop 100%.

Floor ruling also seems fine, its a sizeable error and player was not angling.

Thanks for answering Monikrazy.

1. Really, you think the floor ruling is fine? I mean, the guy clearly wants to bet the pot, and it's not double or triple wrong, it's like 30% ... interesting. I would have never ruled that way (agree though, that the guy wasn't angling)
2. Yeah, also ended up calling, same thought process ... and he did have bad aces in fact ;-(

Additional reasoning behind floor ruling:

First, the action was stopped before other players acted. If you called the 2.4k bet instead of pointing out the error floor can't unwind it anymore because the harm to players is too great. That and combination of action offered/accepted.

But in this case, when you give the whale the option to change the bet size - the only one who can be harmed is him, because he ends up giving away more information. Its not reasonable to hold him to his previous bet size based on bad information, because knowing the correct pot size is relevant to whatever strategy he chooses - betting the amount he chose previously may no longer be his preferred option. What the others players were going to do facing his bet is irrelevant.

So if you find yourself in a similar spot next time you might just want to call without speaking up.

This can also be important in spots where players bet more than the pot.

Floor ruling should be whale has to bet between 2.4k and 3.4k, allowing him to check is completely ridiculous after he announced full pot.

yeah, that's what i thought at first too, but i understand the logic behinds monikrazys argument.

anyway, good point is not to point it out (so not to "risk" the floor ruling i don't want) since i clearly beat the whale's hand

Gotta disagree with monikrazy here, that means whale can check and bet if informed of a different pot size.
Floor ruling ruled in favor of the whale because he is a whale. Honestly in this particular situation i would not have said anything because often the ruling in these private games will favor the fun player.

I think dealer being off by such a large amount is relevant - if it was only a couple hundred, you set up a bad precedent.

Here i think when op points out the difference, he has basically volunteereed a courtesy redo. This in itself is all ready not the ideal situation because his statement may influence the action in a spot when there is a third player.

I don't think a ruling to make existing bet stand, with the option to increase up to correct pot amount is awful - but its certainly on the fence. Player's effort to protect himself has basically been sabotaged by the dealer. So if the floor rules bet is binding he will both upset players and throw his dealer under the bus. While giving the player option to change his decision really does not harm anyone.

And while fun players do get some leeway, floor did not do anything improper.

Typically for mid-stakes and higher games players mostly self-enforce on how to best navigate these types of gray situation. Floor is mostly reserved when players can't resolve it amiable on their own.

I don't play in stakes these deep (5-5-10 normally), so maybe things are different at these high-stakes levels, but shouldn't that be a bet-fold on the river?

I get that there is a lot of weird dynamics going on with the dealer error, but it seems like the entirety of the hand was to target the whale. When you bet the river and get raised, what could owner possibly have?

It doesn't make sense to bluff here when you lead the river; only holding I can possibly think of to do that with is A-10 (blocks the quads and Aces as well, so can rep either). It's 3-bet PRE with super-deep stacks, so no one is bluffing their stack off on that river with that board without an incredible read + specific holding.

In hindsight it was actually pretty sneaky what the owner did by having the floor help the whale save his turn bet - made him look super under-repped (like he was the guy with QJ trying to keep the pot from bloating).

If the turn bet had stood wouldn't you have gotten stacked in that instance as well? I take it you would have flatted the turn if the bet stood and then the owner would have as well, in which case the pot is like $14K and we only have $3K back, so don't see how we are getting out of this spot regardless.

Strangely that mistake actually gave a chance to not get stacked, but maybe it's inevitable based on the holding/dynamics/run-out.

Yep, he "tricked" me good ... arguing for the whale not to be forced to bet convinced me he couldn't have Aces here

In Hindsight, with a little more thought into it ... what could he be raising me with?
He knows im a tight player, so i actually should have been able to lay it down.

Well played by him, bad play by me.

Don't like your river play. I would have bet 2/3 pot to get value from all other houses, and would easily fold to reraise because of size of my bet.

When you bet small on river, you are inducing a lot of bluffs and thin value raises. You should only bet small on river polarized w nuts and thin value (that can easily fold to raise).

JJ or one of many other full houses

Hard to find a fold with A and T blocker, the block bet induces bluffs and possibly worse hands to raise for value.

Also i think i 4bet pre vs a whale that 3bets anything 400bb deep, u wanna get some money in and we can easily fold to 5bet by owner

get the point, but still:
The fact that owner knows my game and still raises me should ring alarm bells

to the 4bet pre:
don't like it. im sure im getting called in 2 spots, and then im playing oop still very deep in a 3 way pot (in case im not getting a 5bet by owner) with my cards basically face up (aa or akk)

If u have a lot of personal history with owner and ur 100% sure that he has AA then yeah fold but dont make thread about it lol.

As for the 4bet to each his own, you dont wanna play face up so your just 4betting disguised hands like 5678ds or you dont have a 4betting range at all here?

Well, i made a threat because i found the whole situation interesting and wanted some input ... nobody is forced to answer ... lol

I can't get behind letting him check.

Yep, same here.
Had a discussion with a friendly floor man from another casino in the meantime, same reaction: Can't be right.

Only explanation: Whale is a really "big whale", and game owner very close to casino, so they wanted to do everything to keep the whale happy.

What exactly is it that the owner knows about your game?

Your argument about owner knows you makes no sense. You say he knows you're tight, then it would be so easy to bluff raise you in this spot. And if he knows you're loose, then easy to raise for value with many hands. Point is if he knows you, then you cannot win.

I can understand being wary of playing OOP with this hand, but as noted by Joe-exotic69 if you aren't 4-betting hands like this at all then you don't have a 4-betting range that doesn't include AA.

This means your ranges become incredibly capped; we need to be willing to 4-bet sometimes with hands like double-suited wraps, double suited KK, double suited double pairs (i.e. 6677 or 4455) in order to keep opponents on their toes about what we are capable of playing.

If you had 4-bet pre I think it would've been a bet of $870 I believe; if the owner wants to 5-bet it's then like $2600 and we can fold knowing that he only does that with AA and we only lose the $870. Maybe he flats the 4-bet and that flop hits and we get stacked anyways, but it just gives you more clarity on where you are at in the hand.

As we ended up playing it we had to put in $850 on the flop anyways when we could've been against both QJ and AA anyways (with Whale having AA and Owner having the QJ) - did you think you are ahead at that time on the flop?

Feels like one of them has to have QJ, so if we don't fill up on the turn are we check-folding and there are only 6 outs for us to do that (at most - could be more blockers out there with the 3-bet and 3 players calling).

As played though river is a clear bet-fold or check-call (maybe JJ or A-10 will bet sometimes if it's checked, don't know the players so can't be sure). You basically have a bluff-catcher as sick as that sounds with Kings full; you block all the made hands that should be betting that river (AA/KK/1010), so the questions becomes:

A) Will I get A10/JJ to call a river lead?
B) Will A10/JJ bet that river ever if checked to?
C) Will I ever get bluffed here on a river lead? i.e. are these guys capable of putting in the most insane multiple level bluffs with super-capped ranges on the most disgusting board possible (with crazy dealer error to confuse things further)?

From the sound of it:

A) Sometimes
B) Sometimes
C) Doubtful

Good analysis Socratic, agree with most of it, just wanna add 2 things:
a) Of course my 4bet range pro is wider, but i'd rather do it with a ds rundown of any kind then with akk10, because those hands are more easily playable after the flop, and when i get reraised, i don't have to fold, because my hand plays well against aces.
b) as i said, mostly agree with your analysis, i guess the discussion about the whale being able to fold and the owner's reaction to that influenced me too much during the hand

ps: thx for all your comments guys, really good input

Good thread.

You gotta 4b with the fish as bad as he is. The fact that you think your range is face-up is mitigated by the fact you don't actually have AA, the fact that you're blocking AA means you're less likely to be up against it yourself and have to fold, and you're nutted with good broadway potential. You should also be 4betting other strong A-high hands and the occasional high rundown like KQJ9ds.

The river is murky as hell but there's enough going on to have me find the call button. It's a confusing play by the owner and the old axiom in poker is that when you're confused by someone's line, look them up. Between the flat pre, the flop raise, the turn check, the vocal desire to have the fish put less money in the pot, and the fact your range is wide as hell to get to this point, outweighs the fact that not that many people bluffraise the river. So I call and reasonably quickly. I think there's a high chance he's raising worse for value or playing a blocker hand like QQJT or the like.

With regards to the ruling, the casino's interests (and ours, in the long-term) is protecting the money of losing players. There's a grey area here, in the sense that if the dealer was off by $10k, I doubt anyone would argue that he's compelled to put his entire stack in because of a dealer error, but if he was $100 out, there's a good argument he should have to put the extra $100 in. If the pot was in fact $10k, I would damn well like the option not to go all-in or even bet at all, because it's much less likely people will fold. So the question is, at what $ amount does the floor rule one way or the other? We need to allow the floor a certain amount of leeway and discretion and I'm entirely comfortable with them making different decisions based on whether you're a pro or an amateur, as long as it's seen to be reasonably consistent and fair, but the point is that this situation is going to be inherently unfair on someone, and we should extend favours to losing players, because they're our bread and butter and we want them to come back.

imo whale gets to choose between betting 2450 and 3450

4bet pre, if your hand is that faceup that means you're a bad nit and you need to study 4bet ranges to ensure proper board coverage. If you're uncomfortable playing deep oop, again, that means you're a bad nit

can comfortably fold to the 5b pre