I differentiate an intentional mistake someone makes while playing from a clearly unintentional mistake. An example of an intentional mistake would be an ill-advised bluff or ambitious call. These are errors in judgement. An example of an unintentional mistake would be accidentally raising because two chips stuck together. That's just an accident.

There have been plenty of occasions when I could clearly see someone thought they were calling off a single bet, not realizing another player had put in a raise, and I had no issue with the person who made the mistake being allowed to take back their bet instead of forcing them to leave their bet and fold or complete the bet to call the raise, even knowing I had the nuts, and that I stood to benefit if they were forced to leave their chips in the pot.

After I misread the board, every player at the table and everyone I told about it said something like, "we've all done that - misread our hand, or the board." The consensus seems to be that the risk of making an unintentional mistake is baked into the game.

I agree that every player should focus enough to know their hole cards and the cards on board, and pay attention to the action and how much they're betting. I wouldn't expect anyone to give anyone else their last bet back in most situations, even when the opponent clearly made an unintentional mistake. I admire anyone who would give their opponent their last bet back.

But when someone clearly meant to call instead of raising, or clearly mis-read the board or their hand, the money won from these opponents isn't the same as the money won when they meant to raise, or knew their hand strength.

It seems overly arbitrary to draw an ethical distinction between keeping a bet someone didn't intend to make and keeping an extra $100 someone didn't realize they were handing you.

for starters, theres no room for ambiguity or angling when people hand you too much money. i mean use common sense in the actual situation. if you're in a private game or whatever obviously the other person is going to get some consideration. in a random casino game, things like handling your chips and reading the board are a part of the skill of the game. if i made a similar mistake it would never occur to me to ask for leniency and it shouldn't to you either. if the argument is i'm more experienced than an amatuer so i use the elite pro maneuver of double checking my hand before putting in big bets idk what to say. the game is literally about taking each others money.

A lot of players say "I misread my hand" when they get caught bluffing.

I wouldn't expect anyone to give my money back if I made that mistake. The other player would have to have a disability or be a complete donkey in order for me to return any of their money. If it's some old guy squinting at the board every hand, maybe.

You quoted me and wrote 6 paragraphs and somehow didnt respond to my point, serious word vomit. Brevity is the soul of wit.

Your reading comprehension is lacking. I did respond to your point.

It's fallacious to say someone can't use the extra $100 I handed them to bluff me. Of course they can, if they convert it to $100 in chips and put them in play.

Handing someone too much cash when two bills stick together is only different from putting too much money into the pot because two chips stuck together in that our conscience only compels us to respond ethically in the former scenario, not the latter. It's ethically hypocritical.

Why do we expect someone to be more careful with chips than paper bills?

An unintentional mistake is different than a deliberate decision which turns out to be a mistake. Yet the consensus among most players is that the risk of unintentional mistakes is baked into the game. We seem to view someone mishandling chips or misreading the board as equivalent to someone over-playing their hand or making an ill-advised bluff, when there's a clear difference of intent.

I really can't stress enough that I'm not advocating for a change in people's actions. Of course I don't expect everyone to give back another player's bet in these scenarios. I was simply curious if my own experience was the norm, and to see how people rationalized the conditional ethics.

I would only do that if I know they have an eye problem or they're handicapped in some other fashion.

I misread the board a couple days ago, thought I had the nut straight (broadway) and was able to gii otr, and while the guy was tanking, the king all of a sudden because a jack to pair the board but luckily he folded. I have a bad eye problem, and I was sitting in seat one and still misread it so I can understand how it can happen but if he called me I would never try to ask him for the money back but that's just me.

What a terrible example.

Agreed. Not a clue who Bart Hansen is but he sounds stupid.

Op is salty that he didnt get his money back when he misread the board. Btw the way you described yourself in that post is hilarious, putting yourself on a pedestal much?

Hey funny story:

I thought i had AcQcxx on KsJs8c Tc4c
In plo and jammed for 2k

The guy folds KcJcxx

But i actually had AsQcxx i misread my hand, should i give the guy back 2k because i misread my hand and he made a good fold? Lmao

Are you trying to have a logical discussion on the merits or just arguing to argue? What a waste of time this comment was. This is the last time im gonna say this: if a guy bets $100 on the river, i might fold my hand.

I dont know if youre trolling me, stupid, or just have a seriously bad case of devils advocate syndrome, but you should be ashamed of this comment.

OP was NOT about someone accidentally dropping too many chips into the pot. Youre moving the goalpoasts.

Lumping in “mishandling chips” with “misreading the board” is referred to as a “motte and Bailey fallacy”. Any time someone challenges your ridiculous position that we hand back someones bluff, you fall back to a much more easy to defend position that you try and conflate with the stupid position you took.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

sure, and maybe the NFL can take touchdowns off the board if a defender slips and falls. Poker is capitalizing on others poor play, misreading anything is bad play, not my problem, I'm there to win money.

I think there are a few spots where it's better for everyone if a player gets their money back.


Two big ones that come up fairly frequently:

New to live game player sits down UTG and dealer ask him to post, but player doesn't understand he can just wait a single hand. This is esp. bad if the player comes in the SB and buys the button but doesn't realize it'd be free to come in the next hand in the CO.

Action goes: P1 bet or check, P2 small raise, P3 3bets but in a way that isn't obvious to P1 (Eg. uses denominations that look like a call, or 1 vs 9 seat), P1 looks around and wants to call P2 raise closing the action but is forced (maybe) to call P3s bet.


Almost always I see the player get screwed in the first example, unless someone gives him the money back, which is terrible because it causes so much ill will for so little benefit to everyone else (I've given people their money back when I wasn't in the hand before, and now I try to speak up to stop it from happening) ... the second is closer to 50/50 on dealer/floor rulings, but IMNSHO it's always better to have people not taking 5x as long for every action and paying 100% attention just so they don't accidentally miss something if they've got burnt by this.


There are probably other examples where it's just obvious it's not an angle and it happens very infrequently but if you don't give the money back it makes the game worse.

Not reading the board correctly, or not remembering your cards are not it though. I must have torched 1000s of BB doing both, and I check my cards a stupid amount of times now ... but life sucks.
I have also bluffed people when I was 100% sure I had it, but I did not have it ... and I happily kept the chips.

I was never salty. Never asked for my money back. Never expected my opponent to offer it. I said I wasn't sure if I'd even take it back, had he offered. I could not have been more clear that I haven't been advocating for everyone to view the situation differently.

In fact, I said I'd been on both sides of the situation, more than once, and only ever tried to give someone back their money once. I said I wasn't trying to throw shade at anyone, and I admired anyone who would give someone back their bet.

How would you describe yourself? Total scumbag? Somehow I doubt you'd be too critical in your self description. If you asked all the regs who play in the rooms I play in, they'd describe me the same way I described myself - friendly reg who gets along with everyone, gives action, and isn't known for being cutthroat or scummy. How is that putting myself up on a pedestal?

I asked a simple hypothetical question - if it was clear someone made an unintentional mistake which accrued to your benefit, would you ever give them back their money? I wasn't expecting many, if any people to say they would give it back.

The point isn't to scold the poker community for a lack of ethics, it was to see how we rationalize the ethical boundaries which seem to exist around the table.

I'm not trolling you. And I'm pretty sure I'm not stupid. It's possible I have a tendency to play devil's advocate, though I'm not sure if that's the case here, nor do I think I need to be ashamed of anything I've said.

I don't see why someone who didn't realize two bills stuck together should be given their money back, but someone who didn't realize two chips were stuck together shouldn't be, in MORAL terms.

Of course I get that within the boundaries of the poker table, there are rules in place to prevent angling and protect the integrity of the game. But the rules don't prohibit us from voluntarily giving someone back their money when it was clear they made an unintentional mistake.

Misreading our hand or the board may be functionally different than mis-handling chips, but it isn't different in terms of intent or the morality of the situation. So, no, I'm not moving the goalposts. I was only trying to simplify the topic for those who couldn't see the point was about intent.

It wasn't simply the things I've seen at the table which prompted me to ask the question in the OP. It was also the ongoing saga/drama of Tom Dwan's alleged debts to other gamblers, specifically Haralabos Voulgaris.

My understanding of that story is that Voulgaris asked Dwan to place sports bets on his behalf, with a specific bookmaker, because the bookmaker wouldn't take action from Voulgaris. I see people advocating the position that Dwan should rightly pay Voulgaris for the bets that were placed and won. But I don't see anyone suggesting Voulgaris did anything wrong by concocting a scheme to deceive the bookmaker, or that Voulgaris should have known better than to use a degen like Dwan as a front-man.

I just find it interesting that often our sense of ethics is conditional. The guy I bought chips from gave me back my $100, but the OMC who scooped a huge pot thanks to one idiot who mistakenly tosses in $205 when he clearly meant to just call $15 only gave that guy back $100 of the extra $190 he didn't mean to put into the pot.

I know, I know, you don't see the two situations as being functionally equivalent. I think you're wrong, but that seems to be the foundation of the consensus opinion - cash mistakenly changing hands is different than chips mistakenly changing hands, because our ethics stop at the betting line.

If someone says I bet two hundred and throws 2 blacks and 4 greens out then they get to take the extra black, that got stuck, back ... if nobody else notices and you notice and scoop the extra black, you should give it back. I feel like most/all of the thread would agree with this.
All the other examples you gave are not the same (Eg. I've won at least one pot because an extra green got stuck so my preflop 3bet was significantly bigger than intended).

This is what you wrote about yourself, when i first read it and didnt know you were talking about yourself i thought you were in love with the guy.