Doesn't sound too crazy limper prob had aq, or high suited connects. Other guy prob laid down kk,qq

Going to be in Denver this evening and looking for a casino to play the closest thing to 1/2-5/5nl, looks like the games are spread limit though? Please advise on what casino I should head to? Also, is there any free or cheap transportation to the casinos from downtown?

Thanks
Andy

Please forgive me for this longish rant and for the steam still coming out of my ears ... Last night my girlfriend had a free room at the Ameristar so I made a rare Monday night foray up to Blackhawk. Probably due to the Broncos being on MNF, there was no 2-5 game going -- the only time I have ever been there when there was none. There was, however, a list and I was on it. Around 9pm they got the 2-5 game going ... took a little while to get a full table. Now on to my story:

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a straight-up honorable guy, kinda soft spoken, usually friendly, who doesn't complain about bad beats, etc. I get dealt Q-10s on the button. There are 3 or 4 limpers in front of me and I happily limp along for $5. Then the BB raises to $25. Two of the limpers call as do I. Flop comes QJJ rainbow (none of my suit). Checks around to me. I bet $65. I am listening to music and the BB starts counting out chips. When it's obvious that he is not calling, but rather reraising me -- since he was counting out $100 in front of him, I take out one of my earphones and ask the dealer "did he raise $100?" The next thing I know the BB is going all-in for a grand total of $275. Whoa!! The dealer then says it's $10 to me to call. What? I adamantly insist I never raised, and that I only *asked* if BB had raised. The BB (an Asian whose first language was obviously not English) apparently thought I had said "raise 100" instead of the question "did he raise 100?" The player on my left backed me up agreeing that she distinctly heard me ASK if the BB had raised 100. Didn't matter. The dealer said I raised and that was it. Of course I would have folded to a $100 raise (putting the BB on either a J or AA/KK -- turned out he had KJ) ... The floor was then called. By now I was really angry since they were doubting my word and the word of the player on my left. The floor came by and was obviously feeling awkward not having witnessed the proceedings. He backed the dealer. If I had not been so upset I should have just picked up my chips -- not paying the extra $200 -- and left. They might have banned me, but I was planning on never playing there again anyway. Instead I foolishly put the $210 in the pot. A few other players started rooting for me to spike a Q and counterfeit the BB's J. Of course that didn't happen. I picked up my remaining chips and stormed off, swearing to myself that I would never play at the Ameristar again.

What do you think I should have done? What would you have done? It occurred to me after I left that maybe the camera also picks up audio (but I doubt that). If so, they would have been able to clearly hear me ASK if the BB had raised to $100. I'm over it now. Too bad, 'cause I sure love to play against someone who raises 5xbb from the BB with KJo :=)

peace

This is limit holdem

mrnuxi-

Tough break. I can only say that poker players should make sure that there are action are as clear as possible so that others are less likely to mistake what your intentions are. I see people do things every day that could be enforced differently than their intentions.

It sounds like this is not the case in this situation though. I would definitely try my best to not accept the ruling. You could ask to speak to the absolute highest authority there and to speak to a gaming representative because you feel you are being stolen from.

If you are absolutely sure that you are never going back again... you could just refuse to give up your cards or put the money in the pot and see if they give in.

You did the worse thing possible by putting in the extra 200 dollars when you knew you were drawing dead or near dead.

I'm sure you're a nice guy, and I know the floor struggles to make good rulings in that casino all the time.

First, you did make the decision to play with headphones. Poker is a visual and auditory game. You implicitly accept a tradeoff when you shut off the latter and create your own soundtrack for the session. I've seen numerous situations where good people just like you get in situations that they could have avoided had they been listening.

Now that that's covered, I admit I find your narrative confusing. Why would you ask the dealer "if he raised $100" when villain is still "counting out chips"? If you asked in the middle of his action, that is weird and kind of jumpy on your part. If you are saying his action was complete but ambiguous, I fail to understand how that could be the case: either he put an extra 20 red chips out there and the dealer will now wait for you to act -- two very strong visual indicators of what is happening, certainly -- or he didn't, and the dealer will be bringing in the bets and dealing the turn card. Until you give us more information, I'm left to conclude that you pretty much spazzed out.

My confusion notwithstanding, this sounds like one of those situations where a considered response from the floor would take into account the very narrow opportunity for an angle shot on your part and the damning fact that you are (presumably, though you do not say) sitting there with your hands in your lap and no stacks of red chips pushed out to the betting area.

So my take on this? You almost certainly brought the situation upon yourself, inadvertently. And you got situationally unlucky with a dumb dealer and a crappy floor ruling.

Thanks for the comments, Neb. Let me try to address a couple of the things you pointed out ...

You are *absolutely* right that this would have never happened had I not made the decision to use headphones. So I will accept the blame for that.

To try and clear up your confusion: when the BB counted out $100 (IN THE POT), it became clear that he must have been reraising me. But his betting was not yet complete. It then became obvious that he must have made a verbal announcement of his raise (otherwise it would be a string bet). That is when I removed my headphones and asked the dealer if he had raised $100 (cause I was gonna fold in that case). Now whether he had said "raise 100" or just "raise", I don't know ....

I have frequently played with headphones, and realize that I miss a lot of the verbal interplay of the game. But I usually remove at least one of the headphones from my ear when I need to talk. Just this time everything went wrong. If I do play with them again (not at the Ameristar!), I will be very careful. Obviously I should have asked, "what is it to me?" instead of "did he raise $100", but hindsight is worthless now.

I see, now. Presumably in real life he stated "raise" but put the chips in in two passes. Without being able to hear the action, you wanted to verify what you observed.

In this case, I agree with your conclusion-in-hindsight very much. There are several easy ways to disambiguate your communication with the dealer/villain. Getting into the habit of saying something like, "sorry, what is the action?", will work in a plenitude of situations.

I think in this case you could have drawn this out with Gaming, waited a while, enjoyed considerable awkwardness at the table and with what is likely a poorly-managed chip quarantine process, and at the end had a small to medium chance of getting a better ruling. My experience is that Gaming is mostly incompetent w.r.t. poker. I do not believe the cameras capture audio. Your best bet might have been to continue to sit there, chips untouched, and ask how the action could be so far "ahead of you" when your two stacks of red are sitting tucked against the rail. (I am still assuming that they are tucked against the rail up until the point you decided to go ahead and commit them.)

At the end of the day you gave up about $200 in equity. Perhaps not too princely a sum for such a valuable set of lessons. I'm sorry it happened to you.

I was playing at a nearby table during this incident. There was some sympathy for you...

Probably about time I cleared up the confusion. $165 bet to you, you pull off your headphones and you say "raise"...Thats it!! You said there was inflection in your voice signaling a question. However if you just use proper English and state the question "did he re raise me" or "whats the action" or "how much is it to me". This confusion would never occur.

I played with Pete n he is by far a trustworthy Guy, I can see where the confusion is however.. for the dealer to be non leant is absurd, Pete said "did he raise"! How more blunt can he be, what's wrong with the dealer askin for clarification? Rather than being totally bias towards one player?

Clearing up the confusion, you say? Au contraire! You are absolutely, incontrovertibly WRONG. I specifically asked the QUESTION "did he raise 100?" If I had just said -- as you are claiming -- "raise", then I would have had to follow that up with an amount (either by putting more chips into the pot, or declaring the amount). How can you claim that I said just the single word "raise"? And who, may I ask, are you? Were you at the table or are you just pontificating without merit?

My last thought on this: if the tables were turned and I were the one who, after raising the max to $165, then thought my opponent had said raise when he in fact insisted he only asked whether I had raised 100, I would *never* take advantage of the situation and would let him fold if he wanted. Karma has a nasty way of smiting one's ass. How you comport yourself -- in poker and in life -- reflects directly on the kind of person you are.

Seems very fishy. However, if there wasn't a pattern of this going on I wouldn't rule out stupidity. I've seen lots of stupid stuff in BH. If they were going to collude via sandwiching, I would think they would do this post-flop. Getting one more bet out of the BB doesn't seem worth the effort. Perhaps though, they were just trying to grow the pot for SB's big hand? Again, tough to say without more details about your session and observations.

In isolation, I wouldn't involve the floor for this play. If this occurred post-flop in a big pot and the pre-flop limper pulled this and folded post-flop getting ridiculous odds...then I may tell the dealer, "don't muck that hand, I want the floor to check that hand." And then explain what occurred. The problem is, the one or two times that's happened, it hasn't occurred to me quickly enough. I'm usually in shock thinking WTF?

As an aside, I've seen dealers check a hand with no prompting from a player where something looked fishy.

1. You've acknowledged the headphones can be a problem, so enough said

2. I'm a quiet guy as well and I'm always careful when I ask questions to ask them loudly. So if I said: "Did he raise $100?" I would be darn sure I voiced the "Did he" part loudly. Or even better, I'll just say "What's the bet?" so nothing can be misconstrued.

3. I think the dealer made a mistake. In every casino, I've played at - if a dealer mishears or doesn't hear a verbal declaration but a player not in the hand confirms what the player in question is reporting he/she said, then the dealer accepts the word of the player not in the hand and action resumes on you having put $65 and you can fold, call or raise your opponent's total bet of $165. Play isn't stopped, and the floor is rarely called over. I've rarely seen that not work smoothly. I would be interested to know if there is an Ameristar house rule that clarifies what should be done if there is a discrepancy between a player and dealer on a verbal declaration.

4. I think the floor is in a tough spot. Was the dealer being adamant that you didn't ask a question? If so, I would expect the floor to rule as he/she did. If the dealer isn't sure and there is another player at the table stating they heard you ask it as a question, seems your verbal shouldn't be ruled a raise. It's just very unlikely that you and the player not in the hand are in cahoots trying to run an angle.

5. Another poster mentioned waiting for Gaming. I can't imagine Gaming gets involved in hand rulings such as this but I could be wrong. Anyone have solid info or stories confirming/denying?

Hey guys,
how is the action on Wednesdays in Blackhawk. I have my day off and would go later. Do they have 2+5 going, is it all regulars?

It's alright.. Plenty of regs, but also a variety of fish and degens.

It isn't a random stupid move. The two raisers are well known regulars. A couple of people at the table did say something to them about it but the floor was never called. This is more obvious because it was preflop. People can usually justify that they were just bluffing post flop and had nothing on the river. The preflop action here cannot be justified.

Gotcha. Sorry, thought you were throwing your original post out there as a question vs. venting.

I don't know about Wednesdays, but Thursdays Omaha at the gates is juicy. It started today at about 11:30 a.m.

So, that 2-5-100 Omaha 8 game is still going? I thought that it will die after they canceled bad beat for Omaha. What is the total rake 4$? I will check that game today cuz I am little bit tired of Ameristar's 5+2 rake

It was 5-10 limit with a kill for 10-20. Not exactly sure what the max rake is, but pretty sure it's 5 bucks. Let us know if you go.

I also stated a list for Omaha high and dealers choice, but no takers.

2/5 was going yesterday all day. There was a list for 1/2 high only but I don't know if it got going.

Does anybody know if we can use Ameristar comps towards hotel bill? I have 176$ on the card and booked hotel for the next weekend. Did anybody try what?

Suprisingly, I like 2-5 action better on weekdays than weekends. It looks like that on weekends all the rocks come out hoping to feed on the fish but all the fish are unable to get to the game because of the huge list. On a regular days it is so much easier for random players to sit down at the game, plus we have number of of duty dealers playing too.

Very true. I totally see where you're coming from in regards to the rocks come out on the weekends. Sometimes playing late, and I mean late nights can be interesting at the 2-5..