Hand 1: Seat 4 (CO) raises, Seat 5 (BTN) folds, Seat 6 vacant, Seat 7 (SB) folds, Seat 8 (BB) folds.

Hand 2: Seat 6 returns and wants a hand. Dealer does not move the button and tells him to buy the button. Seats 7 and 8 don't notice. Seat 5 does not notice or doesn't say anything. The entire hand transpires.

Hand 3: Button is moved to Seat 6. Now Seats 7 and 8 notice they're posting the same blinds. Floor is called.

What's the ruling, what's the remedy?

Significant action occurred just play on . Whoever wins the hand usually gives the blinds back but don't have
To. If no1 put out blinds there
R no blinds that hand but that varies
On floor rulings. They legally can't make people put money in the pot that wasn't in at one point that hand though.

I'm not a fan if making 7 and 8 post double blinds if not absolutely necessary (especially seat 8) Saying "play on" is an easy ruling, but it doesn't make it fair.

I would rule that the button skips seat 6 and moves to seat 7. Assuming it's a 1-2 or 2-5 game, I would give seat 6 back his dead small blind from the last hand ($1 or $2) from the rack and apologize for the error.

Yes seat 6 gets a round without paying the SB, but that seems more fair than making the other guys pay twice.

I agree with that. Seat 6 should not have been allowed to buy the button. Button skips to 7. Refund the dead small and treat it like he posted instead of buying it.

I should have noted this is LHE so the blinds are actually very large relative to the action.

Refunding Seat 6's SB is an option, but then he is also denied the BTN. In a FR game the value of one BTN hand is much less than the value of the dead SB so it might be acceptable.

We had the same problem a few months ago in a lhe game. I ended up eating the bb twice to get the discussion over with.

Very curious what u guys did.

Seat 6 gave the BTN to Seat 7 and let the dealer and floorman off the hook, so we never got to know what the ruling would have been.

It's a shame that someone has to get screwed here, but seat 6 has to be the one to eat it. He tried to "buy the button" (with the help of the dealer), but buying the button from his position was impossible. He just bought an extra hand with seat 5 as the button again.

I wish there were more players like him.

Of course as a player returning to the table he is the one person who legitimately wouldn't have a basis to know that the button hadn't been moved.


But even if you don;t refund him his small blind .... he isn't really getting screwed all that much here. If the button had moved ....he still would have to post both blinds (dead small just the same). While he would have been in the CO for the hand he posted instead of first to act as he did and that is some disadvantage .... but on the other hand he does get an extra hand ....

(while he doesn't get the button ... he wouldn't have gotten the button if it had been done correctely)

I wish he either did it 1 minute faster so the floor would not have had to been called, or 10 seconds later so we could hear from the floor.

Ah. One of those. In that case, nevermind.