Is a player or dealer REQUIRED to announce all-in?

Situation which happened to me this past weekend. Final table of a MTT and I am first to act with 2BB which I bet but do not announce I am all-in and the dealer just announces my raise. One player calls and both blinds fold. Rainbow flop and we both check, rag card on turn and I say jokingly say all-in and to my surprise the other player mucks his cards.

This was a bar league game so no real money was involved and other player didn't care what happened, I just wonder if there is a requirement for a player or dealer to announce the all-in. The dealer did announce my bet of 2BB, just not the all-in.

I don't believe this is specifically addressed in TDA or RRoP, so it's really up to the policy of the home/bar/casino game that you're playing in.

That said, it's good practice and I believe most B&M dealers do it. It clarifies the action and speeds the game along. In my home games, I always ensure that someone announces "all-in." If the player doesn't do it and the dealer doesn't do it, then I do it.

At the very least, if the dealer didn't announce you all-in, you should have made sure everyone knew you were all-in or turned your hand face up once you were heads-up. You basically stole this pot as no one is able to muck once you have an all-in and a call.

It's good etiquette to announce it...and a dealer should announce it when they know you are....the problem is that players so often conceal or obfuscate the view of their chips that you can't tell for certain if a player is or is not all in when they are starting with a small stack.

why were you both checking when you didn't have any chips left. sounds shady on your part if i'm hearing the story correctly.

There is a rule that you must expose your hand when all players except one are all-in in a tournament. The penalty would be a warning/timeout. If I was TD and you said "check" when you knew you were all-in, I would treat this fairly harshly, because you are not being honest about the action, and that's not how poker is played.

The dealer should announce all-ins (and yes, casino dealers are trained to do so). The player is under no obligation to announce all-in when making a bet, nor to say anything at all. However, all chips must be plainly visible at all times, and the dealer will be confirming whether your bet is all-in.

I would deal with this -
Much more harshly.

If it was a very casual, joking type of game and someone folded to my joke I would stop everything right there and make sure he got his cards back.

This is not universal. I know many in the business who contend the dealer should not announce "all-in" (unless the player announces all-in) any more then the dealer should announce "He has $100 more".

In recent years it has become more common for casinos to use these all-in buttons and having dealers announce all-in.

My first thoughts were that all-ins should be announced by someone. I do think it's at least a way to distinguish those that may still have chips behind.

Checking when all-in should be reserved for when you are 100% positive that the other player and dealer know you are already all-in, your cards are face up and you are nudging the dealer to move along, in a friendly home game type environment.

With multiple players still left with action, a simple reminder that you are already AI is sufficient, if they are waiting for you to act.

Shame on you for angling a player to muck. Please send that player to my home games. Anyone who starts mucking without knowing the size of the bet is welcome at my table

Shame on that player for being clueless.

So yeah, my ADHD kicked in hard in my first response. I read the first line of the post and immediately started answering the question without reading the rest of the post.

OP, when you're all-in and action is closed in a tourney, you must table your hand:

When you don't do so, and then you check the flop, you're angling at best, cheating at worst. Expanding on what BigBlue said, shame on everybody in this situation. You for not tabling your hand and misrepresenting the action, Villain for not paying attention, and Dealer for not controlling the game as he should have.

So you "jokingly" checked, "jokingly" went all-in even though you had no chips, and then dragged the pot when your opponent mucked? Do you really not see an issue with this at all?

Yes the other player should have been paying attention but your behavior is incredibly scummy. If you did this at my home game you would never be invited back.

Technically yes, but in a free bar league you're lucky to have a dealer that knows what a burn card is.

Stop acting like a scumbag IMO.

Our homegame is cash NLH so All ins are not so common, but almost everyone announces it, and someone else will ask if they didn't say! Usually a very small stack will make kind of a joke of their all in move verbally!

I only make a casino trip occasionally , but the dealer seems to always announce an all in move and places a button. Guess other places differ

While I recognize and respect traditional methods, and I don't say anything in cash games, current tournament procedure is for the dealer to announce an all-in status.

I had a rather big hand late in a large buy-in tournament go very poorly because I did not do this. The player was cool about it, because he knew it was on him to pay attention, but I verified with the top people in charge of such things that it's the dealer's role to announce an all-in when it happens. Not total bet (nor how much more), just the fact that the player is all-in.

Thanks Schmendr1ck for identifying the correct ruling for this situation. The hands should have been turned over as there was no action to follow once I was all in against one other player. This was not an angle to win the pot as I never expected the other player to muck his hand.

FWIW, if I was a scumbag looking for every little angle to steal a pot, why on earth would I post a question about it here? It was a non-standard situation and I was curious as to what the proper ruling should have been. Even the WSOP has situations come up which have players scratching their heads about ruling.

You may not have intended to trick others, but you did do it. So it's not murder, but manslaughter.

The lesson to take away is that it doesn't really matter what you intend, especially not at a poker table. If your actions cause problems, no amount of "but I didn't mean to" will make the problems go away. By not making it clear you were all-in, and then saying "all-in" when it was impossible for you to make that bet, you obfuscated action.

Not declaring it on the original bet is fine, but then expecting everybody to have noticed when you said it later on, that's causing problems. Even if you didn't mean to do it, you could prevented it.

It's best not to joke about the action during betting rounds, for exactly this reason.