Hand goes to the river, I have TT on a JJT 5 2 board. I go all-in for $180 into a $250 pot.

V covers and goes into the tank for about a minute. He get's the full count twice.

V is sitting in seat 2 in a 8-max table so he has miles of real estate in front of him. His cards are well in front of his chips.

After he tanked enough, he pulls a $100 chip in one hand and a stack of 5s in another and swings them just in front of his cards and starts stacking the 5s.

There is an unofficial betting line but the room's rule is forward motion. With his seat position the betting line a long ways from the seat.

I table my hand, he looks at my cards and after a second or two says "I didn't call".

Floor is called, I'm pleading my case because the dealer is the worst one in the room and I don't trust her to have paid attention or state it clearly. Of course I am shut down and the dealer mostly gets it right. Floor asks if he moved chips in front of his cards and where they were. Floor rules no call.

One, is this the right ruling. Two, is there any chance V was not really intending on calling but stacking his chips to count them even though he had space behind his cards to do so. For the second question a short stack who was all-in on the flop had a T so it's an almost certainty V had a J.

It really depends on the room rules. If forward motion counts, then as you described it should be a call, chips released in front of cards that are already well beyond the usual card containment area for the seat. But the floor seems to have accepted those things as fact and still ruled no call for some reason, so either the floor sucks or the rule is something other than you think.

Having said that, there is no prize for acting fastest. Protect yourself from bad floor calls as best you can. Wait for the other player to finish their action before doing anything. Confirm the call if it's at all ambiguous. If anyone gives you **** about slow rolling, just tell them you got screwed out of a pot once by showing too fast. Sadly, in your case that is now true.

There is no point guessing at villains intent really. People do all sorts of strange things. Could be innocent, could be malice. Doesn't really matter.

Internalizing this solves a lot of problems.

No doubt I should have just waited until dealer said something so I am at least partially to blame. The long tank played a part of that.

As for ruling, floor's are people and people don't like making uncomfortable rulings that could cause more work. It probably seems easier psycologically to let the winner keep his pot and not try and force the other player to give up chips with the potential outcome if he refuses.

The quick call show hand can be an "angle" in this spot as well. Try to force opponent to call when they weren't calling.

I see lots of weird staging with chips and you just gotta wait through it.

Why turn over your hand without having a clear decision/make your own decision? Seems to me from your description he never meant to call, and you were trying to rules nit him into a call.

I have a hard time picturing where that unofficial betting line might be. The player has miles of real estate in front of him and also his chips have to be somewhere. The cards are "well in front of the chips" and he proceeds to stack chips in front of the cards. At that point we have to be at least 1.5-2 feet in front of the rail? Is that betting line in the center of the table?

I agree that if the only rule is forward motion that should be a call. Especially if the betting line is somewhere that people with shorter arms can't even reach without getting out of their seat.

But as always the biggest takeaway here is to not table your hand while your opponent is still working on his chips unless he verbalized a call and the dealer acknowledged that.

They changed the felt since this but the "betting line" is in a similar config. This table is configured for 9, when 8 max the 2 seat is literally at the end of the oval.

Thanks for sharing that picture. I'm glad the line is "unofficial" because IMO it shouldn't even be allowed to enforce a line that's so vastly different based on your seat at the table.

I remember MGM Grand in Vegas had similar shaped tables in the past designed for 10 players (no idea what they have these days). The combination of a dealer with short arms and a player with short arms in one of the two corner seats away from the dealer led to situations where at least one of the two always had to stand up and lean over to be able to maneuver chips to within the other persons reach.

Whether he was angling or not, you presenting him with the angle opportunity.

What does this mean?

He was tanking long enough to ask for a count, then ask again to confirm right before sliding his chips out.

Sounds like a bad ruling if the line is a courtesy line.

Have a talk with management? Cover your ass in the future?

Lots of good advice already posted.

I think it's a bad ruling. I think you will ask for confirmation to avoid a bad ruling next time.

Yes, there is a chance that they weren't going to call. They might have been attempting to get you to do exactly what you did, or just counting chips in a poorly chosen spot.

I played and dealt in that room for years, with every version of betting line, no betting line, hard betting line, courtesy line, forward motion, etc. Just one note, whether chips went in front of the cards or not was never a rule there as it is in some rooms. So players generally could play/stack chips in front of their cards without it being considered forward motion esp if their cards were kept close to the rail as most players do.

So most dealers would watch the elbows of the players. If you have chips in your hands, and your forearm extends forward from the elbow, that was considered forward motion. As OP describes it, it ws definitely forward motion by the rule.

However by snap calling before the dealer announces call and showdown, OP opens himself up to requiring a floor ruling. And once that happens, it exposes OP to an additional consideration. The floor has the right to rule against the technical reading of a rule if he believes it is in the best interest of fairness. So the floor is open to take things like experience level of player, player intent, etc. IOW a floor could, for example, rule one way for a player in a poker room for the first time versus if the guy was a reg who often angleshoots.

So while it may be a "bad" ruling from a technical standpoint, once a floor is involved the decision becomes a judgement call. Thats why it is so important, as others have said, to NEVER expose your cards prior to the dealer announcing call and showdown. That keeps the call out of the hands of the floor in the first place.

Each room may have it's own variations on these spots for sure. But for the most part in our area this would be considered a Player 'assembling' their bet before moving it forward (with release). How far is far enough? Subjective. Angle? Subjective. Different Floor, different Ruling? Certainly.

As with multiple other spots in poker we do end up just saying 'slow down' and protect your action.

The latest trend in 'Player friendly' betting? One that we've already had a couple threads about is when a Player verbalizes one thing while clearly cutting out chips in the betting area. 'First completed action' is the key phrase. And since the Player has not completed the cutting of chips then the verbal statement is considered their action .. with a few exceptions for sure, like trying to make the bet smaller than what's already cut.

This is way more prevalent in PLO .. a Player will bring out a stack of chips for a supposed bet or call and then 'all of a sudden' says "Pot" or an amount that extends beyond what's currently in their cutting hand.

Angle? Most would say yes, but then others would point to TDA 50 which states that Players 'must wait' until prior action is 'clear' before making their own action.


What's the other shoe here? What if V had said "All in" after Hero exposes hand? Is it declared a valid action? Here's where Floors get a bit out of line IMO. They may be quick to 'protect' the passive action of V here as in the OP, but do they also allow an aggressive action in basically the same spot? GL

Has his calls been with chips behind the line or were they always pushed across the line?

But I agree with everyone else that OP angled here and acted too quickly.

Pretty sure no one else here thought that the OP was shooting an angle.

I don't understand why some people are so quick to pop their load and table their strong hands. Just ****ing wait until the dealer confirms the action and asks you to show. A few extra seconds of patience is all it takes sometimes to get paid.