Player here, not an employee, with a possibly entertaining question:

Have any of you ever had arguments with players not wanting to move out of an awesome must-move game? Anyone actually booted from the room who wouldn't get up?

This is common, except for the part about where they have to be booted.

Yes seen people booted for this. For once the floor didn't beat around the bush. "You have to follow the rules of the game or you cannot play."
I'MNOTMOVINGBECAUSEI'MOLDANDABITTER****
"Here's a rack. Goodbye."

If by argument you mean they verbally object .... Yes it is common.

While I have never seen anyone need to be booted from the room I have seen the floor need to tell the dealer to deal the player out because the player thinks if they refuse to move they will be allowed to stay. I have seen many players choose to leave rather than move but that is not always about anger it's often about inertia.

And of course the argument about who is next is very common.

Me - "[Dealer], deal out seat 4, they're next on the must-move"
Player - "Do I have to move?"
Me - "..... MUST-move."

That's about the worst I've gotten. I'd imagine any argument wouldn't be that bad. I don't really care where they go after racking up, but they're not staying at the table.

We had some juicy players on the list to start the 2nd must-move table and a few of the guys on the main game racked up as that game was starting thinking they were going to just be able to go play at that 2nd game. They were incredulous when the floor made them wait the full hour to be dealt in (the time our room allows a player to enter the game as a new player).

These guys crack me up.

I've had a player shout to the whole room that they're never coming back to this horribly run room because I wouldn't let him continue playing on the must move game until his blind came around. He was back the next night.

I've seen players jump over to PLO or a smaller NLH game for 2 hours rather than move to the main game.

I'm actually surprised that it's never gotten past this point for me:
Player - "what if I don't want to move?"
Me - "well you're next on the list and you can't play at this table any longer, so..."

I've never actually even had to tell anyone the other option.

Me: "John, you've got a seat on the main game."
John: "No, I'm good here."
Me: "Actually it's a must move. This game is the feeder."
John: "Do I have to move?"

Me: "Steve, you're next to move to the main game. You can play til the button if you've paid your big blind."
Steve: "Oh I'm leaving anyway."
Me: "Ok, Eric, you're up then."
10 minutes go by, another seat opens and Steve is still playing.
Me: "Steve, seat on the main game now, otherwise you can leave now."

My favorite is when the must-move thinks they can collectively beat the house and the main game with a clever gimmick.

Must move captain: We're changing the game from 10-20 NL to 10-20 with a rock.
Floor: That's the same game.
Must move captain: No it's not. We'll have a rock.
Floor: It's the same game, but with a straddle.
Must move captain: Okay, we're changing it to 10-25 NL.
Floor: No problem.
[Floor looks to the rest of the table]
Floor: Does everyone agree to change this to 10-25 NL?
[Entire table happily nods their heads in agreement]
Floor: Okay, before I go get a new plaque, I'm going to let the 10-20 main game know that you're switching. If they also want to switch, they'll just stay as the main game and you guys will be the feeder.
Entire must move table: D'oh!

where I play, must move table can not change the game, and definitely not to 10/25 while 10/20 is still running

proper procedure would be: must move breaks, we inform main table that they want to open a new 25/50, everyone who wants to play 25/50 goes on the list and a new game is called

They want to play 10/20 and 10/25 and you're gonna offer them 25/50?

WHATHADHAPPENEDWAS....

I _read_ “more than six”, THOUGHT “we have full 8-max games all the time”... and then typed up the response without proofreading


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ve have lived this exact scenario. One of my favorite moments on the floor.

I grew up in Pensacola and dealt there for almost 5 years from 2011-2016.

Oops deleted. That was meant to be a PM.

they can want all day, but 10/20 and 10/25 is basically same limit so it's a no go

10/20 and 25/50 is fine and so is 10/20 and 5/10

No longer telling phone-lookers "It's on you."

I now tell them, "Whenever you're ready."

Much better.

I like it.

I like looking at one of the players who's paying attention and saying, "Hey can you send him a text that it's his turn?"

Always good for a chuckle.

The very first time I moved to a level that had a must-move(30-60 Limit) I was instructed to move and objected. I was not a jerk I just did not understand the concept, once it was explained to me I moved. I will admit I did not want to, it was mostly because I was in way over my head (moving from buying in to 1-2 for $100 to buying in to 30-60 for 1K) and had won a few pots. I started to get comfortable and I had this crazy idea that the main game must be filled with sharks. "They could survive in the infamous main game, the must be the elite..the must move table be default has to be filled with the less experienced fish(Me) etc" I went over and was able to book a small win.

The first time I ever experienced a must move game was at the Bicycle Club. The floorman came up and told me they were moving me to the main game. I was also a little confused, so he then explained the concept. But I pointed out "Those three guys at the other end of the table were here before me". Answer: "They're house players." Aah, so I was also introduced to the concept of prop players.

I know this adds time to the routine, but I've long been an advocate of using the 'must-move' list as an order of option/priority rather than forced right of passage.

Floor .. "We have a spot at the main game, does anyone want to move?" ... 3 guys raise their hands.

Floor .. "OK, Seat 3 you have priority so the seat is yours."

If no one wants to move, then you revert to back to the list. But this also opened up an interesting conversation one time about forcing the last person to arrive at the table to move rather than the first. I can actually see some merit to moving the last guy to keep the table 'happy' but then I also can see that moving a Player who may have just sat down and hasn't had time to build a stack into a main game is a 'death' sentence.

The issue comes up more often IMO when the Must Move starts to get short. I've actually seen a 6-handed table break with NO ONE going to the main game when the Floor tried to move a Player. This room changed it's policy .. They don't move anyone when the Must Move would drop down to 5 or less UNLESS the Main Game has also dropped down to 6 as well.

We all know that poker players don't like to be told what to do. So why not give them just a sliver of power? Obviously if none of them want to 'play nice' and move then you need to step in and make something happen. GL

I prefer a procedure similar to the Bellagio's where the main game is only protected to X-1 seats unless the MM has the same or more players than the main.

So in their example, the tables are 9 handed. If the main game loses a player to have 8, we check the must move. If it has 8-9 players, we move one. If it has 7 or less, we don't move one yet, unless more new players show up to bring its total to 8 or more.

If the main game loses another player to go to 7, we now move one from the MM regardless to bring it up to 8. So it is "protected" to 9-1=8 players.

Essentially this is a normal must move game except you let the main table get down by 2 players before forcing a move, unless the MM game is also full or nearly so. This has the advantage of keeping the MM table a little more stable when it is not full, and keeping it from breaking just so the main game can have 9 players instead of 8.

As an aside, I also like their policy on having multiple main games with a single MM feeder rather than a chain of MM tables, but this can only be effectively done in a room that has a history of getting 3+ tables going, and where the floors are experienced enough to be able to handle multiple tables worth of table change requests. This gives main game players some ability to change tables (which I guess is a blessing and a curse, depending on how much players abuse the privilege, but it's probably net positive).

I'm a little more conflicted about their policy of converting MMs to main games after an hour of being full, since it can mean that your main game table breaks before a table that was a must move previously, but I guess they have the data to be able to support doing so to keep the total number of tables open at a maximum.

I am not adverse to a "preference" system such as the ones a20 describes, and in general I'm all for a policy that makes 2 people happier than they would otherwise be, but I wonder whether they can be gamed in some way, whether regs might somehow coerce noobs into volunteering, or whether they will cause main game players to get annoyed by not being able to tell who is getting moved to the main game. I also think I prefer not having players get moved in reverse order if no volunteers, though I would need to think about it more. Either way, might not be worth the trouble of managing it.