Situation arose during my last session. Sharing the story because its lol funny and I also want to know if this would be standard procedure in other rooms.

Friday early night at a local 1/2 NL game

Dealers are switching and new dealer comes in and notices his tray is short 100 dollars. He immediately calls over the floor and lets him know. Dealer starts his round, after a hand or two a well-respected player states that he believes the previous dealer overpays a player in his previous down. He states player gave 200 in cash, and is given 300 in chips. Another player at the table says he also thinks he saw the same thing. Dealer calls floor over and tells floor. Floor leaves and asks the player who had at this point already moved to another game. Player denies he was over paid.

As this is all transpiring the dealer and other players at the table joke that maybe player x (at the same table, who also got change in the previous down, and who is awaiting a high hand payout) got the extra 100 when he rebought. Everyone jokes and laughs and says when the player gets his high hand payout that he'll owe the house 100 bucks. About 10 minutes go by, and floor comes over and says they need to go to the tapes.

The floor leaves, and after about 5 minutes, the manager of the room comes in and taps player x on the shoulder, they go about 20 feet from the table and player x, ends up having to give the manager 100 bucks from his wallet.


My questions;

1. I am assuming dealer who overpaid is getting a serious reprimand? Would this be a fireable offense?
2. Does the player have to pay the house? What would have happened if player had already gone bust, or refused?
3. How dumb does player X have to be to stay there - obviously waiting for his high hand payout but why not just come clean?!

1. The dealer usually won't get reprimanded unless it's an ongoing problem but it depends on the room.
2. Yes and no. If he wants to continue to play there he has to pay it back, otherwise he'll get banned. If he lost the money, he'll have to bring it with him next time or he won't be allowed to play.
3. Money does some crazy things to people. Money's what makes a man act funny.

Come clean: pay them $100


Don't come clean: best case scenario, they don't figure it out and you owe $0. worst case scenario, they figure it out you owe $100.


Seems like not coming clean is +EV

1) Varies by room and the dealer's history. I've worked places where they'll pull you aside and say "this thing happened, be more careful". In other rooms, if they're trying to get rid of a dealer because they've caused issues or because they're trying to clear out full timers, it could result in them being fired. The fact that they were able to recover the money makes it less likely anything serious will happen.

2) Usually they'll be told to leave and not come back until they pay. Not sure if they can withhold the high hand money or not - this may depend on local laws/gaming rules.

3) This kind of thing happens a lot and people figure they'll just wait to see what happens. I once saw a chip runner bring $100 to the correct seat # but wrong table. He just added it to his stack and kept playing until the supervisor found out 15 minutes later and asked him to give it back.

1. Yep. Totally depends. I have seen dealers make mistakes with huge payouts and get a "What were you thinking?!?!?" reprimand. I have seen dealers fired over miscounting $25 chips when coloring up (craps). Mistakes when you are good are different than mistakes when you are on thin ice or they want to get rid of you. Reputation matters.

2. The ability to come back and play/gamble is huge. Do not underestimate what this means to players. Especially in limited markets.

3. It amazes me what mistakes players think they can take advantage of. I remember dealing a tournament where I tap into a table and deal a few hands. Moments later a floor comes over to seat 5 and cuts out $500,000 in $25,000 chips in front of him. The floor says "There is the $500,000k you are owed". Then quickly walks away.

The look on seat 5's face is one of complete bewilderment. He is clearly utterly confused. He slowly thinks things through and his look turns to one of resolve. I find it odd and consider saying something, but the player confidently pushes the stack of $25,000 chips against his stack and I look around and no one else at the table flinches. Ok, the player was just startled. No one else cares, so it was obviously a color up that he was surprised about.

I literally forget about it.

A few minutes later there is a commotion at the table just in front of me. A different floor comes over, there is a lot of discussion between the floor, the player in seat 5, and the dealer. It is animated. Seat 5 seems to be looking around, looking for someone.

I can't tell completely what they are talking about as it is just far enough away. From what I can make out, seat 5 insists he has more chips than he actually has in front of him.

It takes me a second, but I put 2 and 2 together. I try and call over the floor, he tries to hold me off by holding up a finger. I insist by talking louder and make it clear I can solve his problems.

Finally after listening to all of the parties at the other table, he comes over to me. I try and explain to him quietly that I think seat 5 inadvertently got paid the missing $500,000. I make it clear that I am unsure, but I explain my reads and thoughts. I absolutely hate that I have to try and whisper and make my point without letting seat 5 know that I am talking about him because I am purely speculating. I don't have any facts and am just guessing on what I saw.

Seat 5 sees this and immediately gets nervous. As a person who can read others, it is 100% clear he is guilty. I would bet my life on it. He doesn't speak up though. The floor looks at him and looks reluctant to act. He doesn't know what to do.

The floor walks away and goes and talks to the TD.

I was tapped out by the time it was fully resolved. Later after talking to the TD, I learned that the floor had indeed tried to color up a player. He took a rack of $5000 chips off of the table in front of me from seat 5. He then erroneously paid seat 5 at my table $500,000 in $25,000 chips.

In the floor's favor, in the middle of this transaction, the TD told the floor to hurry up and finish what he was doing and go on break. He messed up but it was somewhat understandable. Not justified, but understandable.

Against the floor was the fact that the tournament was really close to the bubble. Just guessing, but maybe in a 600 player tournament where they were 5 or 6 players from the money. Furthermore, $500,000 in chips made a huge difference. It meant going from being a player who likely makes the money by folding to being a player who increases their stack by aggressively raising and taking advantage of the folds of smaller stacks.

I was told that the money made it correctly to the right player after reviewing cameras. Furthermore, the player who took the money was booted from the tournament. They tried to contest the expulsion by claiming they didn't know what the floor was doing by giving him $500,000, but he was experienced enough that he should have known better.

The offending floor was reprimanded, but he continues to work where I work. In his defense, he is a good floorperson. At worst, this was a one time brain fart. Plus I am sure he argued that the TD was rushing him to go on break ASAP.

It still blows my mind that the seat 5 who incorrectly received the $500,000 never spoke up. Did he seriously think he would get away with it? Casinos have multiple cameras pointed at each table (granted, not always the best angles, but still). What was he thinking?

I think i previous poster said it best where money makes people do stupid things.

This whole mess reminds me of the issue with Chase Bank suing their customers for taking advantage of a computer glitch that allowed their customers to withdraw the full amount of a check that was deposited in their account right away. It went semi-viral on Tick-Toc.

Apparently lots of people had friends deposit fake checks in their account, and then would withdraw the full amount in cash at an ATM. Then when the fake check bounced, Chase bank would be out of the money.

What makes this so utterly stupid is that Chase bank clearly had information about the account holder. They had their names, addresses, and even their social security numbers. How in the heck did they ever think they would get away with this?

It is clear they were not thinking. Again, money makes people do utterly stupid things.

Pssst…tournament chips do not have a dollar value…drop the dollar signs.

Don't think I've ever dealt/played tournaments where a floor/TD would take chips off the table and come back later to pay it back. That is horrible procedure. Every time it's prove the amount you're coloring up, pay it in big chips, and take the smaller chips off the table or into your color-up bank, whether being performed by a dealer or floor.

There's plenty of instances of color-up breaks going long due to transaction mistakes, or not every table is set to go by the time the break ends (damaged card discovered, not all color up banks have been picked up, etc). No excuse for the floor to rush/not have good procedure in this instance.

It pretty much never happens when you're talking about a real tournament crew, but smaller rooms doing $100ish weekly tournaments do that kind of thing a lot. They can get pretty sloppy.

I did see it once in a WSOP day 2. The table I was dealing had almost none of the smallest denomination chips and making change was slowing down play. A floor grabbed 2 stacks from another table that had too many, sold it to a player at my table, then paid back the other table.

Chase bank didn't have a 'glitch'. What the people were doing was ordinary check kiting.

Checks deposited are not available for withdrawal immediately. Chase's ATM software temporarily allowed it. So, yes, it was check kiting. But it was only possible because of bad programming.

Back in the days you could do that at almost every bank.

In my experiences banks usually let you withdraw at least some of the funds immediately. Because, as mentioned, they know where you live if it's fraud.

I thought they would only let you withdraw at most the amount you have on deposit.

That was the old, safe way to do thing. When competition heats up for low cost funding for banks, they loosened things up. I've seen this cycle several times as some hot shot MBA decides that they can juice up flows, people steal, the MBA gets fired and things go back to the old way of doing things.

Both the Wynn and the Bellagio will have floor take chips off of the table and bring back higher denomination chips within minutes. I would think both qualify as "real tournament crews".

Granted, I am willing to bet that the proper procedure is to have the floorperson give a player a rack and have them rack up chips and let the rack sit on the table and later bring larger chips and remove the rack, but busy overwhelmed floorpeople will occasionally break procedure and do things out of order.

Yes to all this, except that while the feature might have been born from competitive pressure, the banks now realize that these floats are actually not risky for the very reasons that Neil mentioned: you're a known entity, and the losses are capped. In retrospect it's pretty safe.

interesting because i've been playing a bit of blackjack recently out in podunk locations where the staff are mostly part time and poorly trained

i've been paid and/or seen people paid where it should have been a push or a loss

just last week i pushed and then doubled my chips because the count increased and the dealer didn't notice that and proceeded to pay me out when he shouldn't have - not on the original wager either but the new larger stack - that was the only time i ever said anything because the floor was standing right there watching and there was no way he didn't see what happened so i quickly told him we pushed

but... i'm bringing this up because i've seen this happen commonly in all the places where people are poorly trained (very rare in established national brands) but... the most surprising thing is that since it's mostly tables full of morons doing all those progressive jackpots and sidebets

it came to my attention that they are indeed watching the payouts on those carefully because occasionally the floor would pop over and let the dealer know they owed someone 10-20 bucks because they hit a smaller sidebet that went unnoticed

so it made me wonder, are they only watching the sidebets or are they watching everything and just ignoring the mispays - in my experience, a lot of people who are mis paid usually end up dumping it back later anyway - so i'm curious if they notice but don't figure that it's worth the hassle or are only watching the sidebets and progressives

I don't get this as a reason - do you think the floorman would blame you because the dealer made a mistake?

it's because i literally just upped the bet - so from the floor's perspective, i'm past posting - which would get me trespassed and even possibly face charges

had i not just added like 20 bucks to the stack i would have just done as i usually do and kind of appear disinterested and not paying attention and then only grab the winnings which i shouldn't have been paid once the cards are swept up

Huh, well it still would have been his mistake, not yours. You obviously thought it was a push and were betting again for a different amount, then the dealer made a big, double mistake. I don't know why the floor would think you were trying to cheat when you obviously weren't. I would expect the dealer to be fired after screwing up this bad, even if you gave back the money.

idk, perhaps i've watched casino a few too many times

Because if you take the money you clearly are trying to cheat. As you write "you thought it was a push"; you do not need to be correct but you need it to be possible you honestly do not realize you are not entitled to the money.

Can't believe that some of you think that mistakes by the dealer are somehow the fault of the player, or that they would be interpreted that way. If I ever got more money back at a table game than I thought I was going to get, I would assume that I made a mistake or didn't know the rules as well as the dealer does, because I probably don't, and I definitely shouldn't.

If I were the floor person when this happened, I would immediately step in, correct the dealer's mistake, tell the dealer to go back to the office, and apologize to the player, explaining exactly why I was taking back the chips he was just given, and offer a meal comp or something else for his trouble. Any operation doing differently is going to get the reputation of cheating players.

happened to me before at the table and cage... pay or don't play there ever again. No you can't see the tape just got to take our word. I wish I could run my business that way. They're not even nice about it treat you like a criminal when you come in next time. (I drink when I play honestly didn't catch their mistakes when it happened those times. I've corrected people countless times when they've tried to overpay and I am aware usually at the cage where the training is typically very poor it seems at some places. Why would I want the hassle I'm going to end up paying next time anyways)