headphones guy needs a kick in the nuts.

dealer needs a bigger one. why would he ask headphones guy if he's all in? did headphone guy say all in? no he was facing two all ins. the dealer should have said "sir the action is on you" and told him what the bet was.

something about this story doesn't quite add up, but if OP is being completely truthful about all the events, this is definitely on the dealer.

i play at the hammond horseshoe quite often and it is required by all dealers to settle the pot in every all-in situation PRIOR to dealing the next street or showing hands. somewhat of a new rule but i haven't seen a situation when a dealer HASN'T done this in the last 4-5 months. if the events unfolded as they did, this is a pretty major screw-up by the dealer.

The fact that headphones answers yes, river is dealt, dealer asks for cards, headphones turns over his cards, and THEN he puts up a stink implies he knew exactly what was going on. If he truly thought he was just checking, he'd have put up a stink when after the turn there wasn't a round of betting. He knew exactly what was going on, how the floor didn't realize this and ask him the question I just did can only mean they were trying to avoid a blow-up and/or this guy is a reg and they're trying to keep him happy. Either way, you were screwed.

Dealer also mishandled the situation and shouldn't have asked him if he's all-in, it's a dumb question. But as we say players are responsible for protecting their cards, they're equally as responsible for protecting their words so to speak. Verbal actions are accepted as binding in nearly every circumstance, so answering "yes" to a question from a dealer then saying, oh no I didn't hear him!!!! The player is also responsible for paying attention to what is going on. If he's paying attention and the dealer asks that question and he's truly confused, his response isn't yes, it's "Wait a second, how much is the bet to me? Are they both all in? They did not place chips forward." Sorry, pal. Put in the chips and take off the freaking headphones.

Hi, just wanted to add in that I assure you I've done my best to tell the story as accurately as possible and it was every bit as weird as I've described it. The above rule was definitely not enforced. My hope was that if anyone who was at my table ever stumbled across this post, that they would agree with the details of how it went down.

Again, when the floorman came everyone else at the table backed up that it was an all in situation, the words all in had been stated multiple times, and the dealer told the story accurately to the floorman. The dealer apologized to me profusely after the hand and the table seemed generally surprised (at least half the table muttered statements along the lines of they couldn't believe he got to keep his chips either out loud or to me in the short period after the ruling was made).

although I hate headphones in poker games and I really wanted to say headphone guy is wrong before reading the post it seems obvious that he didn't know what the question was. with a board of 2222 and 2 people all in it is pretty obvious that he is not going to call all in with a Q.

So, he is just answering 'yes' to an unknown question?

I think headphone guy was angling, trying to freeroll a showdown.

Won't help him much to get a free showdown when he is certainly drawing dead (ok, 2 outs to a chop).

My best guess is that his mind blanked on the situation and he didn't realize it until after he turned over his cards. It was almost as if he had a brain cramp and didn't realize high card played when 4 of a kind were on the table. This is how it appeared to me in person, though obviously I can only guess what was going on inside his head.

It's true that it was an absolutely silly call to consciously make, though it was almost as odd that he raised from 15 to 30 (though I suppose there was some potential to steal the pot if nobody had a king or ace).

Seems like a lot of opinions boil down to how much sympathy people have for those who aren't following what's going on due to headphones.

The guy raised with Q high on a 2222 board and you're unable to believe he thinks (somehow) that his hand is good?

Yeah dealer messed up but this is a board the 99.9% of the time is going to be a chop with everyone who is in. If I'm sitting in dealer's chair I "know" that OP and caller have an ace and assume that headphones has one too. I'm not pulling in the chips and making side pots only to have to chop them 3 ways in 10 seconds. If I do every OMC at the table will be griping about how they knew it was a chopped pot and we're wasting time.

This is 100% a dealer caused issue by his strange and improper wording of the action. Like other posters have said, there needs to be some retraining with either this dealer or the entire staff (if this is standard practice). All-in buttons would likely have eliminated this completely but so would: "Action to you sir, both other players are all-in" or something to that effect.

That said, if I have to make a ruling on the situation at hand, Headphones answered in the affirmative that he was all-in. He is all-in. Chop him up.

+1 That's the first thing I thought.

Is it at all possible Headphones thinks he is answering the question "Are you folding?"

And his response was "yes". Which would indicate only one thing. He is all in.

I rule this a call and headphones can get the **** out if he don't like it. Then my dealer gets a KITF.

I rule that Headphones calls the all-in bet. This kind of behavior cannot be allowed to derail the game and rob other players like this.

The dealer made a mistake that will need to be corrected by his manager. Whoever used the phrase "leading questions" is spot-on. The dealer should never introduce a player's action by asking if he's all-in, if he calls, if he folds, etc.

That said, it doesn't matter after the fact. Little infractions like this happen all the time, but no one makes a big stink about being held to the action because saying "Yes" to a question is an unambiguous feature of the English language. Headphones agreed to it and did not even attempt to clarify. That in itself is fishy to me. What did he think he was agreeing to?

Despite the dealer's sloppiness, Headphones agreed verbally that he is all-in, twice. He had audio and visual cues for all of this. It appears that he tried to take advantage of a weird situation to try to freeroll at showdown. Yes, calling off your stack with a queen kicker is a dumb play (most of the time), but so is raising to $30 in that spot. So is drowning out your entire sense of hearing in a game where important information is often conveyed verbally. No one said he was smart.

The entire table agreed about what happened, but it looks like he got his way because he pitched a fit. Typical behavior from someone who is disrespectful enough to sit there with headphones blocking his hearing, expecting everyone else to work around the obstacle he has made of himself.

Take the goddamn headphones out of your ears. Take them OUT. All the way out. Don't even leave one headphone in. Just shut the whole apparatus off and put it away somewhere, or else resign yourself to occasionally paying a steep price for listening to your all-important music or podcasts or whatever.

I sat next to a guy like this last night, and it was infuriating. He was constantly acting out of turn, stopping up the game to make people repeat themselves, and generally being a nuisance. It got to the point where I had to exaggeratedly check by slapping both hands against the table because he couldn't even hear the noise I was making by loudly tapping the tip of my finger.

In any case where deliberate and willful handicapping of one's senses is part of the problem, the ruling should come down in favor of the other person. The same goes for sunglasses people who can't read the board or misinterpret chip colors, and hoodie people who miss visual cues because their peripheral vision is blocked. That's their problem, not everyone else's. This type of **** should not be encouraged at the table in any way.

For future reference for everyone.

Please ask the floor to handle this ******. Do it away from the table and let them know he is single handedly slowing the game to a crawl. Any half decent floor will watch the guy and tell him to find a way to speed it up or lose the headphones. And then actually force the guy to remove them if it continues to be a problem. I personally like to ask dealers going to that table to let me know if he is slowing the game down since I can't sit and babysit but they are there for 30 min at a time. We too hate these guys that can't keep it moving if they are jamming out.

He eventually took out one headphone and picked up the pace after a couple regs who know him outright told him "Hey [name redacted], take the friggin' headphones off!" in a friendly but forceful way. This was several hours into the session, though.

Should a solution not materialize on its own in the future, I will probably take your advice.

One would hope that a dealer, after dealing to such a player for a down, would alert the Floor about the problem after getting pushed. But then I guess she is just relieved that he is the next dealer's problem.

I second that reference.


Dealer's an ass and has no clue how poker works. Just say what the bet IS to you and not if you're going to go along with what everyone else has done thus far. And he's also going on the no tip list because I just hate this type of idiocy; things like this aren't mistakes, its a lack of the basic understanding of the game that you should already have imbedded in your brain before you ever sit down in the box.

I agree that the headphone guy really got a lucky break on this but damn it if these Floorpeople would only start punishing the people who suck the life out of the games.

Bravo!

You're a breath of fresh air.

terrible ruling.

verbal is always binding.

I was at a table one time when a player was turned away from our table and talking to his buddy at another table, so that his back was turned away from the action at our table. Dude that owns a strip club had just bought in for 10,000 into an uncapped 2/5 game. He pushed all in pre and the dealer turned to the guy that had his back to the table and asked him if he called. He had been roughly paying attention and thought that the strip club owner had made a preflop raise and did he call the raise, he did not realize that the owner had shoved pre for 10,000. The guy had about 2000 in front of him and he said, "yes, I call." The dealer just kind of shook her head and dealt out the flop, turn, and river without pausing. The young guy was trying to figure out what was going on when the dealer told the players to, "show me a winner' Strip club owner turns over two red aces. Young guy turns over two red 8's.

board was:

So the guy flopped quads and didn't try to stop the dealer from bringing the turn and/or river?