That move as an angle shoot is frequently used today in rooms with hard betting lines. I'm surprised you haven't seen it decades. You must play in a room with either a particularly ethical group of players or few tourists to try and take advantage of.

If we're going to dig deep, then I'll say that it's an angle that's alive and well in rooms WITH forward motion rules, since they (mostly) also require 'release' of the chips. So a Player can move a stack forward but the bet is not complete unless they release.

Typically a Dealer will say that the bet stands since they went past their cards, but it all comes down to the wording and how the room interprets enforcement of the rule. Usually the Floor will also rule that the bet stands as a punishment for waking them from their nap and making them walk over to the table!

The pump fake, even the now famous 'cross over' move from Chance Cards are all subject to interpretation Player to Player. GL

I dont know of any forward motion rooms that allow you to start moving chips forward and pull them back without making a bet at all, ie a pump fake. Yes, the total bet isnt determined until you finish releasing chips, but you are bound to make at least a min bet. Or, if you are facing a bet, then moving chips forward is binding call.

I don't think that is true.

I don't think this is an angle if OP isn't doing it to get a read. But it could go haywire if somebody folds because they believe OP is going all in. Then what would OP do? If OP takes the pot then it would be an angle though unintentional and unethical IMO. If OP stops the player from mucking and concedes the pot then we get back to the original intent: honest humor.

Personally I think there are many degrees of angles.

At Foxwoods a player assembled chips and then started to push them forward from behind his cards. I raised all in and the player stopped the forward motion and folded. I called the Floor over and he ruled that because the players chips did not extend beyond his cards that the forward motion rule was not in effect. So I learned a few lessons and now protect my action by letting players complete theirs (though I failed again at this in Las Vegas at the Venetian when I asked the Dealer what the player's action was after the player said "All in" loud enough that I heard him from across the table, the Dealer said "all-in" got an all-in chip to place on the table and I called - after which the player denied having said anything and the Floor ruled in the player's favor without asking if anyone had heard the player say all-in...)

But there are many variations of this that are not only within the rules but aren't angles.
- Looking down at your chips.
- Taking a handful of chips that would constitute a raise and then putting back enough chips so that you are making a call.
- Bringing a stack out over the betting line and dropping only some of the chips.
- Assembling chips as if you were going to make a bet and then checking
- etc.

But in each of these cases a player could be doing it subconsciously or could be trying to get a read. And in some of these cases what a player does could end up being an angle if the player fakes a motion as happened to me at Foxwoods.

What they all have in common is that they are within the rules and the decision by the Floor will always be in support of the player doing it. Whether or not they are an angle doesn't matter to me if I am the player it is being done to. What does matter to me is that I protect my action and hand to the largest extent possible by waiting for the other player to finish what they are doing without reacting. Unless of course I believe that the other player is looking for or trying to create a reaction. Then I will give him the tell he is looking for.

Mike Caro did have an interesting take in a similar situation. In the case where a player is assembling chips to make a bet, Mike suggests assembling your own chips to make a call to see if the other player reacts and if so to judge accordingly. As Mike also recommends assembling chips to see if an opponent reacts as if he is going to call makes it somewhat ironic as you should always continue your bet because the opponent is most likely going to fold. So what I do in these spots is ask if they are familiar with Mike Caro (OK I don't do that, it was a joke...)

Logic like that just baffles me. You can argue against literally anything using "what ifs". I could see an elephant walking down my street too, as there is a zoo just a few miles away.

What also baffles me is why you want to deny an aspect of skill and knowledge in the game. But you're right about one thing, we're not going to agree and no one is going to change their mind.

Of course assembling chips is often done to get a read. That's the point.

Now, I'm actually in agreement (mostly) that pushing them up to the line to try and get another player to act out of turn is wrong. However, as I've said before, that just doesn't happen around here.

What I have seen is someone pushing a call forward and stopping because he was truly deciding if he wanted to call, or fold. He just didn't know. That is useful information, if you can pick it up. By the standards expressed here, he would be wrongly accused of shooting an angle.

This is like a chop shop operator being baffled that he is not respected as a legitimate body shop owner.

You are begging the question here. ("You deny a skill in the game" while there is active, well-articulated, majority disagreement with that categorization.) All successful angles can be argued to be skillful, so merely insisting that you are good at it does not save you from being wrong.

I would agree - as the game is played today, most players would consider pushing chips up to a hard betting line to get a read an angle, or at least angle adjacent. Perhaps less so for players in that room who are used to it, perhaps moreso for beginners, or those of us who actually play in rooms with a forward motion rule for whom this sort of thing is totally ridiculous.

This may be an issue of old school vs. new school. Old school players are a lot more caveat emptor. The new school is more about protecting new players to expand the game's reach.

It could also be reflective of the old vs new rulesets. In the old days, there were no written rules. As rules were written down, they were descriptive, meant to describe the way the game was played. So you would never change your behavior to cater to rules, the rules cater to what the player base decides is acceptable.

But as time goes on and the game got more public and prolific, with a desire to make it more accessible to new players, the rules have gotten more prescriptive, to file away the rough edges. To a player like JayKon, who has been playing for decades, I'm sure he's coming from a perspective of "anything goes within the letter of the law". Many of us don't share that view.

And to put a fine point on it, just because it requires skill doesn't make it a poker skill. Cheating also requires skill. The prescriptive rules are what decide whether an activity is against the rules. It is a little fuzzier what decides something is discouraged or whatnot.

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To get back to the OP, I think I would agree he is basically saying he does it for yucks, and never does anything other than fold when he does it. Taking that as fact, it's hard to consider it an angle.

But as others have said, I very much doubt other players find it as entertaining as he thinks they do. This is basically just causing confusion and wasting time. If that wasn't the case, it's not clear why he would have posted here in the first place to ask.

I refer you to the concept of "The tyranny of the majority". Check the Wikipedia page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

I know what tyranny of the majority is. The topic being discussed is one that considers the "correct" position to be the "commonly understood" one. The radical minority opinion is therefore the definitionally incorrect one in the descriptivist sense.

It's like calling language tyrannical because you don't get to decide its direction.

Again

We've drifted away from a discussion about whether or not the move described is an angle shoot. Instead we now have two sides seeking to list the personal inadequacies of the other side that prevents them from seeing that they are wrong. Let's please rein that in before it crosses the nice/not nice line. Thanks.

I think that part was solved early on, unless we have people who don't think it's an angle to purposefully use your knowledge of specific house rules against players who aren't aware of those specific house rules.

Personally I don't think we really need a discussion about if there's a fine line (and skill) between pump faking and "moving your chips forward to get a read in a way that doesn't qualify as forward motion" but to each their own.

So because you're mad that you didn't get your way you're going to punish the entire table for your issue with another player. Seems very mature and balanced.

As a dealer I approve this strategy.

Very true .. There are plenty of other threads that discuss the FM topic and how to handle it going way back to the original WSOP ME pump fake by the CA poker pro whose name escapes me currently. That particular 'first' case was definitely an angle. The Player knew THAT THE CHIPS MUST BE RELEASED TO COUNT AS A BET and used this to attempt to gain information multiple times.

A recent high profile case of forward motion was the HSP Garret v Person when Person 'angled' (?) to call Garret's bet before Garret could even release chips from his airborne hand that was moving forward.

There are also threads that discuss FM bet sizing issues when a handful of chips comes forward but the Player is allowed to 'cut and paste' their actual bet. We have discussed the differences between airborne and sliding chips .. all of which includes a release of the chips.

As I've indicated before, it comes down to the exact wording, if any, in the room rules. IMO I think a Dealer will give a warning whereas a Floor will require the bet to stand, especially for known Regs.

In OP's exact spot there appears to be no intent to garner information from the marginal action .. therefore it's not an angle.

I've seen plenty of spots in PLO where a Player folds and then says 'Pot' both in fun and to see the reaction of the other Player, who may not have seen the fold. GL