*clickbait*

Local casino tournament, 40 players, at the final table. Player has about 30k in chips and says "I make it a million" which he obviously doesn't have. Dealer says "no no no, floor!". What's the ruling?

Pretty sure there are some floors who rule that an all-in since one million technically is a legal bet size and therefore the ruling should be the same as if he had said 31k with his 30k stack.

Others will say that the player was clearly joking and no other player has acted on it yet, so no harm was done.

The problem is that the rules don't cover situations of players joking.

As long as no one else has acted, I would allow the player to reconsider his action (even if that action is to go all in). Then I will warn him not to make jokes like that, especially when the action is on him, as future rulings might require him to go all in. If this is not his first time being warned about this, give him a 1 orbit penalty as well.

To add further, player proceeded to move chips in.

Uh, then I don't see how there is even a need for a floor call. He's all in.

If he says an outlandish number but then pushes all his chips in, there really is no reason to not consider it an all-in.


If he just makes a verbal statement, then it becomes problematic. I have only seen about 1-2 times that has occurred but it has always been determined to be an all-in since it's a number greater than the amount of chips he has. I'd imagine it will become more of an issue when a player is just joking around and actually wants to check or make a more practical bet but I haven't seen a time in which that occurred.

What would be the worst possible ruling that the floor could make?

Player is disqualified from the tournament.

Yeah that's worse.

Anyways floor ended up ruling it as a minraise. Blinds were also such that an all in was pretty logical. Just wanted to know if there was a universe where that was a proper ruling.

Not really. Bad ruling. If he had said $31k because he miscounted would it also have been ruling a min raise?

Silver lining is that that guy will probably never say something stupid like that again.

Huh. What would your ruling be if he moved the chips with more than one motion? Not trying to pick a fight here, I'm just trying to reconcile this:

Edit: Now that the actually ruling has been revealed, I guess I should ask if you think it was the right one.

The reason I stated that you can go ahead and consider it an all-in is because he then proceeded to push all his chips in. So, at this point, the outlandish number can pretty much be ignored because there is really no alternative ruling you can give but to say he is all-in [I'll address the min-raise ruling in a second].


Obviously, more than one motion is when it goes back to my next point of it being problematic. It is a scenario I rarely ever come across and I can't think of any particular rule that would address this situation. A floor may just give a warning based on the fact it is a number significantly higher than what anyone's stack people is, including his own.

The floor may also just rule him all-in based on the number being more than his stack. Reasonably, this can be applicable in many situations. If I have a stack of 47,100 and I say "47,200" based on a minor miscount before pushing the stack out, it is still reasonable to assume my bet will stand as an all-in despite the stated number being higher than the final amount. I have seen people do this when they know what their stack is before a hand starts but forget to deduct the ante amount from the number.


So, based on this, I'd probably say the guy will have to put in an amount of chips up to 1 million [Obviously meaning he is all-in for significantly less than the initial statement]. I can't really see the rationale behind a min-raise. Perhaps the floor determined he has to put in some type of bet/raise because he stated a number but gave him a reprieve on being forced to go all-in due to an all-timed buffoonish statement that might have been made in humor. Hopefully with a warning that if he repeats such an action, he may receive a penalty or worse.

i presume he meant "pushes all his chips in [in one motion]".

I don't agree with the "rules is rules" method of making rulings either, but this isn't the right example to pick at.

Instead of " no, no, no, floor " , why not just say " that's not a legit bet, what do you want to do "? After he pushes all his chips forward , however, I think many places would consider it an AI despite the "witty" phrase. Obviously that is not the ruling everywhere as your post suggests.

The problematic part of that is if players show a reaction to such an outlandish bet or proceed to act before the dealer can get a clear answer from the player. Holding up the action and getting a floor ruling is better than essentially giving the player another chance to act, perhaps now with new information about the players following him. He definitely shouldn't have all his options available to him [Like checking].

OK, that would be a complication, But if no action occurs right away, I think the dealer getting clarification is better than calling the floor just to eliminate game delay due to the players "witty" phrasing.

issue a warning and the player is all-in (assumes he made the statement during his turn.)

Player is obviously all-in if he moved all his chips in one legal betting motion without announcing a bet size smaller than his stack size. In this situation it should not matter if he says "one million" or "I like big butts".

Death by drowning or burning, that's usually considered more painful than lethal injection, hanging or shooting.

Ruling it a minraise is just absurd and completely arbitrary in my opinion unless he made a string bet.

What if the player moves his chips in so everyone knows he wants to go all in, but he doesn't do it in one motion. In other words, does the verbal announcement of a higher amount ever not stand?

Are there any actual rules written about this situation?

I do not believe there is any rule in TDA (or RRoP) covering what to do if a player verbally announces an amount larger than the number of chips he actually has. The rule on unclear betting just warns not to use unofficial terminology, and warns that ambiguous amounts with multiple meanings (i.e. "five"...hundred or thousand?) will be ruled as the lesser amount.

If there are any rules written down somewhere, you can safely bet that they will NOT be applied by all rooms , or dealers, or floors with any constant result from place to place or time to time. Gumps box of chocolates is your likely results on this.

I would argue this clearly isn;t a joke.
Jokes are funny.

This may not have been serious ... but it definitely isn't funny.

C'mon! You don't think some dick doing this as a joke and getting it called a min raise isn't even a little funny?

I think psandman meant the joke wasn't funny.

Getting it called a minbet would be funny but that's the floor/dealer being funny, not the player.

This should be an all in every time. Any other ruling is just plain dumb.

It's ridiculous to suggest otherwise. What if he had said 800,000? What if he had said 200,000? What if he had said 60,000? If you announce an amount, that's a binding bet. If the amount is more than you have, then of course you are all in. Otherwise a guy with 35k chips can say he bets 42k, and then if he doesn't like that he got called, he can say the bet was a joke because he only has 35k in chips. To not understand how simple and straightforward this situation is blows my mind. There's no reason to make special accommodations for people who want to make "joke" bets when it's their turn.