I feel like I should know this but I'm not 100%.

Preflop. There's a raise, 3 callers and several folds. It comes back around to UTG who we then realize never acted. What are their options?

Spectate the rest of the hand.

Here is what RRoP says. TDA has similar rule, with better wording imo which includes an ‘enough time’ provision.

“To retain the right to act, a player must stop the action by calling “time” (or an equivalent word). Failure to stop the action before three or more players have acted behind you may cause you to lose the right to act.”

So basically it is a floor decision. Often if skipped player is allowed to act then he is limited to non aggressive action (call, check, fold). Alternative, floor can rule skipped hand dead.

Imo if we KNOW skipped player had reasonable time to protect his hand/action, the hand should be dead. Too much info can be gleaned. E.g. knowing there were 6 calls and no one left to raise makes calls with speculative hands easy.

Otoh if we know there were 4 instamucks, I am giving skipped hand all options including option to bet/raise.

Most cases fall between these extr3mes and floor has to make best decision. Dealer should be sure to include timing information accurately to assist floor making a good decision.

One other nuance that comes up… only the first player missed can be skipped. Additional missed players are not considered skipped. They can’t be punished for not acting because it actually isn’t their turn to act. They have not had reasonable time to protect their hand. They are acting properly by waiting. However, I could see their presence and the knowl3dge they keep all options influencing the floor decision


TLDR: call floor, share all info, ruling anything from complete rollback with all options to hand is dead.

I think a rule 1 decision can be made between letting the player limp in or fold.

Meaning if it’s a player that knows better their hand should be dead, but if there was a genuine confusion then call or fold is fine.

Yeah, this is one of those times where there is no right answer. The floor has to make a decision that is far from good and is unfair to someone.

If I am in floors position I am giving UTG the option to call or fold. No raise. It is unfair because he is closing the action, but best of a bunch of bad choices.

This does remind me of a situation I saw a few weeks ago at a very deepstacked $2/$5 game. UTG paused for a second while thinking about his action. UTG +1 raises to $25 out of turn for whatever reason. UTG +2 immediately calls (I think he saw UTG +1 hold #25 in his hand so he grabbed the same). Both UTG and the dealer immediately call to stop the action( literally fractions of seconds had passed). A few seconds after they scream, the next player in order throws out 4 greens and a red for a raise to $105.

Floor is called.

UTG (and the floor) did absolutely everything he could to protect his action, but there was very significant action (raise, call, reraise).

Floor has an impossible decision.

To make it worse, we later find out that UTG has AK offsuit. A hand that can be very polarizing preflop in deepstack poker that can be anywhere from a preflop fold to a reraise. Furthermore, it is a hand that doesn't want to to see many players to the flop and wants to narrow the field.

Giving him unlimited action knowing the action behind him seems unfair. Making him only call (or fold) seems bad too because it will likely be multi way. He shouldn't be punished because he did nothing wrong.

No good answer.

Action after you bring up something and try to stop action doesn't count towards significant action, obviously.

Thanks guys! This particular situation was just chaos with a player leaving, UTG moving one seat to his right and accidentally placing his water bottle over his cards, the next table breaking and I (the dealer) was answering questions about seat availability, etc. UTG didn't even realize he had cards and nobody could see them well. And the only floor was a table games person who wouldn't have known what to do anyway.

Why would that be an impossible decision for the floor? At the very latest, play is halted once the dealer says so. The reraise should have no meaning in regards to significant action.

@ Reducto: I feel like in that case we can turn it into a (almost) no harm / no foul situation by offering UTG to call the raise or fold. I would be surprised to hear anyone object to that. Unless we have someone at the table who just likes to object.

Like that will ever happen.

Have to disagree. This seems like a pretty easy and clear cut floor decision. Not only did UTG not do anything wrong, as noted both he and dealer actively did what was correct.

In this case, my decision would be easy, we roll back to UTG and he retains all options including fold, check, raise (I am assuming this is preflop and there is no straddle on). Both RRoP and TDA are pretty clear on how to handle this one.

Now I believe UTG has an interesting decision. He definitely has gained quite a bit of knowledge since if he calls BB, he knows (or should know) there is a raise, call, re-raise coming. Or he can upset that whole apple cart and make a min raise (thus erasing all that OOT action), or he can raise (large?) himself knowing the intentions (not sure why I would do this), or he can call allowing all the OOT action and then 4 (or even 5) bet when it gets back around to squeeze the OOT action. But that is more a strategy discusssion.

Yes, UTG has gained a bunch of information from the OOT action. But I see no way to limit his use of this information when he did everything he could to stop it. If the OOT players chose to giveaway all this info, that is their problem. The ones actually hurt are those left to act because UTG now has info only later actors should have. The OOT actors hurt themselves so 'deserve' whatever the cost is.

I go the other extreme. Let's just kill UTG hand. Seems he had plenty of blame in this (not sure how a water bottle would otherwise get on top of the cards. I know Reducto is a great dealer, but that's a hell of a pitch to do twice).

Since he is UTG and doesn't even know he had cards, he prolly should not be playing them anyway (I know that should not be part of the decision) but I doubt he will protest much.

But def agree, no way I am allowing UTG any aggressive option. I don't like to kill a hand but IMO UTG brought this mostly on himself when he "hid" his cards. If I was playing, I would not object to the no aggression solution but if I was UTG I would not object to my hand getting killed either.

There are rooms with a policy to virtually never kill a hand, any hand.

I'm not sure which hands we're talking about now.

For the OP, I'm with Fore. UTG put a water bottle over his cards and didn't even realize he had cards? Too much action has occurred, kill his hand. I doubt he'll even care, and if he does, tough tootie.

I do agree that generally speaking we try never to kill hands, but this one is an exception that proves the rule.

For JimL's situation where UTG stopped action quickly, dealer did too, and people just kept betting anyway? Back it up to UTG, he has all options, and treat other OOT actions according to standard rules. It does put some people into difficult positions, but that horse has left the barn, and UTG (and dealer) did everything right. I don't particularly think of this as an impossible position, but it is one that gives some people the short end of the stick, particularly people caught in between who didn't do anything wrong themselves. But the rule on how to handle it is pretty clear, it's not like we're making up a ruling.

That's the more interesting floor decision point imo. I'm pretty sure we agree that the initial raise stands if UTG decides to call. But what about the re-raise that happened after action was stopped?

I can see the argument that giving him all options back would give him an advantage, but OTOH he bet at a time where play was halted?

He was moving seats as I pitched the hand and must have set it down right after I gave him the second card. He had like 6 things to move over and was in that dazed state players get when they play too long. I nearly just mucked the hand hoping he would stay oblivious but I hesitated and he wound up looking at them. Luckily he folded so the whole thing ended but I was left wondering what would happen if he decided to raise instead.

I don't think we should let him raise. Giving him the option to call is already a #1 ruling.

I am 1000% with Dinesh. He captured my positions perfectly and did it much better the me.

Understood, I was being semi facetious. I know plenty of dealers could stick two cards under a water bottle but few could likely bury two card making them not visible. The was the real point. The cards were not really visible due to UTG actions not dealer or someone else.

This is one of the few things I think they do better here locally. Here very little other than cards, chips and hands can remain on the felt. No drinks, racks, phones, loyalty cards, food, napkins, etc. Reasonable card protectors are about the only other thing I can think of. Pretty much if it can block view of more than half a card, it is not allowed. So a stick of gum is fine but a tin of Altoids is not.

Lots of local stuff might be iffy, most is truly standard though, this is one I think locally they get right. Keep the felt clear

I pretty much had this in a tournament last week but without the seating shuffle. Didn't protect his own right to act in turn, significant action behind, dead hand. In this case the reasoning is just as or even more strong since he hid his cards, even though likely inadvertent.

This is what I was getting at with the impossible situation comment.

I think it is obvious that the UTG +1 raise and next players call would stand if UTG just limps (i.e. doesn't change the action).

The question is, does the next players reraise to $105 stand? It is important for UTG to know the answer to this question, yet knowing that info gives him a really huge advantage.

Obviously AK doesn't want to play a big pot against multiple players (especially out of position), he is also up against players who were willing to raise, flat call, and reraise, all from relatively early position. Depending upon his reads of the other players and their stack sizes it is easy to make an argument for folding (and saving himself a decent amount of money), limping and then reraising, just calling, etc. What he does depends much more upon his reads of the other players ranges rather than just the strength of his own hand.

He is given lots of extra information, but it is with a hand that can be kind of strange in a deep stack cash game. It is an obviously strong hand but the reverse implied odds can make it much weaker in some situations, so the extra information is magnified.

The reraise almost seems like an angle cause it happened several seconds after action was clearly halted. Unless it was someone wearing headphones and staring at their phone until they think it's their turn to act.

In the OP it would be pretty hard not to kill the hand. I don't care about a seat change .. Player should know that he's going to be UTG and be ready for it even with all the fuss going on. Take it out on the Dealer? Maybe a little, but most experienced Dealers have highly developed 'circus' skills and can deal a hand with their eyes closed while doing their taxes. So while the Dealer was multi-tasking the ultimate responsibility falls on the Player.

In the 2nd spot we have 'significant' OOT action with a raise/call, but we also stopped the bus in a reasonable amount of time. We are going to call the Floor with an expectation that we back action up to the skipped Player with all options pending room rules. Yes, there is 'free' information out there but I find it difficult to rule that a Player was reasonably skipped, but then limit their options just because it was 'significant'. The key to all these spots is deciding whether the skip was reasonable or unreasonable first, then you can go from there with a decision on the OOT action(s).

The re-raise, while also informative, is pulled back IMO since the hand was halted prior to the action. This Player will have all options once the action returns to them. While possibly on the menu, I don't think I can tell that Player that they have all options, but any raise is capped at the amount we chose to ignore in the first place. But I can definitely 'see' that a ruling like this might come to pass but probably wouldn't do it myself. GL

This is the one part I disagree with. This is assuming the skipped player protected his action, and the dealer tried to stop the action.

In that case I think the skipped player should have all options open, call, raise or fold.

If they call or fold then out of turn action should be binding, including the re-raise. I think only a raise by the skipped player would be considered altering the action such that all other players could pull back their bets and reconsider, starting with the player who first made it 25.

Alternatively floor could rule that too much significant action has taken place, and the skipped player can only call or fold.

In any case the 125 should stay unless the skipped player "changes" the action, and the action would only be considered "changed" if the skipped player raises. A call or fold is not considered changing the action.

So basically the skipped player can call 5, wait for everyone else on the table to act and then call, raise or fold as they please.

Now if the dealer hadn't tried to stop the player who made it 125, and they were just acting what they thought was in turn after the player to their right, then I would say they should be able to pull back the 125 and reconsider.

The dealer/skipped player attempt to halt the action does not change the OOT action. That attempt protects the skipped player options. Imo, ruling is easy, skipped player has all options since he attempted to protect.

Floor could rule call fold only. Neither of those would change action. Though I think that would be a weak ruling. But what happens when the 125 gets back around to skipped player. Is floor going to limit him to only a call? If he can raise then he can bet now.

If skipped player doesn’t change the action by betting, all the OOT stands. That the raiser thought he was acting in turn doesn’t matter. The intervening caller thought he was acting in turn. Can he now fold or raise? Not imo.

Skipped player has gained a lot of extra info but I don’t see this as an angle since he tried to stop everyone. Skipped player did things correct and the OOT players did not. The extra info they gave away is on them.

Now a situational question…what if skipped player questions the floor if the OOT bet is binding? What about the OOT raise? Regardless of what the floor rules or is going to rule, is the skipped player entitled to know?