Lately this question has been coming up and I was hoping for some clarity.

When dealing PLO if asked what the pot is are you allowed to answer?

Thanks.

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Yes - dealer is expected to answer for size of pot and amount of maximum raise.

Yes, but this is primarily a PL thing. Dealer should not answer in FL/NL

[nit]
Or spread limit!
[/nit]

Lol Quad.

Touché.

In pot-limit, the dealer is required to answer; in NL or Limit, not allowed to answer.

This depends on house rule. Two casinos here in Pittsburgh, one the dealer is permitted to answer and it is not considered action. The other, when you ask what the size of the pot is, it is considered that you bet pot.

That's ridiculous.

PLO is the game i play most and I have never liked the fact dealers will tell players the size if the pot.
Would prefer they only announced pot size if someone do betting pot.
Players need to pay attention and be able to calculate it on their own.
Although I realize it is more inviting for novices, whom of course I welcome to the games.

I think its ridiculous as described. But I wonder if the way they ended up with that rule was because of problems with players saying "pot" and then claiming it was a question not a bet.

That would be my guess.

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Yeah, that makes sense. I've never had a problem understanding a question or clarifying when I was just giving an answer about pot size or max bet, but different markets, I suppose.

Iuomo, I see time same as someone asking the bet on the turn in FL, or clarifying if an all-in re-opens action in NL. It's a question regarding the parameters of the game. I understand that it also assists in other things, but as you said, that's the price you pay to get new people in the game.

This is almost verbatim what the higher stakes players say and want in our area. They also say is prevent angle shooting, how I'm not sure. I suppose as someone else mentioned, maybe someone saying pot and then attempting to back out by saying it was a question?

If the high stakes players all want that..... all they have to do is not ask the pot size. If its an issue then they can't all be taking that position.

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It's 2 different questions really, Saying pot is a verbal binding bet. But asking what pot size is can be confusing if it's following action.

Say the pot is 100, after flop player A leads out for 75, one caller, player C asks what is the size of the pot? At this point the answer to that specific question is 250? Then player C say OK I pot, and dealer says bet $400. Player C "huh"?

If asked the pot size I tell them "you can bet......" if they point at the pot and say "whats in there" I tell them how much is in the pot .

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This is an extremely dumb (and fortunately pretty rare)(I hope) rule.
Sure, the players should be able to keep track of the pot, but many (especially new or ex-internet players) simply can't yet. Also, pot size in a PL game is information which the players are entitled to have; it's like asking how much was a previous bet in NL, or did a previous bet re-open raising, etc.
Also, the fact that asking the potsize question can be misheard is no different than a lot of other perfectly legitimate poker questions which can potentially be misheard as actions.

At Foxwoods a while back, in a pot, re-pot pre-flop multi way pot, after the flop we had young player bet verbally half pot.

Don't have that button in live plo.

I hope someone said that to him.

As much as I agree pot size is info players are entitled to in plo, previous betting information is/should not, regardless of game. A dealer (unless allowed by some very dumb house rule I haven't seen) should never give information on a previous betting round. It is the players responsibility to remember who raised, when, and how much.

This is right; I meant a previous bet on the current round. Sorry if misleading.

All good, had me confused for a moment(happens often).

Necrobump....

A local cardroom which has been spreading PLO for several months now recently changed the policy. Now dealers aren't supposed to tell how much is in the pot. If a player asks their options, e.g. facing a raise, the answer is that they can fold, call, or raise up to a PSR, but they're not entitled to know the amount.

This made me curious: How many other rooms have a similar rule? Here's my informal tally based on the info above and my own experience:

DO NOT ALLOW PLO PLAYERS TO ASK POT SIZE

• Pittsburgh (one of two major rooms) -- considering asking the question to be a PSB or PSR
• Mountlake Terrace, WA -- dealers won't answer the question

ALLOW PLO PLAYERS TO ASK POT SIZE

• Aria
• Venetian
• WSOP
• Commerce
• Tulalip
• (Possibly most other rooms?)

Any updates or edits to this list would be appreciated.

I am pretty sure in a lot of jurisdictions, gaming regulations require the casino to provide a player with the maximum $ amount he is allowed to wager in any given situation.

If the floor in your card room tells you the dealers aren’t allowed to announce the maximum size of a bet, you might want to check if that’s even legal.

Those are the facts. Now for the editorializing....

This is a tendency in Washington state poker that tilts me, probably way more than it should:

Invent nonstandard tweaks to the rules to fix "problems" that were debatable in the first place, with total disregard and ignorance for the way the same game has been dealt elsewhere or even the existence of a standard rule.


In this case the problem is that people were asking the pot size and then not betting pot, which apparently the house considered to be an illegitimate request for information that might slow down the game 10 or 20 seconds every down.

The problem is, the people are making these "fixes" to the rules of games that they've spread for a few months. To me it seems both arrogant and foolish for a room manager in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Tampa, New Orleans, or Seattle to think that the accumulated experience of running large numbers of poker games in Los Angeles and Las Vegas should simply be tossed aside. I'm not saying good ideas can't come from lower-volume markets. I'm all for intelligent innovation. Sometimes local conditions may call for a specific house rule. But in WA it's just considered standard to monkey around with the rules whether or not you have any experience with how it's done in other places. And when those other places have been very successful at spreading games for years, even decades, ignorance does you no favors.

But people here are really hostile to the idea that there's value to consistency from state to state, or that it should even matter if every other PLO game in the country does things differently. "But it's the house rules! Why don't you think the house should have the right to write its own rules?" Pacific Northwesterners have an obsessive culture of blind rule-following. Of course the house can write house rules but I don't consider them an inherently good thing. If one cardroom wants to declare the ace to be below a deuce in hold'em and make queens higher than kings, is that just part of their prerogative? Or wouldn't it better to have consistent rules that get tweaked only when there's a legitimate rationale, so that any poker player can sit in a game and expect to know the rules?

...and that tweaking should occur only when the person doing the tweaking is aware enough of national and international standards to understand why they want to depart from them!


What brought this up was, a pot I thought was 3 handed to the flop was actually 4 handed. The dealer hadn't announced number of players (as they're supposed to in this room) and I missed someone with cards, so I asked the pot size to clarify the number of players. I generally count the bets as they go in so hiding pot sizes works to my advantage, even though it's stupid and tilts me. But I'm going to ask them to announce # of players now. Many opponents still won't bother counting the pot even with that announcement.