situation: 3 people in the hand @ the river, first player to act bets about 1/2 pot. as second player is contemplating his move, he moves his cards in front of him (chips were stacked directly in front of him, he put his cards on the other side and put a single chip over them). third player asks "is that a fold?" (maybe he didnt see chip protecting cards, i dont know), and the second player responds "no, i'm calling". dealer misunderstands, it was an older asian guy with a somewhat heavy accent, and announces the player is all in, and player 3 insta-calls, player 1 mucks. player 2 protests, saying he had just called. what should floor ruling be?

1. Players should be quite certain as to what the action is before they "insta-muck." This is especially true when someone with a heavy accent makes an unclear move, as happened here. Whenever someone "insta-mucks" I don't feel sorry for them if they didn't bother to verify what the true action was before they tossed their cards.

2. The dealer should make it quite clear what the action is when someone makes such a critical move as going all-in. Dealers who verify the action and clearly announce the game don't have these problems. I'm not sure what this dealer actually saw/heard and whether they were asleep at the wheel or not. However, it is feasible that the dealer may not have actually known what the action was, since everyone else also seems to be unclear on the matter.

If the mucked hand was properly mucked and is therefore unretrieveable, then that player failed to rotect his hand and that's too bad. Given the limited information I can extract from this post I'd probably rule the asian player called and did not go all-in, and that amount stands. I can't see a reason here to force the asian player to put all his chips into the pot. Convince me of a better ruling and I might feel different, but not likely.

Al

The title of this thread demonstrates, YET AGAIN, the bias against dealers.

From reading the post, I get the impression that NOBODY "heard what was said correctly", yet the dealer gets singled out in the title.

If I'm the floor, and I get the same impression from the players that I get from this post (that everybody at the table thinks he went all-in), then I've got to rule that he went all-in. How could I possibly rule otherwise?

(I should note that I would first try to broker a compromise between all players, but should that fail--and it almost certainly will, since they couldn't work this out without calling me over--I'd have to rule as stated above.)

...

LOL every other dealer-related B&M thread is like that.

Two of my pet peeves from the dealer side used to be (1) players not speaking up or enunciating their action clearly, and (2) those who insta-act before actually being certain of the action that's taken place, especially over a major pot. I say used to, because at this point I don't think about it that much. It's just as hard for me to understand people when they mumble or don't speak up as it is for everyone else, and that's all there is to it.

People can (and almost always do) wind up faulting the dealer in these spots regardless, but here's the rub: if you come up on the bad end of a ruling, it's not going to matter a bit who you blame. The dealer will still get tapped at the end of the down and move on to the next table.

EDIT: And if your dealer (or fellow player) has a heavy accent, yes, you have to be even more careful. Obviously it sounded enough like all-in to the other two players in the hand, because most players in this spot will be like 'wait, is is call or all-in?' Besides that, the action must have gone pretty fast, because in Player 2's shoes I would have spoken up the second the dealer announced the wrong action. If the action happened so fast the player might not have had a reasonable chance to protest, that's one thing, but otherwise I'd say Player 2 is all in. The player who instafolded is gone in any case.

In NL the players have a responsibility to be sure of the action before they act. Ideally the dealer should be in less of a hurry, but the dealer quickly announcing the action before the player has clarified it does not relieve the players of the responsibility to know the action before they act.

So as players we're supposed to wait 5 seconds after every verbal declaration by the dealer to make sure the dude that stated said action doesn't correct the dealer?

Meh.

Yes. If the dealer claims a player has acted and he hasn't moved any chips yet and you didn't personally hear the same thing the dealer did you have an obligation to wait, or act at your own peril.

Bad play by player 3. I don't do anything if I'm player 3 until I see chips in the middle.

it seems to me the dealer fairly gets singled out here because he announces incorrectly that the player is all in, and this precipitates action by the other players. however, as a player you should be aware that dealers make mistakes sometimes. if the dealer announces action that i dont see or hear, i will often ask the player are you all in?, or you made it 100? or whatever the case might be.
however, it seems clear from the original post that this was a case where the dealer misheard and announced the wrong action, so i dont think you can put the first player all in, and if the instamuckers hand is irretrievable, thats just too bad.

Ok, as a dealer here in LA I do deal with a lot of people who's english leaves much to be desired. If I am not sure if what I heard was correct I will ask. I want to do everything in my power to avoid the mistakes above. Another thing we have started doing at the place I work is that we have started using an ALL IN button to hopefully avoid this confusion.

The moral of the story is that I hate the difference between "I'm callin" and "I'm allin" because people (of all races) pronounce them super similar and is often difficult to distinguish between the two.

The moral of the story SHOULD be:

1) Dealers need to check and sometimes re-check the verbally binding action, especially if the player has an accent.

2) If players do not wait until the action has been clearly defined, and do not act accordingly, well then IMHO, they are not protecting their hand.

3) Screw player 1 - He was weak anyway, and wasn't going to win.

4) Player 3 obviously had the nuts (or close to) with the insta-call. If that's the case, again it's his responsibility to protect his hand, and make sure that the action is verified before coming back to him.


If I was the dealer, I'd make sure that the chips were in the middle, especially with a foreign player to avoid any confusion. If he pushes his stack in, there is NO question about what the action is. I think more casinos should require actual action in situations like this, versus JUST verbally binding.

this is why the place I deal at has now gone to an all in button that is tossed to the player that is all in

No, the dealer wasn't the only one who misunderstood the action here, so it should stand to reason the 1st player wasn't very effective in communicating his action. That burden ultimately lies with the players, not the dealer.

I agree with this point so far as it's reasonable. If I hear you say "all-in", I'm going to repeat "all-in." If I don't hear you or am not sure what you said, I'll clarify it. But if I simply misheard you because you can't speak clearly (or for whatever reason), what am I supposed to do? I speak English as well as any dealer I know, am very attentive to the table, and have excellent hearing... and that's still not enough.

Dealers repeat the action in the first place to help prevent misunderstandings between players. It's not a perfect science like it is online. If you say calling and three other people hear "all-in" and act accordingly, well, guess what? What you said apparently sounded a lot like "all-in." It doesn't matter what you meant to say or tried to say.