In a tournament, blinds are 200/400, a player in early position raises to 1,000. The next player throws in a 500 chip and I tell him it's 1,000 to call. The next player then reraises to 3,000. The player who threw in the 500 chip didn't think there was a raise and wants to fold but is ok forfeiting the 400; he did admit that he would have called had there not been a reraise. The reraiser wants him to make the full call to 1,000. A floor is called. What should be done?

I don't think my floor made the right ruling so I wanted to double check here. My floor said that because there was a reraise, the undercall would have to complete his bet to 1,000. When action came back around to him, he folded.

I think he should be allowed to fold his hand with 400 forfeited to the pot regardless of what the reraiser did because that would have been his option had there been no additional action. Though he did make a mistake, he shouldn't be further punished. But then we're punishing the reraiser and I can't think of a good reason why he should be punished other than that he didn't wait for the caller to finish his call; he didn't wait for the action behind him to fully complete.

He threw in one chip which is a call regardless of of his intention. The floor made the right ruling

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I dont think a 2.5x raise of the bet amount at these levels is a gross misunderstanding of the action that would allow an undercaller the option to forfeit the 400 only. The action behind him is immaterial, even though it was why he did not want to call. Comparing his action to the initial raiser, 400/1000 is not significant enough to give him the option.

it's a gross misunderstanding concerning the size of the call. the player thought it was not raised, but it was in fact raised. the player is allowed to take back his chips and fold. mr 3000 needs to slow his horses and ensure that the undersized call is first dealt with before making his action.

Your preferred ruling would be a bad precedent that allows for angling. The caller needs to pay attention and know what the action is before him, not be rewarded for doing the opposite.

So I am allowed to one chip call, then change my mind if there is action behind me?

If the dealer raised the question with Mr. One chip, and the actor behind acted before Mr. One Chip clarified, i could see the case for letting him forfeit just his 400. But if He tosses out one chip, which is a legitimate indicator of a call, and then someone raises, Mr. One Chip needs to complete the call.

I have never see gross misunderstanding used in this case.

TDA rules are:
Section B does not mention anything about action after an undercall. Section C indicates that it is possible to unwind successive undercalls at least, but this is not exactly relevant to an undercall followed by a raise.

Either way, Section B does not obligate the TD to allow the player to forfeit his undercall and fold, merely provides the option. So even if the player behind hadn't raised, the TD could have required the player to complete the call.

And given a player did act behind him, and did make a raise, perhaps that also entered into his thinking. There does not seem to be any rule which would prevent that. Seems like a reasonable, if unfortunate, ruling to me.

As an aside, the RRoP cash game rule is a little bit different.
and also
Those two rules are similar, but not identical, which is...unfortunate. The first one applies to misunderstanding even the opening bet (as given in the example), the second only to an undercall after a raise, but ideally these would be written more crisply to make it much more clear which rule applies when, and whether rule 12 is also at the floor's discretion or whether they have that option 100% always as a rule (which seems excessive and abusable).

So in a cash game, the fact that a player behind you acted after you undercalled may in fact affect your options (and in particular, might prevent giving you the option to take back your bet and reconsider).

In both situations, the TD has some latitude in his decision making, because of rule 1 if nothing else. IMO a lot depends on the context of the fellow raising behind - does the dealer think he did so purposefully after the dealer had pointed out the issue and was trying to correct it, or was it done in turn at game speed and likely with no bad intentions? No easy answer here.

There is no case for forfeiting 400. Either he is allowed to take back his call (gross misunderstanding), or he is forced to call the raise. Forfeiting 400 makes no sense, because you are essentially admitting that there was a gross misunderstanding, which should mean that the player is allowed to take back his call and re-evaluate.

While I agree with you in principle, in practice the TDA rules (which are by far the most common rules used in tournaments) specifically require forfeiting the undercall if you are given the option to fold.

There is also no "gross misunderstanding" rule in TDA, though the rule quoted above is essentially a replacement/clarification for that which applies only to undercalling a raise, not an initial bet.

The case for forfeiting 400 is that TDA rules specifically address that as a possible ruling and that several poker rooms handle it exactly that way. Including the WSOP IIRC.

I think that we have a good enough reason, not so much because he didn’t wait for action to complete but because the dealer indicated a potential misunderstanding and our reraiser could not wait for it to be resolved. I don’t think it’s a particularly great reason, but it does meet my threshold for good.

Now I really don’t mind siding with the undercaller. According to your floor, the reraiser was allowed to force a full call with his impatience. And he was the one who protested. So we have given the protester control over the floor’s options. This guy sucks.

Another strike against the 1 chip call?

Especially when it someone raises to 1k PRE FLOP, next guy throws in a single 500, and everyone's reaction is somehow "yeah that's a good spot to 1 chip call with an under chip. Makes total sense to me"

So,reading Dinesh's comments and rereading the OP, Mr. One Chip's action was not yet complete,as the dealer had asked him to clarify his action, so process described in Dinesh's post had not yet been completed. Which would mean that Mr. Three Bet's actions are out of turn. It seems that the floor should have stopped everything, used whatever house rules there were to deal with OOT action, and then returned to Mr. OC with the option to call or forfeit his 400. Since Mr. OC could only fold or call, action to Mr. 3B can't change, which usually means that Mr. 3B's action stands.

I think the floor got this one wrong.

In a tournament there's no way he doesn't have to complete the call to whatever it is.

In a cash game you could make allowances for him if he didn't speak English very well or the players know him and he's not an angler, etc.

Floor did the right thing.

There is no 'right or wrong' here ... only the TD's discretion. The following is from TDA 2017 'notes' ...

Rule 42: Binding Declarations / Undercalls in Turn
Example 1: NLHE, blinds 1000-2000. Post-flop, A opens for 2000, B raises to 8000, C pushes out 2000 silently. C has undercalled B’s bet. Per Rule 42-B, because B is not the opener (A is) and the round is still multi-way, at TD’s discretion C may be required to make a full call or allowed to forfeit the 2000 undercall and fold.

Since the BB 'does' count as an opening bet PF we have a similar spot here. So IMO the Floor could rule either way after taking into consideration the facts of this particular spot.

1) Do we have OOT action? Not really, the 3k raiser certainly could've interpreted the one chip as a call of the previous action.

2) Do we have significant action? No, but it really doesn't apply anyway since the Player did act and SA is for Player's who've been skipped.

3) Do we have misunderstood action? No, there is no such thing in tournament play .. unless we conclude that 'under call' is the same thing.


Back to the OP ... in this case here I think the Player shot his own foot by indicating that he 'would have' called the 1000 if not for the raise behind. For a clean ruling we need him to either say he didn't know it was raised to 1000 or he was going to call the raise. So I'm leaning towards forcing the 1000 this time around since the Player is admitting some wishy-washy action here. GL

Can you provide a reference to this rule? I think you should re-read the TDA rules because you have misinterpreted something.

Same question. Can you provide a reference? Dinesh quoted the actual TDA rule earlier ITT and it specifically says when it is possible he doesn't have to complete the call .

My ruling would have been that the 500 could be forfeited and he could fold or complete the call. I hate the idea of forfeiting chips and folding, but that is the TDA rule so I follow it. The TDA rule give me discretion to decide if they can forfeit and fold or if they must make the call, but I will always let them forfeit and fold unless there are some extenuating circumstances that make me feel like it was done on purpose or something similar.