It's incredible that JayKon and all the people JayKon polled are literally the only people who have never seen this gesture.

As to the earlier comment that it could be taken as "I give up" and thus a check, a "I give up" gesture would generally PRECEDE a check, not be one. What if he instead said "Jesus Christ, every single time it just runs out brick brick and you're never folding of course" is that a check? obviously not. Or what if the first player bet out and then the second player did the raise arms motion. Since it could mean "I give up" are we now saying that the gesture means he folds to the bet??

Anything other than "A is now all-in, action on B" is a horrendous ruling.

So are they saying their ruling would be one of:

a) we don’t know what the motion means so action is still on A
or
b) it was a motion in turn so it’s a check


And their determination is based on other factors?

No, that is NOT what the sentence means. But you have staked out your position and I give up.

I am going to start referring to the stupid **** that bounces around in my head as "a regional thing".

Maybe he is thinking of a palms-up shrug of the shoulders. That is not the gesture.

Clasp your hands together in front of you. Now pretend there is a tiny little slow motion explosion in your hands. Make a little explosion noise if it helps. The tiny little explosion propels your hands up and away from where they were. That is pretty close to the gesture.

Maybe someone can find a clip where the gesture happens. I know I've seen it on youtube. Kind of a pain in the ass to search for.

mod: If you guys want to continue to argue the merits of this ruling, or even the very banal parsing of word choices in your posts, fine, but please quit it with the low grade, passive-aggressive personal insults. Thanks.

Here. This is likely a pretty accurate representation of the gesture I made.

It is definitely what the dealer showed the floor people that I did (I shut up and let the dealer explain what happened, content to interject if I felt something was misrepresented and there was no need).

Obvious angle by player B. I don't know how a floor rules this a check. It's common for a player to gesture to another player to raise their hands so they can see their chips.

The only thing player A could have done differently would be to vocalize their request to see the other player's chips. An important lesson if you want to protect yourself from incompetent floor rulings.

Dumbledore plays poker?

I admit that is not what I was picturing. I foresee a great deal more arguing of the merits and very banal word parsing. Sign me up!

Thought it was Gandalf.

Using OP's description, this is one of the two possible gestures I figured it could be (the other is the one you are thinking of-hands together, raise them apart in a pantomime of exposing your cards)

Neither is ever a check.

Jaykon, you think people are misinterpreting your quote

"if anything, it would be a motion, in turn, and therefore a check".

What most of us are interpreting this as 'If I were required to make a ruling, I would rule a motion, even if not explicitly associated with the action of checking, as a check if it were made when action was on that player'. And most of us think this is an awful position to have.

Can you clarify what you think your quote means?

In thousands of hours of live play I have never seen that motion used to indicate a check, I have seen it multiple times to indicate "show me your stack". As was mentioned earlier if there's any ambiguity it's only that it might be interpreted as an over the top "raise" motion.

Something that hasn't been addressed but to me is a big factor in this - Player B was already violating the rules by not having his chips clearly visible. So Player B is violating the rules then uses the violation as means to cause Player A to perform this "ambiguous action". So Player A gets penalised by the ruling for Player B hiding his chips.

I've had someone try this angle on me before - river is dealt, they turn and talk to the player next to them for 30 seconds then table their hand and expect me to table mine. Tabling your hand to force the other guy to check back is a standard angle.

Dealers should force players to stick to the rules if there's ambiguity, not hold players to random actions that they have seen other players do before. I was once held to a check for wiping my forehead while action was on me because "there's another guy in the room who does that motion to check so it's a check". How about making the other guy follow recognised actions rather than holding everyone to obscure actions? These actions are not ambiguous, they have literally no connection to the action being claimed.

That is what I am going for...

Ergo, if something has no meaning and people want to understand what it could mean, they search for what meaning it could have had. My failure was not putting those two statements together, in the same post.

Sometimes I'm just amazed by people's decisions about which hill to die on.

Is that something you decide on before engaging in a thread or does it develop over the course of the discussion?

So, would it be fair to say that your floors are saying 'This gesture has no meaning to me, but if I were asked to make a ruling, I would rule it a check because a motion was made when the action was on the player?'

Would it be fair to say that in the rooms where you play, that if action is on you, and you make any deliberate gesture, even one that has no known association with the action of checking, the floors you talked to would rule it a check if asked to make a ruling?

I think it happens incrementally when people get challenged and they decide to dig in. At a party with friends, I once made the comment that Peacocks were very aggressive. People laughed and made fun of my comment, so I dug in. By the end of the conversation, my position was that peacocks were, pound for pound, the deadliest creatures known to man, and that they would as soon kill you as look at you.

You are hammering me for telling you what people told me. The fact that I understand and partially agree is separate.

Or, are you suggesting that I should hide the opinion of some people because others find it unpopular?

And I bet your friends still recall it as The Time When Spewing Dug In. (It helps that anyone who has met a peacock can be convinced of your claim, or at least be convinced that you believe it.)

Luckily, my friends are equally as stubborn as I am, so before too long, there were other, equally ridiculous, utterly polarized positions. But yes, comments were made whenever in the vicinity of a peacock