Hi all,

There is a limp by me in the cutoff, a raise by the action button, and the sb action player raises to $50, I call, the button raises to $220, and the sb calls and right after I call the $220 security abruptly escorts the small blind out of the poker room (apparently he was banned), they don’t let us finish the hand and take his $220 in chips out of the pot. Before anyone can do anything the dealer puts out the flop. I ask the floor to be called at this point and floor was not aware the player was going to be picked up.

What’s the remedy?

Thanks,
DT

I'd have thought the 220 stay in but this is above any poker rules. Security and gaming do what they think is correct.

I'd argue my case to the floor but don't think we could get any sort of answer in real time, floor isn't going to put the 220 security took out back in the pot.

You say they don't let you finish the hand but it sounds like they don't let sb finish the hand but everyone else does.

This is a result of casino departments not communicating effectively with each other. You can lodge a complaint with whatever overseeing gaming body regulates the casino. I would expect to get nothing satisfactory out of it.

Wonder if the hand can go on with that $220 just pulled out of the pot, and one player getting it back. You could get your invested share as well.

I kind of understand security may have reasons to act immediately, and then pulling out the sum so he gets back the invested money as escorted out. The higher interest...

Might also depend on "why" the guy is banned.

If he's banned because the casino thinks he's an undesirable customer, I don't see any reason to not kick him out in between hands instead.

If he's (self-) banned because of a gambling problem, the right thing to do might be to remove him mid hand. In that case, making him forfeit his money doesn't sound right and I like the decision to give him his investment in the pot back.

The other question is what should happen to the hand. Declare it dead and refund all bets or let the remaining players play it out? With 3+ remaining players in the pot I would prefer for the hand to continue. With only two players left I'm not sure if that's the right call. I guess the floor could ask the two players away from the table and declare a dead hand if both say the don't want to continue?

Seems like an easy ruling. As soon as the SB was removed from the table by the casino, the hand should be dead, and everyone's money should be returned (including returning the Big Blind even though he folded). The casino voided the hand by removing that guy, so it should be ruled that the hand never happened and all money returned.

As BB has lost his blind, guess the hand must be declared dead. He could for example say he folded because of sb's action. And generally some of the players could say they'd acted differently had they known. But this is competing with letting it continue if everybody agree, which also can be option, respecting the play already put in. But maybe declaring it dead is stronger.

This is obviously a unique situation so I would be fine with some traditionally non-standard solutions like voiding the hand and refunding all monies and redealing. In fact, given that security pulled money out of the pot, which obviously changes the odds and decisions made along the way, this might be the ideal solution.

With only 2 players left, if you both agreed you'd rather play it out as is then I'd be fine with that ruling too.

KITN to dealer and floor too. With such an irregular incident happening (money being taken out of pot by security), dealer should not put the flop out without a floor approval. And floor should definitely be at the table monitoring when such an incident goes down - maybe it's not his fault he didn't know security was coming to remove someone mid hand, but mostly likely he should have known.

Having said the above, the described timing is a little hard to understand or believe. The SB calls, the OP calls, then security removes a patron and takes back his money, then the dealer puts out a flop before anyone can stop him? I can't imagine this sequence of events happening too fast for people to intervene.

I'm curious to the ruling.
Security does not have athuority to reach into a pot and remove $$$$$
they need to call the floor over to do so.

Well what ended up happening was this - the two remaining players played out the hand (there was no betting after the flop by us). The floor then gave the winner the $220 security took out of the pot from house funds. Seemed fair except I lost the hand and may not have been involved if not for the SB (he was very gamboly).

As far as timing, it all happened within a matter of a few seconds. The security literally swooped in and took him and his chips away and the dealer didn’t miss a beat in continuing with the hand as if nothing happened…! (New dealer.)

So the preflop goes...

CO limps
Button raises
SB 3 bests
CO calls
Button 4 bets
SB calls
CO calls

Then, the SB gets dragged off to poker jail.

Then, the hand is played out and is checked down through the river?

I'm just curious what game you where playing and what the cards were? How could that kind of preflop action lead to check-check, check-check, and check-check post flop? LOL.

It also seems that having the floor come back to reward the winner with $220 AFTER then hand was over, with no prior disclosure of this money going back into the pot, was also the wrong decision, as obviously if the players had known of the extra $220 in the pot, the post flop action probably would have (or at least should have) played out differently.

Every casino employee mentioned here did the wrong thing.

We were playing Plo5.

Not to derail the thread with actual poker strategy, but is it ever correct to open limp the CO in PLO5?

If they've witnessed that the money was not gambled legally (Examples including the casino not being permitted to accept the person's action, or theft), of course they can recover the chips.

I overlimped actually, it’s irrelevant to the post anyway.

they being the floor or pit NEVER a security guard
gaming regs are in place for things like this

Is there a gaming regulation that says outside of the dealer only a floor or casino management is allowed to remove chips from the pot? What about law enforcement?

I've never seen security take chips out of the pot but I've seen security remove a player from the table including his chip stack. Since the floor came over a minute later and asked the dealer what happened, I assume nobody in the poker room had anything to do with that.

Let's check Nevada Gaming's Regulation 5 on the operation of gaming establishments.

Regulation 5.170 merely requires licensees to establish a program to allow patrons to exclude themselves from certain activities, at a minimum. So if a licensee includes in that program an exclusion from the ability to wager at all, and the licensee's program procedures allow for security staff to enforce that exclusion, then they are well within regs.

Further, of course the bad actors clause of 5.011 prohibits licensees or their employees from "catering to... either socially or in business affairs, persons of notorious or unsavory reputation [etc]." There is no limitation given on how 5.011 is to be enforced by a licensee.

Or how about Regulation 28, List of Excluded Persons?

28.090 requires that a licensee request the excluded person immediately leave if already on the premises, and notify the Board and law enforcement upon failure to leave. Further, the licensee is forbidden to cater to the person. This is a duty of the licensee. They *have* to pull the chips out, and there's no reg that says a person with a specific title has to do it.

Heck, some places won't even have a pit boss do a blackjack back off.

The money should have stayed in the pot, and if he happened to win the hand, they would of confiscated it at that point so no, security guards shouldn't be allowed to grab money out of a live pot. Sounds like everyone jumped the gun there for sure.

A LOT of people limped from all positions when I planed 2/2/5 card that's nothing surprising.

Security probably could have looked on from the distance and waited until no hand was in play. Once they approach the player at the table, the option of letting him continue with the hand is gone if the player isn't allowed to gamble in the casino. If the floor was involved, they might be able to rule him all-in at that point but apparently no floor was present.

The fact that the casino matched the money that was taken out of the pot (even if it was from the promo fund) boggles my mind.

I played with a few regs in my time that tried to explain to me promo money is not the Casino's, it belongs to the players, and must be doled out in a certain way.

I think the casino operated exactly as they should have.

If a player has snuck in while they are banned they need to be removed immediately.

The fact that the casino replaced the $220 because of the impact it might have had on decisions by the other players was admirable. I have never seen a casino do that even when they made the mistake that caused the problem. Until now.

The casino cannot confiscate the winnings of a player who was not allowed to be in the casino. They can't even confiscate money that a player "steals" by not putting it in the pot after making a call and then picking up their chips and leave. What they can do is ban the player until they pay the money they owe or ban them forever anyway.

At Foxwoods many years ago a player who was 20 years old was one of the winners of a bad beat jackpot with KK and quads. When Foxwoods realized that the player was not 21 they did not give them the $100,000 or so that would otherwise have been given (because it clearly stated that you had to be 21 to win the jackpot and ID was required at the time of victory) . But Foxwoods did give the player the pot that had been won with quads. And then they banned the player (until they turned 21).

If the casino here had waited until the hand was over, a player who was not allowed to play at the casino could have won the pot and all the associated winnings. The casino then might have been liable to a lawsuit from the other players for not properly stopping the player from being in the casino. In part that may be why they added the $220 to the pot.

Well f me…that banned fckr earlier stacked me for $500 before he got the boot!