Hi all,

Last night I was playing plo in a casino and a player proposed side bets on other players in the game winning the pot. He and two other players next to him bet $10 each on their "horse" of choice in the game. If your horse won, you won the side bet. I thought it was a fun idea and even though against the rules (no side bets allowed on the table), I let it slide. The action player was having fun with it too so it was good for the game.

The night wore on and at one point I noticed the side bet was accumulating - apparently if none of the horses won, the previous bet was added on to, which I did not notice at first. The side bet was around $100 at this point and we were mostly seeing limped pots which were around $75. In this situation, would you speak up to enforce the rule against side bets to avoid possible soft play or collusion, or playing harder against certain players, in favor of the player's own horse or against another player's horse? (Or ask that they not make the bet cumulative?) With the side bet so large in comparison to the pot, the possibility of softplay was not just speculation.

Unlike other side bets like red or black, this side bet was not neutral and had the potential to impact the other players in the game.

Thanks,
DT

Thus the reason the rule in every casino I know of is no side bets. Once you crack open that door...

I know it is fun and starts very innocuous but it will grow/change to keep it interesting. OTOH, if the dealer allows it, you as a player will certainly look like a stick in the mud (or worse) if you say something.

It is right up there with table talk multi way or from out of the hand players. People see stuff happening on streams, home games, etc and think it is "cool". What they often don't know is where to draw the line. You want these fun players in the game because they are there to have fun and really don't care how fast they lose whatever their limit for the night is.

They treat things like house games so don't realize when they impact the play between others they are influencing outcomes and are favoring, maybe even helping one player over another.

TLDR: Ideally, get the dealer to stop it before it starts since once it gets going you will upset folks asking them to stop. If game is good enough, put up with it. If not, leave, change tables, or speak up knowing what that means.

I would say this is going too far. It could easily lead to someone trying to bet the other guy's horse out of a pot, not betting or mucking their hand because they would win more on the side bet than is in the pot, not to mention all of the potential table talk during the hand. If the dealer isn't stopping it and you don't want to speak up in front of them, mention it to a floor.

Red/black type of bets I'm ok with assuming it isn't a big portion of their stack.

Someone tried to convince the floor we shouldn't be allowed to do props (we pick a card like ace and if it comes up that player wins and in a certain spot or suit double) because I would play differently (not try to see flops when I had that card in my hand) and it was collusion. Even if he's right is the negative impact to him really worth bringing this to the floor and getting a ruling that's going to piss a bunch of people off? Guy I was playing props with left and wouldn't play non private games anymore and was obviously great action.

I've played with husband/wife that were accused of colluding because they don't bet each other and stopped playing as well.

This is also one of these situations where if people are doing something and not being obnoxious/telling people what to do to win their bet/playing absurdly different etc just please let people have their fun. I wish people thought more long term and were more cognizant of when rules should be strictly enforced and when being like this dissuades people who just want to gamble and have fun from wanting to play and ultimately destroys games or turns them private especially when player pools are small.

Couple years ago we played red/black for $5 from the stack in a 1/3 game. One guy felt the need to complain and made the dealer stop it. We're like OK, no worries we use real money out of pocket instead. Since nobody had bills smaller than $100 we played for that. Minutes later a different guy calls for the floor because "they're making a mockery of the game!". Floor apologetically told us that gaming regulations disallow prop bets between players.

End result was the same that smoothcriminal99 described. One guy left and never came back.

If there's some real risk that a prop bet negatively impacts me for significant money I would speak up. We don't want to see a situation where player A is heads-up with player B if said player A is going to win/lose a big amount of money depending on if player B wins/loses this exact hand. Otherwise i'll let it go.

If the limped pots were 75, I am assuming that the game was something like 5/10/25?

I can´t really see how it would effect my EV negatively if someone was trying too hard to win a 75 USD pot in order to lock up a 100 USD sidebet win. It´s what, three big blinds or three straddles? So what. Actually quite the contrary - if someone overadjusts his game chasing that sweet 75 USD limped pot, he´s more likely to make a mistake costing him several hundreds or more.

Let the players have their fun - sidebets are fun, stave of the boredom of folding in tight games and generally lead to a much more relaxed and fun table atmosphere. Can´t really understand why someone would complain to the floor about this if the casino lets it happen. Okay, if they were betting like 500 a hand it might actually matter, but come one, 10 bucks a hand that keeps growing until one of the horses win? That´s just a drop in the ocean, and even if you somehow happen to lose 10 or 20 bucks of EV due to the side game in a single hand, you more than make this up from the factors mentioned above.

Also if there are regs at the table involved, I for sure wouldn´t want to be seen as the fun-killing reg who calls the floor. That´s also long-term -EV.

I think side bets have their place in poker but I think betting on “horses” or putting bounties on players are just bad for the game. It forces the players you’re betting on to play a meta game they didn’t agree to/sign up for.

When I was a dealer though I would always enforce no prop bets if the players were being obvious about it. There’s no advantage or a very small advantage to me, and the dealers in certain rooms can get in a lot of trouble up to suspension or termination, since it goes against gaming commission rules. So it’s sort of selfish of the players to be doing that kind of stuff.

In a time game though I always thought it was a little bit more acceptable to tolerate the prop bets since the players are not paying a jackpot so the dealer can’t have that jackpot moment where their entire down now comes into question for any minor procedural issues that they ignore.

Side bets in our room were considered illegal gambling as they werent approved by the gaming commission. So definitely a no go. No one disputed they were fun, etc. But players just arent allowed to conduct unauthorized gambling on the premises.

Red/black is great. Not sure if this is standard, but we play the money (nearly always $5) is doubled if it's a monochrome board, and it's double again if the turn is the same color.

I've only had one guy complain in years of playing it, but it went nowhere since Portland doesn't have gaming regulations, lol (at least that detailed).