Several years ago, someone played a joke on me that felt slightly cruel at the time but was certainly funny to everyone else at the table.

I had a full house heads-up on the river (2/5 NL), and made a fairly substantial bet. My opponent starts tanking, and I stare neutrally at the middle of the table as I tend to do in significant situations where I don't want to give anything away.

After about 30 seconds, I hear him clearly say "all-in". I immediately say "call" and fastroll my hand. I then look up to see the villain has no cards. He had silently folded before saying anything I didn't notice from where I was looking.

Doesn't change anything. There's no financial penalty for violating OPTAH. Just proves the other guy needs a talk with a floor to explain what behavior is acceptable at the card room and what's not.

I don't think it should make a difference as to whether it is binding or not. But the verbal statement aggravates the situation.... you whether or not the third player folds to the verbal all-in is not the only issue with this conduct.

If we accept it is a joke the question is what is the joke? The joke would apparently be that it is an absurdity for anyone to not fold in this situation when the apparent rock makes a huge overbet ..... and so what is the offenders real defense here .... well I wasn;t actually raising I was just violating one player to a hand and giving advice to the remaining player.....

(There is no scenario where this player is not a complete jackass for doing this but that is not why it should be binding .... that is why he should get a kick in the nuts as well has having his bet be binding)

I hears a similar story, and the floor enforced the all-in, since it affected action. Cannot confirm if it was true, so it probably wasn't, but the guy who did that should be at least 86'ed.

Any dealers or floors encounter this situation? Can you ever hold a player not in the hand to a binding declaration if it affected action?

^ ^ I am 100% with psandman here.

Usually when people make the 'hahahaha raise' joke, it has less to do with the other players action, and more to do with how ridiculously bad their cards are. In their mind, it is funny, because no one would ever consider raising after seeing 74o for the 4th time in 5 hands.

I don't honestly think the OPTAH angle is that applicable, but I am frequently wrong.

If he had possession of his cards for even a split second after saying raise I'm calling the floor.

If the players involved want to let it go they can tell the floorman.

A couple of different questions getting mixed together in this thread.

The first question is whether the dealer should have ruled it a raise which is what psandman initially was answering. I agree.

However, it is clear that the dealer decided that it wasn't a raise and mucked the cards. The second question is whether the OP should have called over the floor to over rule the decision. This is a bit like the "I can see the villain's cards next to me. What do I do?" There's no "right" answer. I'd let it go, but I'm not playing professionally. In this case assuming the player is a crusher, it is 5 hours of profits. A pro really can't afford to let that kind of money go. So while I wouldn't do it, I'd be fine with someone else doing it.

Finally, the Sands isn't some 3 table room in a bar in the middle of nowhere. There are people playing seriously there.

Yeah and this is important. It's not like the old question about whether or not forcing someone to show is always in your best interests. There's a quantifiable benefit to enforcing the action here.

It's probably the same people in all the threads.

I consistently oppose holding people to accidental bets and oppose holding villain to a joke bet here (the fact that the joke is not funny is irrelevant - nobody contests that he meant it as a joke). The underlying rule is that as much as possible, people should be allowed to do what they intended to do.

Raising to $50 in a 1/2 game after 2 limpers is quantitatively unusual - that is, you rarely see it. It's grossly oversized relative to an average or median raise, and UTG thinks it's unusual enough to mock. He may be right or wrong on that (I get mocked all the time for making the correct play) but there's nobody who contests that's what he meant.

In an ideal world, dealer (not the player) warns Villain and Villain apologizes. And if the dealer doesn't do this, then OP certainly has the option. But that option comes with consequences and when you're the guy raising to 25 bb and then insisting someone with a dead hand put money in the pot, it's going to use up all the social buffer that you have.

Maybe for some people it would, but if I were in the game, I would love seeing the db have to pay the bet, the OP would go on my list of players I respect, and the dealer would go on my poop list.

I have no problem enforcing the raise and would expect the dealer not to give the player the option of doing anything other than raising. Guys like this are in some way bad for the game. It creates a 'home game' feel to the table where everybody starts pulling similar crap and then it escalates from there. You can give this guy a 1,000 warnings and he won't stop until he faces an actual consequence.

Disclaimer: I'm an ******* and hate this sort of crap.

when you raise to 50 in a 1-2 game over a few limpers expect to get made fun of

Should you also expect to have your hand called out?

OP is clearly an angleshooter who found a legal reason to steal $100 and came here looking for justification. He is most likely bad at poker and horrible at life.
I usualy deal with aholes like this by sticking to IWSTH rule (i hate that rule) in the most painful way i can find during that session.

It's not like the joker provided any great insight. Does the table really think the guy that has folded for hours is popping it to 25x pre with Q2o? Of course not.

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The way I understand it, he accurately called out OP's exact hand. Seems like a problem to me.

A guy goes 25x after not getting involved for hours... AK isn't exactly a soul read. He guessed what pretty much everyone was thinking. Just my opinion.

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That doesn't excuse it. The guy who talked and fake raised sounds like the tool at the table I hate to play with. Hard to believe so many people are defending this behavior.

No one is defending the behavior. We are just saying that forcing him to put in a raise, with no cards, over what was obviously (to everyone, including OP) a joke, which didn't cause any mistaken action behind him, is bad judgment.

There are other more fair (and less fun killing) remedies to curtail that behavior in the future.

Seems to me most people (including you) are defending the behavior, and I haven't seen any suggestions about how to discourage the behavior in a way that a douchebag like that might take seriously but not ruin this "fun vibe" that you seem to assume has been going on (even though nothing in OP implied it was a fun table).

How about throwing out the talker? I would also be in favor of that, but do you think that would be less likely to ruin his fun?

Well, you can continue to assert that if you wish, but I will just keep telling you that I'm not, and pointing you to the many places where I've said it was a stupid joke and that he should be warned for doing it. Doesn't sound like I'm defending the behavior to me, but maybe you have a different definition or something.

I haven't given any opinion at all yet about the "calling out his hand" part, mainly because it was added after most of my other posts. I will say exactly what you should be able to guess I will say: no one should be talking about hands when multi-way, so he is out of bounds with that, and it (also) deserves a warning. I would not throw him out for it without warning him first, unless he has otherwise shown himself to be a problem case already.

Yes, I assume that players making jokes at the table, however regrettable for their bottom lines, and however terrible their senses of humor, are trying to have a good time while playing poker. You are of course free to try to snuff that out wherever you see it. I don't think you'll make a lot of friends that way, but it's your call if you want to try to convince everyone that a deathly quiet no fun table is the best way for poker to be played by all.

Not really because you cant fold until the bet size comes out.

If the " joker" has been a DB earlier about other stuff and has gotten a warning or reprimand then maybe ruling the "joke raise" as valid is warranted. If this is a one off event , then a simple warning from the floor should suffice. I doubt many folks think the jokers action is a trifle to be ignored! It needs to be stopped. The OP asked if it was OK to insist on the raise. It was OK, I just would not have insisted personally unless the "joker" was some kind of target of mine due to past behaviors or encounters.

When playing online, there are two types of tables - real money and fun.
In a casino there are no fun tables. Of course it's great to "have fun" when playing but not at the expense of the integrity of the game. Key words like bet fold raise, etc. need to be enforced. Keep the fun to Yankees vs Red Sox or trump vs Hillary.

Also, anyone that thinks that the 50 was a bad bet, is not a good player. Do you never change up your game according the the players at the table and only play one way? I adapt my game, and as I said we had a calling station.