I was playing the 2nd day of a $10K tourney when my wife that was with me got a call that our 2 year old daughter was headed to the emergency room and was having trouble breathing. My sister was taking care of our daughter and she had gotten sick, high fever and now labored breathing. She was developing pneumonia.

We are hundreds of miles from home and roughly 30 eliminations from the bubble. My wife informs me we are leaving. I tell her to head up to the room and pack our bags and I proceed to go all in blind multiple times trying to get a big enough stack to blind into the money after I leave. Would have been nice to have another option available, but family is more important than $10K.

Glad to see they accommodated this couple.

I dont see what makes labor such an extraordinary event. Its actually a super predictable and ordinary event. Plenty of other situations, like freak accidents and illness would not let other people take over your stack, so why labor?

What if its a HU tourney and you only entered because you had perceived massive edge because of certain rec players in the pool.

What if a deal was proposed that you didnt take because the woman was bad, while the husband is a crusher?

My point is that any ruling should prevent future unfair situations. If its a rule that pregnant women can have others take over their stack, it has the possibility of creating difficult and potentially unfair situations for other players.

This situation is far more worthy of a special ruling than an expecting woman who choses to play a tournament.

TBH if she was pregnant and playing that's more than one person to a hand and she should have been disqualified for collusion anyway.

What if during the pre-final-table break the woman gets married to Phil Ivey at one of those drive-through chapels then comes back to the table and takes labor-inducing medication?

I think they really should have considered every possible related hypothetical situation before making a decision on a possibly one-time event.

Family is more important, yet you stuck around trying double up. Lol. Nice one.

What if it's a women's event? Should the husband still be allowed to play?

Needs love... Cmon people

To everyone saying 'she's expecing and shouldn't play' it is very possible the baby was due in another 1-2 months and came insanely early which is what I'm guessing happened. Obviously you shouldn't be entering Aussie events when your due date is MLK day but what if she's due late February-early March? It was probably as much of a surprise to her as anyone else.

I'm going to go ahead and agree with this, I feel like this is probably discrimination in favour of the softer sex. If a man were to be able to go in to labour or suffer some horrible accident or illness it is extremely unlikely his wife would be able to take over for him.

Husband takes over wife's stack, begins to play poker.

Other player asks: "hey man what are you doing here? Are you crazy? Shouldn't you be at the birth of your first child?"

Husband looks down at his sizeable chipstack: "that is my child".

You're an idiot. He just said they left and from the sounds of it, he went in blind for 5 hands and probably busted as his wife packed the bags upstairs.

The whole point of this thread is to address making Poker a more humane game. Yes, by prison rules everyone should be blinded off, no takebacks play for keepsies. But I personally and I'm sure some other rational people have no issues with a refund or alternative solution to someone losing their money when an extreme situation or emergency arises. If you contend there should be nothing of the sort, OK you've stated your opinion and point so please stop talking. The point of this discussion is to see if reasonable solutions can be found for unfortunate life circumstances that inevitably arise during poker tournaments.

You're clearly a very angry person with a small IQ so we can leave it at this. The hatred motivates me and continues to fuel my fire though, so bring it on as much as you can.

Well then it's one of those things, **** happens.

We live in a bull**** world of double standards, smh at this ruling.

I herebys copyright the concept of "tag team tournies" - will sell to Amaya for wun hundred mirrion....

What did your other wives say?

They've already existed. In fact, one of Doyle Brunson's bracelets is in Mixed Doubles.

Then there's nothing I can say to convince you that the ruling is correct.

BFD. Far worse than this goes on in every tournament (soft playing between crossbooked players, if not outright collusion) yet people still choose to play.

If this is the worst "cheat" I ever faced, I'd consider myself lucky.

Plus the TD can always use discretion. They don't HAVE to allow the stack takeover if there's any suspicion of an ulterior motive.

In short, get out of your EV bubble every once in a while. There's a world out there, and somebody's bringing a new person into it. Cut her a little slack.

A few comments. Why did she play a tournament while nine months pregnant? Why isn't her husband at home with the child too? It's seems totally fine and legit to me for the TD to do this. It makes me wonder what would happen with other circumstances. Like what if I got sick, could someone play my stack? Or I couldn't get back for a day 2? This is so rare and I actually have never heard of anyone ever even asking a TD if someone could take over their stack. I've always assumed as I'm sure many of us have that they would be very strict and say no. I would be interested to hear of any other situations where this has been allowed or denied and for what reason.

Don't take it personally. People jealous at somebody binking the ME for Millions and then cashing in HRoller and then PCA Turbo.. Its jealousy. Honestly if they aint trolling ya then youre doing something wrong.. Enjoy it. Hellmuth used to and still gets haters yet nobody can argue with his 14 Bracelets. Let your poker playing speak to the haters. When they've won 11MM they can talk

Unfortunately no poker tournament can ever be assuredly 100% clean because players in between tournaments do stuff that would theoretically compromise the integrity of a tournament (doing a last longer with a friend can even have an effect in a tournament but clearly no one is going to ever outlaw them) but what a venue can do is make sure not to potentially encourage a situation like this to happen. If real life gets in the way of a poker tournament and the player cannot play their stack, it should be blinded off and not let another player take it over. If the casino wants to give them a refund, that's their business. They certainly aren't entitled to do so. All of these things can lead to potential situations down the road that could be messy for both the casino and the tournament itself.

Having said that, it's in the rules at the Crown that you can have another player take over a tournament in an extreme circumstance, so nothing wrong ended up happening here. What I (and others) are expressing our opinions for is whether this rule is good or not. I clearly dislike it while others might not care for it. If I were a player in the tournament I would strongly argue against this being a thing as I would feel I could be getting angled or cheated against.

Would the bubble boy have a valid complaint?