Hi everyone,
We have a friendly 0.25$/0.5$ home game. Last night something happened in our poker game .
A player that his buy in was 75$ and was almost even (maybe 3$ plus), hid 25$ of his own chips and played the last 20 minutes of the session. During that time once in a one hand he raised preflop and was re-raised to all in by another player, but he didn't call the all in and folded the hand. Although he had a monster hand.
In the following he didn't play almost any hand except one hand against another player and he won a pot around 23$.
At the end of the game he had around 105$ (plus 30$) and we were surprised that he had that much chips. Because everyone saw that he had around 60$ chips and thought he might be minus.
We asked him and he explained that during that time (last 20 minuetes of game) he wanted to leave and cash out any time (it was a 6 hours session and anyone can cash out wheever he wants) and because of that he kept part of his buy in chips in his hand.
He claimed that his action didnt affect anyones games. He claimed also that he hid chips from his buy in not from his winning. So, its not Ratholing or .... . And also he said it was his first time that he did such a thing.

Anyway, at the end we punished him and forced him buy paying 50$ to the loosers of that session.

So here I have a question from you guys: ''Was ths punishment too much or was it not enough? What kind a decisions should be made in this situations ! ?'' There was a no ending discussion at the end of the game!

I repeat that this is an absolutely friendly match and we are all friends. But we have some rules to keep the game legit.

I would be glad to hear your opinions.
Thanks.

that sounds off. I've never heard of chips being distributed as a penalty.

honestly with home games, if someone's breaking a rule, the approach I almost always follow is to have a quick chat with them, make sure they know the rule exists and why, and if they repeat the conduct, consider whether I want to invite them back.

Sounds like you're a bunch of bad losers.

If he's cheating, don't let him play.
You can't just take his money ...

Making somebody pay a penalty is ridiculous.

I don't like ratholing but unless your game has a policy that people can't re-enter without matching their previous stack, what he did wasn't that much out of line.

He should have said "alrighty guys, I'm going to cash out. If you want me to come back into the game with a lower amount of chips I'm willing to do that. Otherwise I'll just go home".

Him doing it secretly isn't OK but the correct punishment after the fact is to tell him to not do it again.

Before you start your next session get everyone to agree to the following rule:

Once you buy in, all chips that you have bought or have won, must remain in play, and visible, at all times, until you cash out.

The penalty for violating this rule will be . . .

I don't know what that penalty should be. It certainly shouldn't be arbitrarily making you give $50 to losers. That truly makes no sense. I could see, since it is a friendly game, making the offending person buy pizza the next week - or put money in a splash pot so that everyone has a chance to win them. I think all you really need to do is make sure everyone knows not to do it, and that will probably be the end of it.

Was that $50 a rule? Or you made it up on the night?

Doesn't sound like a friendly game with friends to be fair.

If he knew what ratholing was and did it anyway, don't invite him back.

If he's a clueless noob and doesn't know any better, simply explain that it's in bad taste and why, or better yet... declare the cash-in/out policy ahead of time.

FWIW I'd say your reaction (punishment) couldn't have been worse aside from punching him in the face. I'm shocked he willingly paid up.