Hi all,

My poker room has some peculiar ways of doing things, I'm wondering how (un)common the following is :

When there are some allins, especially multiple stacks, and the betting is over, our dealers tend to just open all the cards and figure out who gets paid what once the river is dealt and the hands are show down.

So, if 4 people go allin before the flop, the dealer would open up all cards and figure out who wins how much at showdown.

Say for example player 1 goes AI for 35$ into 20$, player 2 for 55$, player 3 for 40$, and player 4 covers, the dealer will sometimes make player 4 put out 55$ before continuing, but will not create the side pots.

In that scenario the dealer would see who has the best hand, say it's player 3, he gives player 3 the 35$ from player 1, the 20$ pot, takes 40$ out of the player 2 stack, takes 40$ out of player 4s stack.
At that point he would kill player 3s hand and player 2 and 4 would both have 15$ in front of them, and dealer would then ship those 30$ to whomever had the best hand between player 2 and 4.

The reasoning is that it's just faster when you have several people allin to it that way than to create all the side pots.
Of course, this method could also create some mistakes and confusion. (Players not knowing they are involved in a side pot, for example, or being unsure at wth the dealer is doing at the end of the hand).

In case of 2 big stacks going allin, we usually also just go ahead and open the board cards, instead of taking the time to create the side pot.

Does this happen at all in any professional card room, or is it just amateurish and not recommendable at all?

I do that sometimes.
But I make sure the players know what I'm doing before pushing any chips.

If a dealer isn't competent and careful it's easy to get things really screwed up.

Good thing is when the big stack wins and I just don't have to figure out any side pots.

Its a disaster waiting to happen. and the only scenario where its faster is if the big stack is the winner of all the pots.

Unfortunately it not uncommon for dealers to do this .... and for players to tell the dealer "Just deal it out first"

+1 to every sentence. The benefit is so small and the cost is so high and for whatever reason the dealers and the players love it.

Yep.
I do it very rarely.

I announce what I'm doing before touching any chips.
I'm very clear and I've never had a complaint.

And sometimes even after dealing it out I will take the time to make side pots before pushing any chips.

I always make the pot right before dealing.... once saw a player try to leave room without paying the bet after the board ran out and he lost, that won't be possible at my game.

I don't mind this, however when certain dealers do it I just cringe. The problem with the way you describe it is that it is backwards. I would like to see the dealer find the best hand(player 3) and then take the $35 from 1, the $40 from 3, $40 from 2, and $40 from 4 and put it all in with the $20 in the main pot and leave it there. Then do the side pot, muck that winners hand and lastly push the main to player 3 after mucking all losing hands. I would be all over a dealer that pushed the main pot first before doing the side pot the way you describe.

I always suggest that they get the main and any 'under' side pots correct and then let the other 2 players with the largest stacks keep their chips in front of them ... but make them put 'something' out there so it's not forgotten.

So if you have 5 players all in ... get the main and 2 of the 3 side pots set, allowing the 2 largest stacks to keep their remaining chips out in front.

I've seen the 2nd largest stack scoop and then never get paid by the largest stack because he never had any chips (single chip callers beware) out in front of him.

There is usually always a question of 'what got pulled into the main' if the dealer doesn't get any of the pots 'right'. Getting the main pulled in should always occur IMO. GL

Yeah I'll leave 2 players for the last pot unmade. But the main pot and any other side pots always get done.

Agree with this. The most outside pot is okay to not have correct as long as the stacks are out in front and you communicate to the table what you're doing.

I favor making pots right in low stakes NLHE cash games (up to $2/$5), but making pots right for multi-way all ins in a higher stakes PLO game when they are running it twice and players are knowledgeable would be absolutely insane for example.

I would never want to attempt that scenario without the pots being right.

When having multiple all-ins and sidepots in a hand, I prefer the dealer to make the main pot and the smaller side pots correct before running the cards. If you're left with 2 bigger stacks playing into their own sidepot then I'm okay with figuring theirs out at the end, so long as all the pots that 3 or more players are eligible to win are correct up front. Even if you have a competent dealer that can figure out the pots at the end of the hand without any problems, you open yourself up to having half the table chiming in on what the dealer should be doing if you don't make the pots right before running the cards. As we all know, that's a headache waiting to happen and a big waste of time.

Where I wish dealers wouldn't figure out the pot until after the hand is the more common situation where you have a heads up all-in between two players with significant stacks, especially when it's obvious which player has the larger stack. Some dealers will kill a minute, sometimes more, counting down someone's 150bb stack, matching that amount from the other player's stack, then combining them to make a mountain of chips in the middle of the table. Then of course the larger stack wins the hand and it should have been as simple as sliding a neat stack of chips over to that player while leaving their stack physically intact. Most experienced dealers know this, but I still see plenty of dealers who decide they want to count out $500+ in red birds and force the winner of the hand to restack a mound of chips while the next hand is being played when none of it was necessary.

That reason is that it can save an enormous amount of time when the winner is one of the two big stacks. Even when the 2nd biggest stack wins its really only a HU count.

In cash games this is arguably important. Since most players are losers it benefits most players to take this time. However, in games in which time is paid this becomes more of an issue since by its very definition time is money...

In tourneys it is even more important. A couple of wild all-in situations and you are playing far fewer hands than the other tables.

I have seen the avoid making the side pots thing at every casino. It is really dealer dependent.

I have also seen:
- Dealers pushing the main pot first and then doing side pots...
- Dealers forgetting to get chips from an all-in player. One time this went undetected for 4 hands and caused a lot of butt hurt (though it was sorted out correctly in the end - with both players feeling they had been cheated)
- Dealers counting down the obviously largest stack first.
- Dealers that count in stacks of 5 (the norm) and then pile all the little stacks up once they have finished their count.
- Mistakes in counting. Which requires re-counting. This is fairly common. In most cases this is a non-issue because the chips are laid out in stacks of five (except for denominations of 25 which are in stacks of 4) so the recount takes little time.
- Dealers repeatedly making mistakes on the same hand when doing the side pots. Several times I have seen dealers give up and rely on players who have been keeping close track of what is going on...
- A player walk away from an all-in even though he had more chips and was still alive in the tourney!!! It took hours to chip him off because we were way before antes...

The drawbacks of not making pots right immediately as I see it:
- Sometimes dealers forget (and have to be reminded) to make the main pot right.
- A player in a cash game taking the opportunity to leave with his chips (I have only ever heard of this)
- A player in a side pot losing the main pot and then mucking his winning side pot hand because the pots were not decided in correct order.
- If mistakes by the dealer are made, the players have time before the hand ends to notice. But my experience is that mistakes are either noticed right away or not at all... It is usually only after a player stacks his chips that he notices he was shortchanged.
- I thought there would be more...

Not making the pots right before the runout on a 4-way allin in a PLO game with experienced players and an inexperienced dealer is a prescription for chaos and disaster.

One issue with making all the side pots first is keeping track which players were in for what side pot. I was taught to make a line from each pot to the player who left the last of their chips in for it, but a frazzled dealer might still get confused. I've seen some dealers put the chips directly in front of the player instead, but then you could forget which order they were in.

I just run it out and deal with it at the end now that I'm comfortable dealing. Players seem to prefer this, or at least they only yell when I DO make the side pots.

It's easier with cash because you don't have to make everyone show, you can just point to the biggest stacks and make them show first. Anyone who can't beat them will just muck and that's one less side pot to do. With tournaments if you don't make them all show right away they'll try to muck.

I actually had a floor run to my table and yell at me to stop counting the chips and just run out the board once. He thought I was trying to set up side pots. I then informed him that one player hadn't called yet and had asked how much the biggest stack was. Luckily he did call, won the hand, and had the 6 other players covered. Gotta love cheap unlimited reentry PLO tournaments!

On rare occasions a player will ask that the pot be made right before proceeding, and I always oblige. That or the table is really chaotic and I don't trust the players to not disturb their chips before I can finish.

True, but I was answering as if I was the dealer (which may not have been clear.)

Have you ever been experienced? (to quote Jimi Hendrix).
Seriously, if the dealer is experienced, I am usually happy to leave it up to them to either make up the side pots or to wait. Different dealers have different ways of sorting out the payouts at showdown, and they all work, if the players will leave them alone. But if the dealer is somewhat inexperienced (and especially if they aren't completely fluent in English), making up the side pots in advance is a good idea, IMO.

If the largest amount of dead money is less than the shortest stack, for the love of god don't make a billion sidepots. It is so extremely unnecessary it hurts my eyes.

I'm likely to not make the pots when there's a single all-in, and depending on the game and the chip amounts, I might not even fix the main pot before running out the board regardless of how many all-in players there are. But I've been dealing for several years and math & calculating side pots have always come easy to me.

Just this week, this made my job a little more difficult, however. On a 1/2 table there was an all-in for $36, and another all-in for around $70, with a 3rd player having the other two players covered. The $36 player had the best hand and the big stack had the next best hand.

I got the attention of both winning players and talked it out. "Okay, he has $36, so I'm going to give him his $36 all-in back, plus $72 more, plus all of the pre-flop money here in the main pot. And you [the big stack] will get whatever is leftover on the table."

I got a nod of acknowledgement from both players so I proceeded to do just that. As I counted out the $70 all-in player's chips out, I realized he was a little short of the $72 I needed so I took a few dollars from the big stack and completed the transaction.

Sure enough, as I'm dealing the next hand, the big stack starts questioning what I did, asking if the $70 player had had more chips all along, and wondering if he'd been short-changed. This is complicated by the fact that he speaks very broken English. I know I had the math right and the other players at the table did their best to back me up, but this is one of those times that if I had a do-over I'd have just made the main pot and side-pot in the first place before running out the turn and river.

Wow, I disagree with most people in this thread. You never pull anything into the main pot and you never make side pots once action is complete. Side pots are only made when there's an all-in and action still pending after that all-in (for instance, if 2 players go all in and 2 other players who cover call the all-ins, you build side pots; if all 4 go all in, no side pots).

Another example would be if 9 players go all in pre-flop. I wouldn't build any side pots. Run out the board and take care of everything on the river, no main pots or side pots need be built.

This is exactly where players get confused. They won the side pot, but in reality there is no side pot because the other player didn't have enough to cover and it wasn't counted until it was over. Hard for them to grasp that and I get floor calls somewhat frequently when this happens.

Thanks all, interesting to see all the different approaches