Actually, I don’t know if “etiquette” is the right word.
I’ve been playing an occasional poker hand at this social poker club. It’s a pretty sweet set-up. They host daily tournaments for as little as $20 buy-ins. They don’t take any rake, so they make money by basically charging admission just to sit down at a table. At any rate, I was playing this afternoon (did okay - got sucked out on an all in: QQ v KJ (KJx on the flop - K on the turn - damn it!) but at one point, after a break there was a bit of a bru-ha-ha. The guy sitting next to me got up for break and for some reason took his chips with him. Then he sat back down at the wrong table and when he realized it and got back up, he took his chips and the chips of the guy who was supposed to be sitting there.
The guy who took the chips was embarrassed as all get out and the guy whose chips disappeared was pretty pissed but he was calm and cool about it. They had to sit there for five minutes to try to figure out who was owed what. Personally I think when all was said and done, Johnny Chip Victim got boned, but he sat back down with a, “whatever, let’s just play.”
The resolution was basically, “uh, I think this guy should get this much, Sound good?”
What would have been a better resolution? I was thinking, split those chips right down the middle for the two guys (their stacks seemed like about the same size). However, I think the proper solution would have been to disqualify Mr. Accidental Chip Stealer - but what to do with the chips?
Both those guys were still in it when I busted out so I’m not sure if there was any further issue.
Anything that the two of them can work out between them should be acceptable to everyone else. But if they couldn’t agree and as Club Dictator-for-Life I had to impose a solution, I’d say that Chip Victim gets to take what he considers to be his due, and Chip Stealer gets what’s left. Chip Stealer created this problem and, if adverse consequences must result to anybody, it should so far as possible be to him.
Unless you want to spend hours looking at the cameras, this was probably the best they could do.
However, I have to question whether this was really accidental. It’s pretty well known that in poker, you don’t remove chips from the table - especially tournament poker. OK, I could give him a pass on that. But sitting down in another seat that already has a stack of chips in front of it is suspect. And to then somehow mix those chips with your own when standing up again? Makes me think this guy could have been trying to pull something. I suspect removing any chips from any table (other than under the direction of a tournament official) is grounds for disqualification in most poker tournaments - partly to avoid this kind of issue. In such a case I believe the chips of the disqualified player would simply be removed from the game. In this particular case you would still have the issue of how many chips to restore to the innocent party, which I guess would have to be agreed between them and the tournament director.
Yeah, that was an incredible breach of ettiquette. You NEVER touch another players stack. The victim should be made whole to whatever extent makes him happy. Also, I would question the motive of the other guy for sure…
This is precisely what I thought. The scenario just makes no sense. NOBODY takes their chips from the table mid game; that is not a thing you can do in poker, it’s not a thing you are allowed to do, it’s not a thing I have ever seen anyone do. To then allegedly accidentally sit down at the wrong seat? That seems very unlikely. To sit down at the wrong seat when there is already a stack of chips there and claim to not notice that? I simply do not believe it.
As this is a tournament, not a cash game, IMHO Mr. Forgetful should have been entirely disqualified from the tournament, and the person whose chips he stole should have been given back his chips with a reasonably generous estimate as to what that total was. (It can’t be TOO generous, or that’s unfair to the other players.)
I have a different set of questions RE poker etiquette:
Is their any situation when a player has folded and doesn’t reveal their cards to the table, that another player may turn them over?
Is “cards speak” a universal rule, or just a courtesy?
I’ve been playing cards with a group for 20+ years. We all know each other and we accept both questions as inherently true: you don’t touch another players cards without their permission, and cards speak.
Recently I was invited by a coworker to join his group of friends in an informal Texas Hold’Em tournament: $20 buy-in, split pot (80/20), no re-buys. It was a large group of players, 12 split between two tables. I looked forward to testing my skill against new opponents.
On the second deal at my table I realized these guys didn’t play like my friends: someone flipped over a discarded hand, during the play, just to see the cards. A few hands later I folded my hand and pushed it aside. Someone reached across the table to grab my dead cards and I stopped them. Others told me it’s okay, once cards are dead they’re fair game. In my mind, that’s telling everyone how I play, and that’s not okay. I had revealed my dead cards before then, but I was sitting on two pairs and didn’t want the table to see that. Two guys wanted to boot me from the table but the host reconciled that from here forward, I could keep my cards hidden. (Honestly, I would’ve left except my friend from work drove me, and I didn’t want to pay for an Uber on top of the $20 I would’ve lost.) But the incident soured me, and I was the second player to leave that table.
My friend made it to the main table, and that’s where the next question arose: he claimed a pot with 3 of a kind, but when he tabled his hand someone pointed out he actually had a flush. The other player still in had a straight; he claimed he won the pot, since X misrepresented his winning hand. And he took it, without a challenge.
These infractions would not happen with my usual group. I’ve made it a point going forward to always ask these questions before sitting down against new players. But I wonder if I’m the outlier when it comes to poker etiquette.
My take is, hell no. Cards in the muck are in the muck. If someone asks and you want to show, then fine, but just reaching over like that … hell no. You’d probably get your arm broken in some joints with play like that.
The second question. I don’t know, depends on the place. I’ve only played at one club out here and it’s pretty casual. I mean, serious players, but nice people. I’m positive the cards would read themselves in that situation. And most people at the table would point it out and it would be accepted. In a casino? Same, I would suppose. Cut throat home game? All’s fair.
You are under zero obligation to show your cards unless it’s a showdown and someone has paid for that privilege.
During an ongoing hand is bald-faced dirty pool. You don’t get to see what cards have been eliminated while there is still betting happening. Do they look at the burn cards too? That’s some serious bullshit. If I choose to reveal my folded hand, it will be only be after the hand has concluded, and nobody has any inherent right to look at them at any time.
I expect the cards to be the final say. It’s not subjective or up for debate. So what if you didn’t know what you had? You still had it. There’s no rule against being an idiot.
Coming back to the question on how to split the chips between Mr. Grab Them and Mr. They’re Gone: Would it not have been easiest to count how much money the other participants at the table held? Substract that from the total starting amount and you get what Mr. They’re Gone is due. The rest is Mr. Grab Them (minus at least 10% to be spent on drinks all around). And the starting amount is known, right? Everybody starts with the same stack of chips to make the game fair, do they not?
100% agree with this. Shame those people ruined the game by contravening those rules, which as far as I know are universal in any sensible game of poker.
Yeah, this is the flip side of misreading the board to think you have a strong hand. Okay, you thought you had a straight, but you forgot that the number 5 exists. Sorry, you lose.
This is about as fundamental a violation of normal poker etiquette as is possible to imagine - just a step short of requiring a player to show his active hand to someone who has folded.
I’m amazed that anyone could believe this is acceptable, to the point of admonishing someone who objected. I’d have resigned on the spot: “Sorry guys - I thought we were planning to play poker.”
This will work if no-one has previously (legitimately) moved to or from that table, and if the number of rebuys/add-ons (if any) is also known. In practice, at a multi-table tournament (which this clearly was), this is unlikely - players have to move tables from a fairly early stage (to keep things fair. For example, in a tournament with 2 10-player tables, if the first 2 players eliminated are from the same table, one player needs to be moved from the 10-player table to the 8-player table as soon as possible. If this is not done, players at the shorter table will spend more money in blinds than those at the larger table, putting them at a disadvantage).
I didn’t mention that most of the players were under-30; I’m in my late 50s, and my coworker/friend is around 30. I may have been the oldest player there. These guys appeared to be familiar with each other, maybe played together a lot. I’ve been playing cards with my other friends since late 90s and I —assumed— we played the game correctly.
With each player eliminated, the blinds would raise (usually doubling). That discourages other players from limping along with short stacks, hoping to face fewer players. Even with re-buys (we set a ceiling on how many), each time someone re-bought, the blinds would raise.
Again, I thought this was the norm.
Yes, raising the blinds is normal (pretty much essential) in tournament poker, though the usual method is to raise them on a fixed time schedule rather than according to eliminations. My post you were replying to was a reply to a post that was answering the original question in post #1 of this thread - apologies for any confusion.