I fail to see your point. I believe the guy should have lost all of his chips. He called the hand in time as far as I can tell. But that still fails to recognize the fact that both of the players in the hand seemed to accept the outcome. Any similar events that happen in the future are irrelevent to this discussion. I suppose they could introduce a challenge by instant replay, but as of now, that isn’t the rule.
What exactly do you mean by a less friendly outcome? Some sort of wild west shoot out? I don’tknow what the rules are on challenging a refs ruling but if you’re suggesting it could turn violent, well, maybe… unlikely, but always possible in any situation. So you suggest… what exactly?? If it were me and I were the winner and happy with the ruling I’d tell anyone else it really isn’t their concern if they weren’t in the hand or at the table. I’ve seen players in hands do all sorts of things. Such as running the cards twice. If the ones playing agree to the terms then it’s all good.
My point is that when an incident shows that a rule is quite obviously not being applied correctly, it’s a good idea to address the issue so it doesn’t recur, and a bad idea to say “Well, the players directly affected seemed to accept the error, so I guess everyone should.”
The less friendly outcome I’m imagining would be when this sort of error results in a serious injustice that directly affects a tournament’s results. It’s of course easy to construct such a scenario. Should this happen it would make everyone wish the countdown process had been clarified when the problem first became apparent.
Surely you’ll agree that when the WSOP Tournament Director is claiming that the time from “ten seconds” to “one” is 10 seconds, the tournament has a rules interpretation/enforcement problem that needs to be fixed. We’re also entitled to wonder what other goofball notions this guy may employ when directing his tournament.
While I agree with those who think the countdown was not done ‘correctly’, I think the ruling was made correctly in the spirit of the rule. I mean, we’re not talking space shuttle launches or last second field goals. The guy was simply being asked to make a decision. It’s his own fault for waiting till the last second, and I think the only reason we are discussing this is because he seemed to benifit from the ruling.
The rule is designed to speed up the game. I doubt anyone considered that a player would ever wait til the ‘last’ second as happened here.
A peculiar post, given your username. The same logic would dictate that clearly, no restaurant worker would wear exactly the minimum number of pieces of flair, so any waitress who doesn’t wear several pieces more than that needs a talk from her manager.
The rule as written very clearly considers just that. If it were enforced as written there’d be no problem.
Your point is analogous to saying “I doubt anyone considered that the difference between a 10-high and a 9-high flush would really matter much.” In fact it does matter, it was considered, the rules are clear, they are enforced properly, and no arguments ever ensue as to which hand outranks the other.
So, what you are saying is that the 1 - 0 interval should not be used and it’s the player’s own fault if he misses a call by waiting until the last second.
So that means that th 2 - 1 interval is now the last second and should not be used and it’s the player’s own fault if he misses a call by waiting until the last second.
So that means that th 3 - 2 interval is now the last second and should not be used and it’s the player’s own fault if he misses a call by waiting until the last second.
Can you see where I’m going with this?
Chronos- I don’t really like talking about my flair.
Others- as I said in my first post, #11, I completely agree that the player should have been given 1 second after ‘one’ in the countdown, and I understand the slippery slope in not following the letter of the rule. My point was merely that the player had (according to an earlier post) at least three minutes before “clock” was called, and then 1 minute to act.
The four minutes the player has to act is not some kind of test that should be difficult to for him to accomplish in the time given. He’s not being asked to run a mile before he answers. The time limit is merely there to help move the game along. An important rule yes, but not one you expect to see really tested like this. Most players would be expected to answer when the know their time was short.
Since I know of no physical difficulty, or strategical advantage in waiting until the last second, I am surprised a player would risk losing a hand by waiting until the very last instant to make his decision.
E.T.A. I see the rule as being an official way to say,“Dude, while we’re still young!”
You’re clearly right. But when the issue arises there needs to be a way to force a call/fold action in a manner that does not lead to controversy.
The Rules contain just such a provision. But the WSOP has (bizarrely) chosen to apply this in a way that does not match what’s written and thus does generate controversy. Players who have seen this goofy procedure in action can easily avoid falling foul of it in future (by treating “1 second” as the deadline). Better would be for the WSOP to follow its own rules.
Okay. When I watch the video, one of the floormen is heard to say, “You should have called at 'Five.” Oh, really?! Then why even bother with a count? Why not just allow a dealer to kill the hand, whenever? My position is that if you’re going to have a countdown, then it should be done properly. There’s a $70M prize pool at stake after all.
I agree. I find long tanking annoying. Which is why the clock rule exists. I think that he was waiting until the last second in a vain hope that Bort would give up some kind of tell or maybe flash a card.
I agree the guy called on time and should have lost all of his chips and been out. Had he actually had the winning hand I’m sure he would have made a stink out of it. But if he had a better hand then I doubt he would have waited so long to call. He seemed to be thinking that the guy was bluffing but he was wrong.
I still contend the only thing that matters in this case is the 2 people that were in the hand (and it may be argued anyone else at the table). I think the ref was wrong, but I still side with his decision (even if the decision would have been the opposite). Personally, I would have decided he called and lost the hand. Either way though, as I said before, the winner was content with the decision and life goes on. Our opinions of a split second decision mean nothing.
The Floor’s decision is final. It’s like a bad call in baseball. Still, that can only apply to a point. Can the Floor rule that three pair (not a poker hand but I see this often with beginning players who don’t understand that one of their pairs has be counterfeited) beat two pair. But, with something as (apparently?) ill defined as counting backwards from ten, I guess the Floor’s decision has to stand.
Well, Bort did complain. Not as vehemently as I would have (and certainly not as much as his personality would have suggested) but he did complain. The guy in the Seat Four (who was not even in the hand) seemed to being doing most of the complaining.
Yeah, life goes on… until next time. If the WSOP decides that a countdown ends as at 1 rather than 0 and this is stated explicitly, then at least next time we will know in advance.
He means “counterfeited”, a poker term. In hold’em, when the better hand becomes the worse hand due to a card having changed the board texture (as opposed to a card having only helped the initially worse hand), you say that the initially better hand has been “counterfeited”.
The term is most commonly applied to the following situation involving two pair.
Hero holds 67o
Villain holds AKo
flop and turn: 267K
The hero has two pair and is way out in front of the villain’s pair of kings. If the river is a deuce…
board: 267K2
…the villain earns two pair through no particular quality of his own holding. In fact, the hero’s original two “earned” pairs are both better than deuces. Alas, he loses anyway, since the higher pair takes precedence (and there’s no such thing as three pair). Many beginning players misread this situation.
One says that the hero’s two pair has been “counterfeited”.
