So there are three guys playing poker and each one brought $200 to the table. After several hands and
Abe has $300
Ben has $150
Chuck has $50
and the pot on the table is $100.
Some questions:
1- Can Abe buy the pot by putting in $160 (an amount neither of the other two players can see)?
2- If not, let’s say that Chuck feels good about his hand and goes “all in” with his $50. Does this mean that Abe and Ben must put in $50 each to stay in the game AND that they must show their hands, OR can Abe and Ben (who also feel good about their cards) continue playing against each other?
3- If Abe and Ben can and do continue playing, let’s say that the pot on the table ($250 after Chuck went all in) grows to $350 ($50 in raises from Abe and Ben). Chuck wins the hand. Does this mean Chuck gets the pot, or does he have to give back that final $100 that he wasn’t a part of?
Nope. It’s not line in old movies, where the hero would have to throw in his watch to keep playing. Modern poker is invariably played with table stakes, meaning you can only play with the chips in front of you, and you can always call as much as you are able, with the unmatched excess being returned to the bettor.
(There is a phrase “buy the pot”, but it means something else. Say each player checks (takes no action) in turn. The last player to act may opt to bet out in hopes that no one has anything, thus buying the pot, which consists of antes and blind bets.)
TNW Psycho has this one correct.
Answered above. You can only win what you were able to match. In this case, whoever comes in second wins the side pot.
Right. It’s somewhat colloquial. The last guy to fold will often say to the bettor: “Well, you bought it” - meaning: “I’m not convinced you have much of anything, but I don’t feel like putting up my money to find out.”
This is why I was wondering if “buying a pot” meant outspending your opponents. I remembered seeing an episode of Maverick (the revived series Garner did in the early 80s and set a century before) in which after all but one have gone all in the last man says “There’s thousands of dollars in this pot and I could buy it for ten dollars” and Maverick says “Not and live to walk out the door”, which reenforced that notion.
In fairness, poker rules back then were probably vastly different from the ones we play with today. Even today the finer points can vary from casino to casino.
All of the replies are missing the relevant point, which is that it depends on whether you are playing limit poker or no-limit poker. If it is no-limit poker, then Abe could only bet upto $150 ,the amount that another player could match. In that cases, the responses about the side pot scenario are correct.
Not sure I agree with JSexton’s assertion that “modern poker is invariably played with table stakes”… but in home games, there generally is no requirement that players start with the same amount of money, nor is there a limit to them adding to their stack once the game is in progress.
In casino play or online, you basically have two options: tournaments, where everybody starts with the same amount of money, or sit and go, where you can sit down with any amount of money (although most tables have a minimum) and can re-buy more chips if your stack gets low.
I would not want to play in a home game where the limits / stakes where such that a player with a big stack could just take the pots in the way that the OP describes. That’s not poker.
Sorry for the confusion. Table stakes doesn’t mean that you can’t add to or take away from your stack. Just the opposite, actually; you can take some of your chips off and not have them at risk. No one can force you to go off the table to stay in a pot.
@anson: That’s not at all what limit and no-limit mean. Even in limit games, you can easily bet more than what your opponent has in front of them, once they’re short stacked. And exactly the same rules that I described apply to the overage.
If the OP’s scenario 1 were how it worked, wouldn’t the entire game be decided by who won the first hand? Someone would have the most money after the first hand, and if you could “buy the pot” by betting more than anyone else could, why wouldn’t you do so every time? You’d be getting your own money back, too, after all.
Every cardroom I’ve played in had a rule that you can’t take chips off the table unless you were leaving. Taking them off the table is called ‘rat holing’ and it’s poor sportsmanship. Only exceptions I’ve seen tolerated (and it’s actually accepted as normal) is tips for dealers and cocktail waitresses. But you can’t win a few hundred from someone, take it off the table, and still play with the guy. The chips stay in play as long as you sit at the table.
It used to happen in illegal backroom bar poker games. It’s actually the reason I quit playing poker(was about 10 years ago or so). We were playing for around 100 bucks a pot on average, with some going up to 300 or so. I had an unbeatable hand, but the guy pulled out $2500 and bought the pot.
It’s bad form, but nothing actually against any rules. I was told he got invited to never come back after I left. It’s pretty dangerous too. There are guys who walk around with that much when they go to those games, unfortunately I wasn’t one of them.
In casinos or serious card rooms you can’t take a part of the chips of the table durinf a hand. There are different forms of poker games (cash games, tourneys, sit&go, …) but I never heard that something like this would be allowed. My poker knowledge is made up of personal experience and poker blogs so I can’t say it for sure. I wouldn’t paly at a table if it was possible to leave the table with your chips during a hand.
I had a friend who was a poker player and a novice card counter. He told me a story of playing poker in Vegas with some rich slob who always bet the maximum and raised the maximum every hand - regardless of his cards. He just liked to buy the pot. He won many hands this way, but my friend realized what he was doing, and had enough money to stay in the game if he even had two pair - he said he won thousands of dollars off of him.
I worked in the casino biz for many yrs. and played low stakes poker. The term also means a guy that keeps calling to the max and throwing a lot of money in in hopes of intimidating the other players into folding, thus winning the pot even with poor hands.
The larger the stakes the less of that you see. For instance, I started out playing very low stake games of 25 cent/50 cent poker. That low of a game always had pot buyers. However, the $20/$40 games had way less because it would cost a lot of money $200 to around $1,000 pots and one or two of those would wipe most people out. When you get at those levels and beyond, people play very tight and are usually throwing away 8-10 out of 10 hands and only going in on very high pairs or Ace/King suited, etc. (standard strategies right out of the book.)
Assuming you are talking about no-limit Texas Hold 'em tournaments (just because this is what’s most popular these days):
No. Everything over $150 isn’t playable and is returned to Abe. Ben would have to call the $150.
Chuck would call $50, his all-in. If Ben is not in the pot then everything over Chuck’s $50 is returned to Abe. If Ben also calls, then a main pot and side pot are created, very similar to #3 below.
If Chuck puts in $50, then Abe and Ben must also do so to stay in the pot. Yes, Abe and Ben can continue playing and betting against each other. Because they can keep playing, no one shows their cards. (Knowing Chucks cards can give information to Abe and Ben.)
There are actually two different pots. Chuck is eligible to win the $250 that were the matches for his all in $50 bet. This is called the main pot. Abe and Ben can continue to bet, but they do so in a separate pot called the side pot. In your example, this side pot is $100.
Chuck can only win the $250. Even if he has the best hand, he cannot win the other $100. Abe and Ben are the only players eligible to win the side pot of $100, so whichever of Abe and Ben had the best hand wins it.
This process can be repeated as many times as needed, splitting off as many side pots as needed. The most I’ve seen personally is four pots in one hand, but the number is only theoretically limited by the number of players at the table willing to go all in.
The keys are that (1) You are only eligible to win money that you have bet towards, (2) You can’t bet money that no one can match, it is just returned to you, and (3) pots can be split up to make sure point 1 holds.