I Made a Mistake

It doesn't happen often, but I made a mistake. In my column titled "All In (or Not)," I described a situation in which a player had asked the question, "Is he all in?" This was confused with him declaring himself all in.

The situation:

I was playing in a $10-$20 no-limit hold'em cash game when the following situation took place:

Three players see a flop for a raise to $120. John, the first to act, bets $250, the next player folds, and Steve, the only other player in the hand, raises to $500. It's back to John, who reraises to $1,000. The action is back on Steve. John hears Steve say, "All in," and announces, "Call." The dealer starts to run the board out as Steve slides out another $500 in chips (presumably to match the last raise).

After the river is dealt, John shows pocket aces and Steve mucks his hand.

This is where it gets sticky. John slides out a stack of chips and some bills, and counts them down. It's a total of $950 more. The dealer looks at Steve and says, "You owe $950 more." Steve quickly protests.

The dealer, somewhat confused, tells Steve that he made an all-in reraise on the flop, and John called. Steve, realizing where the discrepancy is coming from, explains that he never made a reraise. On the flop, when John had reraised to $1,000, Steve had asked, "Is he all in?" Steve had assumed that once the dealer started dealing the cards out, John was in fact all in, which is why he slid another $500 into the pot to call the last raise.

The floorperson is called to the table to try to break down exactly what happened and make a decision. This is one of those complicated situations that isn't easy to rule on. In this case, the dealer and John both thought they heard Steve announce, "All in," and the hand played out, in their minds, as if he had. Steve, with the support of three other players at his end of the table, claimed that he only asked if John was all in. The rest of the table seemed to be pretty neutral.

Who is at fault, and what is the correct decision?

In that column, I suggested that the correct decision would have been to take the turn and river back, and play the hand out again. I thought that the decision made by the floorperson to let Steve keep the $950 was not the best one. I was wrong.

After receiving several e-mails from readers, I realized that my decision was not only incorrect, but bad. Two of those e-mails were well-written, and explained exactly why the decision that was made by the floorperson was the right one.

Justin Abbott, a floorperson and tournament director at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, wrote: I like the creativity you used to come up with a decision for the situation you described in your last column. I'm referring to the confusion of player B asking the dealer, "Is he all in?" and the dealer and player A thinking that B had gone all in himself. Player A calls and the turn and river are dealt.

The floorperson has to come to a conclusion as to whether player B asked, "Is he all in?" or stated, "All in." Once that has been determined, you have your answer for what needs to happen. If you determine that he has declared himself all in, why would you back up to prior streets? You have just determined that the action was complete, all in and call, and there's absolutely no reason to back it up and put out a new turn and river. You would do that only if there was a third player who had not called or folded before the turn and river.

I think the floorperson made a great call. You have to ask the people next to player B what they heard him say. From there, everything else makes sense; he pushed in $500 and never stopped the dealer from peeling off the river card, which he would have done had he known that player A had another $950 in chips.

Along the lines that you were thinking, you could, if you wanted to get creative, take the river back and let the turn stand and resume betting. Now you have taken the word of the players surrounding B, who said he asked, "Is he all in?" and called what he thought to be an all-in bet. This is the turn, but we're pulling the river card back in and reshuffling, and all that jazz. Now you complete the action from after the turn, since both players have chips and neither has acted on the turn yet. But I don't really like that too much, either, because maybe player B wouldn't have called the $500 if he knew that A had another $950 to fire on the turn and wasn't all in, as he asked.

Ben, a professional poker player, wrote: I recently read your column in Card Player about how to resolve the issue of the dealer thinking someone said, "All in," when, in fact, he did not. If I understand correctly, your solution to this particular instance is to take back the turn and river after the hand was played out, and allow the player who asked if the other player was all in to act, either folding, calling the additional sum of money, or reraising, as the dealer originally thought he did. This is fine, and probably ideal, if the players never got to a point of showdown. But the player who believed he called the other player's all-in bet has already shown that he had A-A. It's hardly fair to take the action back to the flop, and allow the other player to either fold, call the additional $500, or reraise up to $950 on top, knowing exactly what his opponent's cards are. This allows him to make a perfect decision every time, and gives his opponent, who has done nothing wrong, no recourse. I'm not sure there is actually a good solution to this issue, other than the preventative measures that keep it from happening in the first place, such as forcing players to put the entirety of every intended wager into the pot, rather than allowing them to merely say "all in" without pushing their chips forward (which, of course, you mentioned in the column). However, in the absence of an ideal solution, I think the best, though unfortunate, solution is to award the pot, comprised of all the chips except the last $950, to John. He doesn't get everything he expected to get, but he is guaranteed a win, which should be some consolation to him, and he gets the $500 call that Steve actually intended to make (which, if Steve was significantly behind on the flop, he would not make while knowing John had A-A and $950 behind). Steve should be fine with this resolution, since it's exactly what he thought happened in the first place. Although perfect fairness and adherence to the rules are always ideal, in the absence of that possibility, sometimes a compromise that leaves both parties relatively satisfied is necessary.

Although I was wrong about the decision, that doesn't change the two points that are highlighted by what happened: (1) Don't say the words "all in" unless you are going all in. (2) There is no good reason for poker rooms not to force players to put the chips they are betting into the pot. Time and time again, situations come up that could have been prevented if chips that were bet were actually put into the pot, instead of left sitting in front of a player, where they sat when the hand started.

Mike O'Malley is a consultant for www.PartyGaming.com, and can be reached at [email protected]. His website is updated regularly at www.rzitup.com.