Illegal Bet Sizesby Bob Ciaffone | Published: Jul 06, 2001 |
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I have never played in a poker game – or heard of one – in which there wasn't some governing control by poker law over the amount of money you could bet. In a fixed-limit structure, the size of the bet is specified on each betting round. In spread-limit, you have a range that specifies the upper and lower limits. In pot-limit, you are not supposed to exceed the size of the pot. Even in no-limit, although you can bet whatever you have in chips, there are restrictions. There is a minimum bet size, and also a minimum chip size. In other words, you would hardly ever be able to make a wager of 50 cents, or $100.50. This is because even when going all in, the minimum bet is the size of the smallest chip used in the game, and bets are rounded off so the game is not unduly delayed. In this column, we will discuss poker law as applied to the bet size, and how we should rule if the law is not properly followed.
The subject of improper-size wagers is a lot more complicated than it sounds. Furthermore, not everyone who runs a cardroom sees things the same way, so there is a lack of uniformity. In fact, most cardroom rulebooks do not even address this subject at all. So, I will be presenting to you my own views.
Let's first look at a seemingly simple situation. The game is $10-$20 limit hold'em. On the turn (fourth card), the wager is supposed to be the upper limit of $20. Unfortunately, the first player to act bets only $10, the lower limit. Attention is called to this immediately. How should the situation be handled?
Suppose the dealer said to the player, "The bet was supposed to be $20; do you want to bet $20 or check?" This would be giving the player the option of taking money back out of the pot that had been bet. I do not know of any cardroom that would allow this. A player does not have the right to put money into the pot, get a reaction from his opponents – no reaction also conveys information – and then snatch the money back. So, a player cannot take his wagered money back even if no one has acted on the bet.
There are basically two ways we could deal with this situation of an improper-size bet in the rules. The first way is to tell the player that he has to either make the bet good or throw his hand away. The second method is not to give the player any options, but tell him that he must wager the correct amount. I favor the latter method, so let's take a closer look at the first method (offering an option) and see why certain aspects of it are undesirable.
In the example we just looked at, no one had acted after the player who bet. But suppose the player on his left had raised, putting in $40, before the error in bet size had been detected? Would it be proper to allow the bettor to fold now, instead of making the bet correct? This seems quite unfair. That would mean the player benefited by making an error, which is the wrong thing to allow in any game. Even if the player had only called (instead of raised), it would still be wrong to allow the bettor to fold. Maybe there were only three people in the pot, and the bettor was running a bluff. Since the lower amount got called, he might figure that betting the larger amount would get called also, and now he can escape full punishment by throwing his hand away and losing only half a bet. If you give the player an option after people have acted behind him, it gives him the opportunity to benefit from the information conveyed by those actions. This is simply not fair.
I think that it is clearly wrong to allow a bettor to make an illegal-size bet and be able not to make it the correct size, and, instead, fold if there has been action taken behind him on that bet. The only question is whether we should allow a player to throw his hand away rather than bring his bet up to the proper size if there has not been action behind him. I say no, for a couple of reasons.
First, when you put money into the pot, you are in a sense making a statement that says, "I am betting." If you had actually said, "I am betting," you would be forced to bet, according to modern poker law, which states that verbal action is binding. Is putting chips into the pot any less of a commitment than saying, "I am betting"? No. In fact, one of my favorite rules, which was introduced by me to Hollywood Park Casino and is now standard in a lot of places, addresses the point of putting an insufficient amount of chips into the pot when raising. The rule says that if you put extra chips into the pot, that is the equivalent of announcing a raise, and you are required to make the raise. (The reason for this rule was to prevent a string bet to be called in a situation in which the player obviously intends to raise, but accidentally shorts the pot a chip or two when doing so.) Allowing a player to muck his hand when he has made a short bet is a violation in spirit of treating poker as an honorable game in which you are required to do whatever you say.
My second objection to allowing the bettor to fold instead of bring his bet up to the proper size is the fact that information is conveyed by means other than actually acting. When a floorperson is called over to make a decision, the ruling suggested or requested by a player often says something about what he holds. For example, if one player yet to act was willing to let the fellow throw his hand away, but the other wanted the bet made good, we know which of those two players has the better hand and might raise. So, we must realize that even if no one has acted behind a player, he can still receive unauthorized information as a result of a decision.
Now that we have talked some theory, let's look at some actual decisions. Last year, this situation arose in a pot-limit tournament. When the structure was $300-$600 blinds, a player on the flop tried to bet $500. This was an illegally low amount, as the rules of hold'em and Omaha state that you must bet at least the amount of the minimum bring-in – here, the big blind – unless you are going all in. The ruling was made that the player could not bet. To my way of thinking, this was a dreadful decision. The proper ruling was that by putting $500 into the pot, he had in effect said, "I'm betting," so he was required to bet. Since $500 was not enough, he was required to bet $600. He could not check, he could not leave the $500 in the pot and muck his hand, and he could not bet more than $600. He was required to put another $100 into the pot and make the bet correct, just as if he had said, "I am betting the minimum." To me, this is absolutely the clear-cut and commonsense way to handle this type of situation.
Here is a case that occurred recently in a pot-limit money game. The structure was with blinds of $10 and $25, and the first player called the blind. The next player raised to $55, and another player called. At this point, a player yet to act pointed out that the rules of this particular structure required bets to be made in even $25 units. The raiser then tried to correct the amount of the raise to $75. The player who had limped in for the blind now said that the bet could only be changed to $50, and the raiser went along with this and reduced the amount from $75 to $50. Now, the player who had called the $55 said the pot was too small, so he wanted to change his call to a raise, noting that no one had acted behind him. When someone complained about this, the floorperson was (finally) called. He ruled that the bet had to be changed to $50, and that the player who had just called before could not now change his action. Was this ruling correct? Let's examine all three points involved in the decision.
First, the fact that an improper-size bet has been called does not mean that it stands, so the player was required to make his bet in even $25 units. Second, you cannot give a player leeway in how to make the bet correct, because he has received information improperly. It seems logical that a bet should have to be corrected to the nearest legal amount, so $50 was mandatory. Third, you cannot let a player change a call to a raise when the amount of the bet has been changed, even if no one acted behind him. It has not been changed to a degree that has much significance, and the player has received information from the decision-making process about other hands that he was not entitled to receive. Here, it is obvious that the player who limped in does not have a good hand. So, in this case, the ruling made was perfect. However, I am sure that a number of people would have botched it. I am also unaware of any set of poker rules other than my own, "Robert's Rules of Poker," that addresses all of the points made in discussing the decision.
Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone is available for poker lessons. He may be reached at (989) 792-0884. His website is www.diamondcs.net/~thecoach. His books Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Hold'em Poker, Millennium Edition are available through Card Player.
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