Ch. Ch. Ch. Changes

So, all my gambling life, if you want to raise the previous bet, you must raise twice the amount of the bet before you.

If the bet is 10 dollars, you hafta make it at least 20, or expel all yer chips, if less than double. And if you do push, it hasta be twice the bet on the table, or the rest of the table can't raise. Only call.

So..... I get to the casino, sit in a seat that is prolly filled with more of my farts than anybody else. A hand comes up......

Guy bets 10 duckets. The next guy raises to 20 (the bet is now 20 duckets) The next guy pushes with 30.....

Now, the way I used to play, this should cap the betting. The guy that pushed. Didn't put in twice the bet (40 duckets)

I fold, and the next guy announces a raise. Me, AND THE DEALER, tell him that he can't raise because the pusher didn't double the bet. He calls the floor.

The ruling? He can raise, because the increment that the bet went up was 10 duckets. So the pusher met the criteria. (10 more duckets)

So now, you only have to double the increment to raise, not the full bet.

"All my life it's been this way" say I.
"That's the way they do it at The Commerce now too." says (a very young and know it all) him.

The dealer and I shared a glance of WTF together.

Oz, what do you think?


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Looks like they are using the half bet rule which is a limit rule.

From Robert's rules

In NL Roberts Rules states :-

So if its legitimate then it has to be a house rule. Ask the floor to show you this rule in print as its not a standard rule.

Did the previous callers have to call the 1/2 bet or the full bet and create a the side pot preflop?
The only card rooms I've played at is the latter. I think that makes the most sense.

Ummmm....the rule is, and always has been, that to be a legal bet it has to match the increment (not double the previous bet). So in a $1/$2 game if you open to $8 the next bet has to be to at least $14 (not $16).

Also if the player who wanted to raise in your story hadn't yet acted on the initial raise, he's entitled to raise even if the all-in bet wasn't a full legal bet.

So basically both you and the dealer were very very wrong. I'm amazed that the dealer could even begin to make that mistake on such a fundamental concept.

I think you misread the OP since it was filled with twists and turns galore in story mode.

^^^^ this 100%. Always has been, always will be.

I've been playing poker for a fairly long time and ive always had some trouble with this concept.

So if its $1/$2 and the raise is $6 (4 more dollars than the big blind)
the person who wants to raise has the choice of raising it to $10?
(4 more dollars than the raiser)

And so if the raiser bets to $6, then gets raised to $10, then someone raises him to $14, then someone pushes all in for $14, there can be no more raises after this, correct?

^^ okay thank you very much.

But, after the guy goes all in for that $16, can the first/second raisers
raise it up again or no?

Like if the betting goes as such and the original raiser who made it $6 to go, will he be left with calling the $16 all-in or folding, or can he pop it up again?

Yes. Either the original raiser or the 2nd raiser can raise because they haven't had a chance to act on the last legal raise (the 3rd raise to $14 in your example). In your example the only person who can not raise is the guy who made it $14 (unless the betting is reopened again before it gets back to him).

Ahh, I understand.

Although, these would be rare conditions, and only in live, it's good to know.

the reason is the total bet really doesn't make much difference. Say you bet $20 someone raises to 40 basically they're calling your 20 and putting 20 on top. You then have to put at least 20 on top if you want to raise. Then back to them it's 20 to them so they can either call, put 20 on top, or put more than 20 on top. If you put 25 on top they then have to put 25+ on top. Also assuimng this is NL/PL and not limit there's no such thing as a cap, you can have like 20 minraises in a row if you want.

In response to OP, this has ALWAYS been the rule!!!! If somebody bets $10, gets min raised to $20, the min reraise would be $10 more to $30. Just go online and try it. I have had to call raises before when people really didn't want to raise (i.e. UTG raises to $6, a mid position reraises to $12 and it comes back around to the UTG who has $6 out there, he throws in $12 planning on it being a call [without saying anything], well that puts $18 out which is a legal reraise!)

Actually it's good to have the knowledge even online.

Here is an example of why:

$1/$2

UTG: $40
MP2: $200
BTN: $200

You are the BTN with AA. UTG, a bad short stacker, opens for $8. MP2 calls. You want to raise with your Aces but if you raise a standard amount (say to $30) the UTG shorty can shove for his extra $10 and MP2 can call knowing that you can not reopen the betting.

Now if you're pretty sure that the UTG raiser will shove to any raise you can do something pretty cool by raising smaller (you can't make it any more than $24). Now when UTG shoves MP2 is stuck. If he calls you can raise again and get all your $$ in the middle preflop.

Wow this is a really good post.
I do not know the answer to it but have read all the replys.
And am glad I gained some knowledge on it.
Thank you for posting it.

This is what I was thinking when I read the OP. The way its written the guy who wanted to raise hadn't yet acted, so he's free to raise.

Pretty much all been said above - the rules Stu_Unger quoted are the correct ones and the all-in player's push reopened the betting to everyone because it was big enough to be a valid raise.

As a side note, there was one company I dealt for that used the "double the bet" rule rather than the size of the previous bet or raise rule. That was for pub games where you could rebuy in the first hour if you'd had at least four drinks though... so you can maybe see why they chose the version of the rule that involved slightly less complicated math.

Casinos, the company I work for now, the Tournament Directors Association and every online site (AFAIK) uses the version everyone's cited above where the minimum raise is the size of the previous bet or raise.

Also note that even though all dealers should know this and probably do, not all of them are thinking about it when enforcing it. I still remember up in Canada stacks were short enough one guy made it like 10 other raises to 30 I raise to like 55 (they were weirder numbers though so that made it harder for dealer) and dealer said I had to bet at least 60 but obviously once I pointed out that he only raised 20 and I raised 25 (again they were weird numbers like 14 then 18 or something) he agreed and realized his mistake. Bottom line another reason to know the rules because dealers are not perfect.

Good point.

Remember too that in a casino, dealers are trained to work multiple games and poker may not be their main one. It's possible they only fill in at poker when someone calls in sick or when there's a big tournament on.

That's not an excuse for not knowing the rules, but you can see how it happens from time to time.

I only deal poker.