Live Tournament Rules

i think its fair to be honest in the first case that he is giving a penalty...if he siad he knew he had the nuts and was last to act.,,then he is obviously intentionally trying to help someone by not taking more chips...i didnt know about one or two other ones, like dealer not telling pot sizes is limit and no limit games...i suppose though, its not up to him is it...and he has to no the pot limit for obvious reasons...good post...

This is all pretty standard - the fun thing about the first example was it was from this year's WSOP and two reasonably well known pros were the players involved (IIRC it was Pearljammer and Dutch Boyd, and Boyd was the one who checked the nuts on the river). You'd think they would've known better

In that situation there should be a penalty given every time because there's only two possible explanations for it - either the player is soft-playing their opponent or they're stupid. In either case they deserve a penalty. The fact that you've never seen one probably just means either the tournament officials aren't paying attention or the other players never brought it up. Bring it up next time and see what happens.

The breaking tables thing is really a bigger deal in big tournaments where it can legitimately take a while to find your new seat. Your new table shouldn't be sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for their empty seat to be filled, they should continue playing. What it's meant to prevent is people deliberately stalling on the way to their new table so they either don't have to pay blinds or don't have to sit down in a disadvantageous spot (right into the BB, for example - if they waste five more minutes they could be in the cutoff instead).

On the last point, you shouldn't have seen anyone penalised for asking - they just shouldn't get an answer unless it's a pot limit game. The rule is there to prevent stalling. What a lot of places will let you do instead is ask the dealer to spread the pot out a bit so you can do a rough visual count yourself. I've even seen them do that on High Stakes Poker a few times.

Great information, Oz--thanks!

Up until now I wouldn't have but you're right, they certainly should have.

I guess even the pros can have stupid moments .

Heading out this afternoon to play the riverboats for a few days and I'll defintiely do that. One thing for sure is that I personally won't check the nuts on the river (pun purely unintentional)!

I kind of thought that might be the case. The tourneys I usually play are only 8-10 tables.

That's another thing I'll check for. Several of the dealers and I have become friends so I think I'll also ask one of them if they go by the TDA rules or have some other standard. They won't be surprised because they know I'm endlessly curious about that sort of stuff.