Live game, floor ruling situation. Thoughts ?

Game is a €120 freezout in one of Dublins biggest cardrooms. Its a standard Friday game and has gone off with 104 runners. 14 players left with 9 getting paid. Players are generally bad, and the floor rulings have always been pretty decent from what ive seen.

Blinds are 500/1K, I'm one of the big stacks with 78K, I raise the button to 2.8K with A8hh, bb flats. Flop is 22Jhh, he checks I bet 3.5K, he flats, turn is 4h making my flush and he checks. I eyeball his stack and figure he as ~12K behind and shove, he snaps.

Here is where my issue lies, the dealer then pulls in the stacks, and leaves me with 2.5K behind (WTF) and I immediately object. We table the cards and im miles ahead against his 72. I call the floor and they rule that I should have protected my stack and he hand has to play out, both the floor and dealer dont seem too bothered, he rivers a 7 and im all but busto when i should have ~60K left. Villian dosnt open his mouth once during all this, even when i asked him how much was in his stack prior to my shove, and lets on that he had no idea of his stack size when he called my shove.

There is no possibility that he had bigger chips hidden as there were no 5K chip yet in play. Anyway pot is pushed, my objections are ignored and im busto 2 hands later.

I'd probably stab someone.

Surely the dealer could have even a little common sense. Betting 2.5k on flop and shoving 30k on the turn makes no sense( you would have had to overbet a ridiculous amount on the turn for the pot to be that big).

Did you put your stack in, or did the dealer just grab all of your chips? If he grabbed them, surely they have to listen to reason, i would have gone to the floor manager with this one.

I try to be crystal clear with all my actions at a live table. I announced all-in and moved my stack just over the betting line.

Lol, what more can you do? it's clearly a dealer error. I would have tried to find the floor manager and explain the situation to him, it's a bit of a joke that the dealer can't work out that you are one of the biggest stacks at the table.

With the pot size at 5k on flop, and turn being 12k, you would have had to overbet it by double to make that pot size realistic, it's jsut dumb,.

Something similar happened to my buddy playing live...He puts this guy all in on the turn and the guy calls well after the river hes like you got it and the guy mucked his cards well my buddy flipped over his cards to show Qhigh so then the other guy grabs his cards out of the muck to show his cards, so then they called the floor over since the first guy already mucked and they rewarded him with the pot saying that my buddy fortifited the pot by saying "you got it" even though the other guy mucked his cards.

thats not really similar at all.

lol yea that was my bad was doing to many different things at work while posting this..started to type about it and then ended up talking about a different one...The one I was going to say was my buddy was in a hand multiway pot on the flop with pocket kings he was in the blinds and checked the person who raised preflop goes ahead pushes on the flop and everyone folds to my buddy..well at this time the dealer starts collecting all of the cards and and stacking the chips to hand off to the player who bet..When my buddy was like what are you doing I still have cards they called the floor over and the floor ruled that there already onto a next hand and rewarded that guy the pot which was about 23BBs at the time so a decent size pot when they were down to 2tables.

Dealer error compounded by floor error. I don't know what if any recourse you should have got but you got jobbed.

Sounds like a crazy ruling to me. You'd think they'd have competent dealers being one of Dublins biggest card rooms. Even worse that the floor didn't do anything about it either. You should have protected your stack? Isn't it up to the dealer to count out the chips when a player is all in?

Now the way I read this you had at least 5 times as many chips as the other guy and the dealer gave over almost all your chips to him????? They would have had to cuff me to escort me out.

This is pretty hideous.

Wow. I thought I`d seen every feasible dealer error, but I have never seen that one.

The only precaution I can think of to avoid such nonsenses is to declare "all in" but not physically move the chips across the line unless and until required to do so for counting or for settling-up . I often play that way myself when playing a big stack, purely to avoid the hassle of having to rebuild neat stacks which inevitably get disarrayed while shunting back and forth.

This! You clearly have him covered, so you don't have to put any chips in the pot. Dealer should just run it out and then, when you lose in the end wait for the dealer to count villains stack and tell you how much you owe. Dealers do make errors and there are things we can do as players to help reduce the amount of mistakes made.

... and although it`s frustrating to be on the receiving end, I do have sympathy with them. I played in the Genting Poker Festival in England last week. Chatting with one or two of the dealers whom I have come to know a little, I got a feel for the very long hours they are called upon to work during a big national event like that. They are expected to maintain fierce concentration throughout, and it`s not the world`s best paid job.

LOLwut - that was horribad on everybody's part, there's no way you should have to "protect your stack" in the way the floor described.

Some places will insist on making the pot right before any more cards are dealt, but whenever they do it, the procedure should be that they count down the smaller of the two stacks and then take exactly that amount from the larger one. So unless both the dealer and the floor were complete tards I don't see how something like this happens.

If something this bizarre ever happens again, I might try getting some of the other players at the table involved too - they might not all choose to involve themselves, but technically they all have an ethical obligation to minimise mistakes at the table and point it out when they see one happening.

That's exactly what I was thinking? What the hell were the other players at the table doing/saying while all this was going on? I mean, I am used to incompetant dealers so as bad as this is, it doesn't shock me, but usually players at the table will band together and make sure that when the floor is called, they get all the necessary info needed to make the right decision. I mean most of the places I have played, guys not even in the hand would have been threatening to take the floor person and the dealer outside if they didn't fix this. Were they all just sitting there quietly while all this was going on???

This is sickening and pisses me off , didnt want to read this before bed. I feel for you and may no one else have to ever deal with this bs again.

This was a big mistake. A camera check could've been carried out, even at least to just determine the size of the guys stack, and work it back from there...

Seriously that's a terrible dealer error.. you never bring the chips in like that. At the very least you should have a serious word with the card room manager about how his staff handled that. The call for play to continue is completely correct unfortunately, once the error has been made it's too late to do anything about it (especially if that mug was claiming he had "no idea" how big his stack was before shoving? Yeah, right). He might be able to do something to make it up to you, not sure what however.

What. The. ****?

As soon as his cards hit the muck, they're dead, out, not in play, no longer live, finished, kaput, done, ended! Everyone knows this, what a terrible decision...

I feel really sorry for everyone that's had a shitty situation like this arise playing live... I've been going for 8 years and i've never personally had a problem but i've seen them. Sucks so bad to be on the receiving end of one of those.

Are you sure this dealer wasn't working with the other player rather than making what sounds like a rather overly large counting error. This sounds like a very difficult "mistake" to make, unless he was claiming some ruling that I am not aware of. If this is one of the biggest card rooms in Dublin I would think they would have security cameras and you could ask that hey be reviewed and shown to you to prove the count was done correctly. If there were no cameras then possibly other players would be aware of the relative stack sizes. Go and demand some sort of compensation for the value you should of had left after the hand if the count was done properly. Threaten to sue them and/or publicly expose how the situation was mishandled. If it was a mistake made by one of their employee's then it is only fair that they compensate you and should be considered a cost of business for them. If not let others know how their stacks might be mis- handled. I would think that fear of their reputation and loss of good will could far outweigh the cost of compensating you. You can take the high road and say I really don't want to do this, and have in the past had very positive experiences here, but in this case ... and if you don't properly handle the situation I feel it is only fair that other players know what happened and how the situation was handled.

In most places I play in Ireland, the dealer usually pulls in the stacks and strips down the larger of the two stacks, and returns the rest. Last night (different card room) when I refused to put my stack in the middle during a similar situation and explained what happened to the floor, they had their own little conversation about how they would have ruled, and without the support of the villian, they came to the conclusion that they would have ruled the same.

Knowing the place so well, going to the camera's whist a lovely idea was never going to happen in a MTT. Maybe in a cash game if the pot was large enough, but never in a tournament. Dunno I suppose you live and learn, but in all my years playing live I've never seen a situation as bad as that.

There is always the chance that the dealer knew the villian as well, but there is no way of prooving that.

Thats what I always thought...I saw another weird one when I went up to the poker room about an hour north from where I'm at with one of the dealers from the poker room I always play at..Well we were on FT of a tourney and he bets out and this guy goes to call and puts his chips past the "betting line" but didnt put enough out and then when the dealer told him how much more it actually was he decided he wanted to fold instead so then he throws his cards at her and she puts her hands up to stop the cards and one hits the muck and then she goes ahead and hands his cards back and was like its only 1k more since it was ruled that his chips had to stay out there once they were put out past that "betting line"...So even though the guy threw his cards at her and one hit the muck he was still able to play the hand...Well then she deals the flop and the guy goes insta all in and my buddy was like wtf is this.

I ALWAYS do this - I never make the grand gesture of shoving a massive stack. I just say all in and flick out with the back of my hand (which another thread informs you, this is my "I have the nuts" tell).

In most cases, yes! LOL!

Dealer should of made equal stacks in front of each player and counted out the number for each while doing so. Only then should they be brought into the pot.

I'll be keeping an eye on my chips after your bad experience. I already put keep my fingers on my cards during a table to prevent a erroneous dealer muck.

you should atleast get your buyin back thats garbage....you cant do anything about a dealer error....take it as it comes and just know you played the hand as best you could

Wow - I can sort of understand if it's after the pot's been shipped and there's not really any way of knowing how much villain started with any more, but before that?

As far as I'm aware the procedure (particularly in a tournament all-in, cash games are often looser) should always be count what appears to be the smaller stack, cut that amount out from the larger stack, pass the remaining chips back to the player with the bigger stack, then put everything else in the pot before dealing another card. In what universe does it make sense to do anything other than that?

The problem arises with dealers that are too comfortable and start to take shortcuts. Maybe the dealer just pulled the stacks in and sized them up, clearly made a mistake and the floor made a mistake by saying it was too late.

Generally in a spot like this when I know I have them covered and lose a big pot, I ask the dealer "how much more is it?". If that sounds/looks right, then I put that much in the pot. If not, there is no harm is raising a question to confirm like "did you bring in the preflop bets" or whatnot, to make sure it is accurate.

I've seen way too many mistakes once there are multiple piles of chips in a pot. Especially true in sidepot situations.

I heard dealers aren't supposed to do this either...One of them was telling me the reason is because say they went to go size them up (put both stacks next to one another) and then one falls over and gets mixed in with the other chips they have no way of telling how many chips that person actually had before they got mixed in and it can create a mess for everyone

What you are saying makes sense but I see them do it all the time - at least where I'm at.

Yea they used to do it all the time where I play too but then they recently stopped when they started getting some bigger name tournaments into the area like HPT and stuff...One of the players was like I'll just match his stack and the dealer was like no we aren't allowed to do that and then I asked my buddy who is a dealer there about it and thats what he told me which it does make sense so

Yeah, matching stacks is a shortcut dealers take so they don't have to count the stacks. Definitely can create some problems.

FWIW if poker dealers in general had better chip skills they wouldn't need to take shortcuts like that.

I'm not saying mine are great (because they're not) but as far as casino dealers in general go, poker dealers usually rank around the bottom when it comes to chip handling. Improve that, and maybe less mistakes happen...

Funny you say that..I play at one of the dealer's home games every Monday night and he also is tryin to get me to join his class that he teaches for dealing and he's always talking about how people put their chips out to bet or how other dealers handle the chips..He says if you really want to impress me when I'm dealing then place your bet out their with a nice clean cut..No need to count out all your chips that your betting and then throw them out there so I can re-count it lol

He's actually fairly quick with the chip cutting and everything