[mrticsay]

At our Saturday game, we had an ugly situation. It was primarily fueled by personality issues (surprise, surprise!) but did have a fundamental poker issue at is core. I’m interested in thoughts and will later share with you what was done at the time and what I propose doing going forward.

Our local rules have nothing on this, but reference Robert’s Rules as covering anything not in our local rules. I could find nothing in Robert’s regarding this situation.

Since the tourney ended, I have been unable to find anything on the TDA site or elsewhere on the net that helps. I will be posting to TDA for comments.


Scenario:

• NLTH MTT Tournament
• 3 players saw the flop including the blinds (one limper folded preflop)
• Exact action unclear after the flop and turn but one player folds before the river and we are heads-up at the river.
• After the river, P1 checks. P2 raises. P1 goes all-in. P2 calls. P1’s hand is declared the winner (no dispute).
• P1 reaches across the table and takes the chips from P2 and from the pot. P2 does not believe he was covered by P1 and had not pushed any chips toward P1 or the pot.
• The rest of the table is unsure if P2 was covered by P1, but agrees it was close.

What do you do?

-Michael

[JT-Bird]

Tell player #2 to keep better control of his chipstack.

[TrivialPiper]

Originally Posted by JT-Bird

Tell player #2 to keep better control of his chipstack.

Wow, tough crowd! I'd have to put the blame on player #1. If "all in" chips are not counted out before the hand ends then chips should be counted before any player collects his/her winnings in my opinion. If it was my game at my house I'd suggest leaving player #2 with one more blinds worth of chips...that's just my 2 cents though.

[Buzzerbeater]

Player 1 should have been stopped immediately when he tried to take the chips and a count should have been done to check the stacks. Issue a warning to player 1 for taking the pot before the dealer awarded it to him and inform him that doing it again will result in an appropriate penalty.

It is the DEALER's responsibility to keep the pot correct and handle the chips, no one else.

[Diablo_Rojos]

Wow, this is a tough one.
I believe inappropriate for the winner of the hand to grab chips from the stack in front of the losing hand. Although I cannot point to a specific rule, I think its more a question of ettiquette more than anything else.
I would rule infavor of the person with the loosing hand and return what he believed he had left and give that person the benifit of the doubt.
It's just not right for another player to take chips before they are placed in the middle to avoid problems like that.

[KYBill]

I think P1 is at fault here. I would be soooooo pissed of someone did that to me.

[Matthew]

Player 1 did the wrong thing by grabbing. As posted above the dealer needs to push the chips to the winner.

I don't even know what I would propose as a solution.

I guess I would propose something for player 2 to keep. One BB or three BB depending on stacks and blinds at that point.

If player 1 ever did it again, he would be out of the game, personalities aside.

Matthew

[smoore]

So P1 splashed the pot with his all-in without anyone counting the chips?

What a dummy.

That's a tough situation for sure and if there's no way to verify it... what do you do?

You simply HAVE to reconstruct action. P1 just slowed your game down BIGTIME.

[jdunford]

Originally Posted by smoore

So P1 splashed the pot with his all-in without anyone counting the chips?

What a dummy.

That's a tough situation for sure and if there's no way to verify it... what do you do?

You simply HAVE to reconstruct action. P1 just slowed your game down BIGTIME.

I agree with smoore. You have to at least estimate what the pot was before the all-in raise, add the raise, and whatever is left must have been P2's chips before calling. Even if no one remembers all of the action, it shouldn't be hard to estimate to within a big blind or two.

Oh, and P1 gets a harsh warning, if not some sort of punishment. There must be a deterant to prevent a player from touching another's chips in the future. Otherwise, it could definitely be used to someone's advantage to just reach across and grab chips when all-in. Imagine how much more complicated it would be with 3 players in the showdown...

[Quads]

Fist of all, no player at *ANY* point in time should reach for a pot, touch the pot, make change from the pot, etc. etc. etc.. Winner or not.

The Dealer should award the pot to the winning player by first making sure it is correct, and has all bets in it, etc. etc.. When the winning hand is decided, then the *Dealer* should push the pot to the winner.

Knowing that, tell players to keep their paws out of the pot, and everyone is happy.