Multi-stack raise, not all-in.

I'm curious about something. I've seen footage of big no-limit tournaments where a player makes a large, but not all-in raise. They


physically put out several stacks of chips (say ten stacks, twenty high each), which involves repeatedly reaching back and putting a stack


out several times. I don't hear them announcing the amount of their raise. How do the `string-bet' rules operate in games like this? Is there


an understanding that you just wait until the player stops putting stacks out? Or am I misinterpreting the situation?


Dirk(MildManneredMathMan)

heads up, or slow deliberative tournament, is not a clink-clink-clink ring game


and nobody in a monster tournament is dumb enough to shout raise in the middle of the other fellow betting anyway


that having been said, i guess you could load several stacks of chips more than you could hold with your hands into the folds of a loose t-shirt, and vomit them onto the table all at once somehow


any better ideas?


you should try playing sometime

Yeah, sure, all that's completely obvious. But you didn't answer my question.

So your question is what are the rules?


That's not very pointy-headed or mathematical!


Well, the couple times I've played heads up, or set up with one or two other guys and hired a house dealer (and the dealers always bitch about tips), we've basically made our own rules. We've gone to a lot of trouble to be facing each other, and we're not really concerned about string bets which no third party in an empty seat can react to anyway.


I think how you push your stacks out - since it is such a chore - is part of the game. With the time and energy it takes, it is inevitable that you express yourself and, moreover, while waiting, your opponent has nothing to do but watch you and try to assemble some silly catalog of tells. You're computing the whole time anyway, and want to delay as much as possible while still giving the impression of betting, as well as delaying the same when you're not thinking to cover those times when it is a close call and you are.


So far as tournaments, I'VE NEVER PLAYED IN ONE, but when you are just pushing stacks, your chips aren't technically in the pot yet (unless you splash it like "KGB":). The pushing is really the loading or the preparation of stacks. Once they're set up, you declare them to be a bet and, by collective acknowlegement, the border of "the pot" is extended to include them.


There really isn't much ambiguity. It has never come up in anything I've played or watched. It's a funny question, and that's why I'm wondering if you mightn't go out and play a little instead of just watching videotapes. At least we people who have played a little like to think we know what we're talking about. And self-important suckers who fancy themselves authorities is the whole fun of the game. Or at least looking like one!


But I'm still not sure what your question was!


- the guy

I have never watch a poker video in my life. These were just documentaries I happened to see on Discovery and ESPN networks. No doubt plenty of posters here have seen them too. The one on WSOP is wuite well known and it has been repeated dozens of times. Your reaction was odd. You just sprung to some totally unwarranted conclusion about me. Who knows why?

perhaps it should be said that rules in ring games concerning string bets are created and enforced to prevent somebody from shooting an angle, and putting some chips in the pot and then deciding to raise based on his read of another players' reaction to his placing a chip in the pot. this situation will rarely if ever come up in the heads-up stages of any tournament worth watching on television. the players that make it to these stages are not angle-shooters, nor would they want to do anything that their opponent could read from. it is complex, granted, but the stage of play that these guys are in, no way are they going to call for a ruling on a string bet when they know and respect their opponent(s) and know that there is no angle being shot, so to say. is that clear enough? im not sure if it is.