[chesspain]

Last night I hosted a five-handed home game with 1/2 limits, and I was the big winner with a net gain of $56 when we quit after four hours. So what's the problem? When I went to cash out everyone, the bank was short exactly fifteen dollars [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img].

After counting and recounting everyone's chips, we then retraced everyone's buy-in, and realized that the cash in the bank was correct.

Consequently, we realized that the only logical explanation was that I inadvertantly gave out three extra $5 blue chips at the outset among one or more players. At this point, we were all somewhat stymied. One player began to state "...well, we could try to split the shortage up proportionally based on how much we ended up with..."

...at which point, the higher stakes player, who had never played at my home before but had hosted a multitable tourney that all of us attended, began to sputter and hem and haw. Since he had a net gain of $38 dollars, and had received the most blue chips to start given that he had the biggest buy-in, I thought it would have been nice of him to make some sort of a gesture to help cover me. Ultimately, however, I have no idea who received extra chips at the outset.

But since the higher stakes player balked at receiving any less than his full chip count, and I didn't want to be a jerk, I just said "It was my bank, I'll eat it."

On a positive note, one of the other guys who was owed back thirty-eight dollars said "Just give me back thirty-five."

In this situation, since I was likely the one who screwed up, was it proper for me to eat this shortage?

I appreciate all feedback on this.


P.S. Given the inevitable commotion that always occurs at the outset of a home game when everyone is throwing money at me, I may in the future presort and package up a bunch of bags with, say, forty dollars in the small denomination chips, which will allow me to focus on the easy task of counting out the higher denomination chips to complete everyone's buy-in.