NL – “Half Bet Guideline” for Fixing Short Raises: Your Club's Rule?

[Rick Nebiolo]

Recent experience leads me to believe there is quite a bit of misunderstanding or lack of standardization regarding correcting short raises in no limit. This type of short raise rarely occurred in the old days (when hardened veterans typically played no limit) as a bet, raise and re-raise used to be done in increments of bet $10 - raise to $40 – re-raise to $200 or so. With the small fixed or spread buy-in games, we often see bet raise – re-raise increments of $2-$4-$6 (some clubs such as Hawaiian Gardens require a minimum ratio of $2-$4-$8 – we can re-visit the advantages of this requirement in a future thread).

Here’s an example: Player A bets $100 using twenty $5 chips (one normal stack). Player B pushes out two stacks and raises to $200. Player C (next player to act) notices that one of Player B’s stacks is one chip short so he has actually raised to $195.

Now if Player B was “all-in” most cardroom no limit rules specify that any raise less than the minimum (usually the amount of the last bet or raise) is “action only” and if Player C just called $195 Player A could only call the remaining $95 (or fold). (Note that in limit games, most cardrooms treat any raise of half the mimimum or more as a full bet.)

But let’s say Player B has plenty of chips. How does your cardroom correct this sort of mistake?

Preliminary Comments: At the Bicycle Casino we used a “half bet” guideline for correcting raises. Any incorrect raise that was half or more than the legal minimum was corrected to the legal minimum. If a floorman was called to the table Player B’s raise would be corrected to $200, the minimum legal raise. Had player B put out $145, his short raise would be corrected to a call. (As an aside, I now believe this guideline would be improved if it was “more than half”. This looks better when the bet is two chips and someone splashes in three chips - using a “more than half” guideline this mistake would be corrected to two chips, perhaps better since most three chip splashes are a result of chips sticking together.)

A few miles away Hawaiian Gardens Casino uses a different guideline. If a floorman is called to the table the short raise of $195 would be declared a “fouled raise” and it would be corrected to a call of $100. (per Hawaiian Gardens Lead NL Host Dave Simon, perhaps the patron saint of fixed buy-in no limit). Keep in mind that in the real world (including the Bike, HG and other LA clubs) the floor isn’t always called and players often accept the intended raise to $200.

I’ll elaborate and expand upon my question:

How would your cardroom handle the above $100 to $195 example?

Does this type of error come up often? (i.e. “donk style” mini raises may be an “LA only thing” [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] )

Do your floormen apply rulings or guidelines consistently in this area?

Do you know of a better guideline or rule for correcting this sort of mistake?

Comments appreciated.

Rick

PS I had to edit the title of the post so it would fit.