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

[Randy_Refeld]

Rick,
Your box is full, no PMs.

edit: Or maybe this software is messing up as I can't get into my box either.

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As far as determining if it is clear or unlcear; the standard rule (at least at that time) was it takes a full raise to raise, so the evidence has to be that they clearly wanted to raise. If there is anything unclear it is a call.

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I think this is a hugely significant point. In truth then you were just applying an existing guidleine -- A raise of less than a full raise shall be deemed a call unless it is clear that the players intent was to raise.

Seems like a reasonable guideline to me.

[Randy_Refeld]

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As far as determining if it is clear or unlcear; the standard rule (at least at that time) was it takes a full raise to raise, so the evidence has to be that they clearly wanted to raise. If there is anything unclear it is a call.

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I think this is a hugely significant point. In truth then you were just applying an existing guidleine -- A raise of less than a full raise shall be deemed a call unless it is clear that the players intent was to raise.

Seems like a reasonable guideline to me.

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I think that is a very reasonable guideline. With most poker policies and proceduires I am in favor additional training on existing policies rather than tryign to write new ones. There are some tough spots; however, writing more rules for the few hard situations generally leads to more problems.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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A guideline might be helpful. I don't know what a good guideline would be. The first bad situation thst that has to be avoided is where someone cleaerly wants to raise, let's eveyone knows they want to raise, and then they aren't able to raise.

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Right now if someone states raise, then only puts in let's say 20%, 50% or 70% of the required minimum raise, his raise is corrected to the minimum, usually without calling the floor.

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A second situation that must be avoided (but is less troublesome thatn the first) is one where a player can make it appear he wants to raise, but puts in an amount that is intentionally unclear (putting in exactly half a raise in limit can cause some problems) in order to gage reactions.

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Although I wrote up the half bet guideline at the Bicycle Club, I now think the guideline should be "more than half". This is especially useful when the lead bet is let's say two chips and someone throws in three chips. Also note that Ciaffone in his online B&M rules (link should be elsewhere in the thread) talks about 80% in an example relating to bet amounts.

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There are problems with guidelines (not jsut in this spot, but in all spots) do you replace a top section floorman's judgment with a written rule? I think the most imporant rule in poker is the floor will rule in the interest of fairness.

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Top section floormen's judgment is sometimes suspect - I've seen one with 30 years experience screw up the "cut and dried" half bet rule for limit. Also note that most NL games aren't top section games these days, they are often placed in the lower limit poker game area (the Bike's placement of smaller NL games in "The Plaza" is the only exception in LA).

Would you agree that guidelines can be written that cover common situations, yet allow exceptions to be made in the interest of fairness?

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Everytime you make allowances fo rthe floor not having good judgment you make poker nittier and less fun. I think the real solution is to work on getting better floor staffs. This can be done both through training and making better employment decisions. Unfortunately the places where they need the most help will be the last to ask for it. Having even one person on the staff that is really good can make a lot of differnce (more of a difference in a small room than in an LA card barn).

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We both tend to agree that poker nits need to be curbed and poker should remain fun. It isn't fun to watch major arguements break out regarding whether a raise should stand and so on (although some may disagree [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]).

Regarding LA card barns, it is discouraging that so few floor personnel participate in these discussions, and those that do are sometimes resented by upper management.

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A friend of mine worked on the floor in a room that occasionally spread 2-7 triple draw (when I say occasionally I mean less than 10 times a year). Long after he left there the rank of hands came up. He didn't know that A2345 is not a straight in that game (ace is high only for anyone that doesn't play 2-7) so he thought it would lose to 22456. He was one of the best floormen in that room, but nobody had ever told him this simple point so if he would have had to rule on it he would have gotten it wrong. I have to wonder why nobody told him that; perhaps nobody else in that room was aware of that either.

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You should have seen the triple draw blunder I made in Gabe's home game [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[Randy_Refeld]

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Right now if someone states raise, then only puts in let's say 20%, 50% or 70% of the required minimum raise, his raise is corrected to the minimum, usually without calling the floor.

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This wasn't the problem I meant; if they say raise everythign is fine. If they put in 195 facing a 100 bet it is clear they want to raise and that shoudl be treated liek a raise. If it isn't treated like a raise they have let everyone there know they like their hand enough to raise and everyoen gets that free info.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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...writing more rules for the few hard situations generally leads to more problems.

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We (I'm including just about everyone who participates in these discussions) should try a stab at writing a draft of a better set of NL rules applicable to today's games. One stipulation is that they should concentrate on what are now common situations, they shouldn't be any longer then current rules, and they need to be simple and easily applied.

Right now this type of thread is research and just for fun. I'd have time to help come up with a draft around the year 2009. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Rick,
Your box is full, no PMs.

edit: Or maybe this software is messing up as I can't get into my box either.

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I've got that message that I'm supposed to delete a few hundred PMs. This sucks since there are a lot that I'd like to save and it will take me forever to go through them.

Anyway, my email is available under my 2+2 profile. And Outlook Express lets me save them all, even those Nigerian money scams. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[Randy_Refeld]

Yea, you have been in my address book for a long time. I took a ocupel hours one day and went through my PMs and celaerd it out so I could receive them again.

[Rick Nebiolo]

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Right now if someone states raise, then only puts in let's say 20%, 50% or 70% of the required minimum raise, his raise is corrected to the minimum, usually without calling the floor.

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This wasn't the problem I meant; if they say raise everythign is fine. If they put in 195 facing a 100 bet it is clear they want to raise and that shoudl be treated liek a raise. If it isn't treated like a raise they have let everyone there know they like their hand enough to raise and everyoen gets that free info.

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But the basic guideline I'd suggest would ensure that any raise mistakenly made with chips that is more than half the minimum but less than the minimum would be corrected to the minimum raise.

~ Rick

[Randy_Refeld]

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Right now if someone states raise, then only puts in let's say 20%, 50% or 70% of the required minimum raise, his raise is corrected to the minimum, usually without calling the floor.

[/ QUOTE ]

This wasn't the problem I meant; if they say raise everythign is fine. If they put in 195 facing a 100 bet it is clear they want to raise and that shoudl be treated liek a raise. If it isn't treated like a raise they have let everyone there know they like their hand enough to raise and everyoen gets that free info.

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But the basic guideline I'd suggest would ensure that any raise mistakenly made with chips that is more than half the minimum but less than the minimum would be corrected to the minimum raise.

~ Rick

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I think this is about as good as you are going to get.