Cashing out at home games

#1 07-31-2005, 09:00 PM

I usually play small tournaments with my friends, but we decided to start a small cash game. The buyin was $20, and it was .25/.5 NLHE. About 20 mins in the game, some guy decided that he didnt want to lose any money so he pulls out $30 in chips and cashes them out, while leaving himself with 3.50. Is this allowed? i thought you either had to cash out all your chips, or cash out to the minimum buy in. There was a small fight, and we decided to let him cash out the 30, and he went on to turn the 3.50 into 10 and left.
Cashing out like this seems kinda rediculous becasue its so much easier to play the short stack than a large stack.
Whats the official ruling on this.

daryn · #2 07-31-2005, 09:29 PM

it's a home game, so there are all kinds of rules.

standard though, and what i consider best is:

you can leave at any time, but if you leave, you leave. no taking money off the table. no coming back with less. table stakes, baby.

HitHard69 · #3 07-31-2005, 09:29 PM

Money stays on the table. Once it's put in play, it stays there. You can't put it to the side, take it out of play, put it in your pocket or cash it out. If you cash out, you cash out everything you have.
Most casino's have a rule that if you leave a table and come back within an hour, you have to return with the same amount of chips.

#4 07-31-2005, 10:04 PM

alrite this is what i assumed, it seemed really unfair to just "set aside" chips.

flatline · #5 07-31-2005, 10:41 PM

Agreed, money should stay on the table unless a player cashes out everything. Some home games let a big stack sell some of his chips when someone new buys in, which I do not think is unreasonable in a friendly game. But ratholing such as the OP described should never be allowed as it kills the game and is just generally retarded.

#6 07-31-2005, 11:26 PM

i have a similar homegame. what's on the table stays on the table until you leave. it's all or nothing. the only time you can cash out part of your chips at our game is after we call it. we'll usually cash out even amounts and play with a few bucks each, at that point you play until somebody has the 5 bucks or whatever it is and the others are broke. that's only if it's ok with everybody. it's friendly, but it's still for money

Lottery Larry · #7 08-01-2005, 09:40 AM

It's called ratholing and it's a no-no. The closest you could/should come is if you make a rule saying they can take off X amount if they still cover every other stack at the table, but I'd only do that in a very casual game.

You can't do it at a cardroom, don't learn a bad practice at home.

chumsferd · #8 08-01-2005, 10:52 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Money stays on the table. Once it's put in play, it stays there. You can't put it to the side, take it out of play, put it in your pocket or cash it out. If you cash out, you cash out everything you have.

[/ QUOTE ]

We play this way in our home games, it's definietly the way to play. The downside can be that, in a friendly-social home game, since we play NL, the destination of most the money tends to be decided by a couple of hands between deep stacks towards the end of the night. With limit, however, this shouldn't be a problem.

As a slight aside, I've discovered that a number of the (less experienced) players in our home games divide their stack in two. One pile equivilent to their original buy-in(s), and then the rest. If someone is doing this, whilst playing NL/PL, and you really want to put them to a decision, then try to bet just enough to make sure they have to break into their buy-in stack. It sends your fold equity way up, in my experience.

Edit: hmmm... at least 4 people from that game read this board, so maybe I've just reduced my fold equity... for what it's worth, if any of you are reading this, I wasn't talking about you

Aquarian · #9 08-05-2005, 04:50 AM

We know who you are talking about [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

#10 08-05-2005, 11:41 AM

have you considered setting a cap? Some people set a cap to how much you can lose in a pot if you're playing NL or PL. Caps are especially useful for Omaha, since it's such a volatile game. Since you have a cap, someone with a real deep stack wont have a reason to cash out a portion of his stack.

caps also create a lot of action because people know they can "only" lose a certain amount