Judge Judging Judges

As we all know, there\’s far more to the World Series than just bracelet events. One of the alt-poker activities going on today and tomorrow and yesterday (Tuesday and Wednesday) is the TDA Summit. That\’s where tourney directors from card rooms around the country get together with Matt Savage, Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and the other honchos in tournament operations to discuss, debate, and vote on various technicalities of poker rules — as well as to discuss handling new and old situations that inevitably arise.

They also had a specialty non-bracelet tourney today — a $125 buy-in with 60something players (Warren Karp was the \”known\” name who made the final table) — and I happened to stumble upon the semi-funny sitch captured above … where at a table full of floormen, someone called floor. Ha ha.

Though you can imagine the pressure on the floorguy should he make the wrong ruling, it frankly wasn\’t that hard of a decision … But there were a lot of people interested in how it would turn out, particularly because these players, while being trained in TDA rules, where in a tourney being run by WSOP staff, which has its own rules, which are slightly different from the TDA\’s.

Click below for a breakdown of the situation, and see for yourself if you woulda made the same decision.

Blinds are 200/400. A player in middle to late position announces raise and makes it 1,200 to go as the dealer reiterates, \”Raise.\”

The small blind, however, didn\’t hear it. And he tossed in his 200 intending to call. Upon learning there was a raise, the SB tried to take his 200 chips and muck his hand. That\’s when someone protested, and eventually the SB called floor.

The floor gave the player two options: He could either abandon his hand and the extra 200 he threw into the pot (400 total), or call the 1,200. It would not be legal, however, for him to muck his hand and retrieve the chips he errantly put in the pot not realizing there had been a raise. The percentage of the undercall in relation to the raise made no difference.

According to WSOP rules, the only time a player can pull chips out of the pot is if he makes a call (or a raise?) out of turn, and the player in front of him raises. At that point he can pull back his chips and throw away the hand (or call, or raise).