Angle? Bad ruling? Both?
$180 PLO Tournament at Champions Houston. Players can rebuy for $100 and can add-on 50K chips for $100 at the first break.
Villain in early position (I think small blind), hero in middle position to my right.
Villain is a tournament regular in the Houston area and is a very aggressive player.
Blinds are 200/400 with a BB ante of 200. Champions plays "true pot" preflop which makes an open 4x the big blind.
Villain opens to around 2500, there were some limpers.
Pot grows significantly.
Flop is 9♦ 9x K♦
By the turn, which is A♦ , villain announces "pot",and slides out about 8 or 9 pink chips (5K denom). Hero quickly announces all in for about 35K.
Villain announces "Full house is good", and tables nut flush with Q♦ 4♦ Kx Tx, but doesn't put out anymore chips, because the 8 or 9 pinks covers hero.
Hero acknowledges full house and shows 9x Kx x x
Dealer rips river, which won't change outcome, because villain can't make a better hand.
Villain then says, "I never said call", and wants the floor to come make a ruling.
Floor is then called over and dealer explains what happened. Floor says something like, "The action going to stand, and you're going to pay off his bet"(which was around 6K more than villain's pot-sized bet on the turn).
Villain starts arguing that it's not about the chips, but the "bad ruling". Hero is like "come on, this really looks like an angle." All-in bet is paid off and we move to the next hand where Villain is still arguing with floor.
Thoughts?
Does exposing his hand before announcing "call" kill his hand?
Angle. Well-handled by the floor.
As a dealer, I actually had the reverse happen to me the other day.
NL tournament. I don't remember the blind level, but it isn't important. It gets heads up to the river. Player A (first to act) has a huge stack. He has the most chips at the table. Player B is a short stack. If I had to quickly guess, I would guess they had $15 or $16,000.
So on the river Player A thows out 4 $5000 chips but doesn't say anything. It is obvious he is trying to put Player B all in. I announce it as a $20,000 bet.
Player B tanks for a long time. A really long time. Finally a clock is called. Before a floor can even get to the table, Player B throws in one chip to call.
Player A turns over his hand. Whatever. It is clear he has the best hand. Player B holds a funeral for his cards before finally throwing them forward and then pushing all of his chips forward. He starts to get up. I start to expose his cards thinking he was all in, but glancing at the stack he pushed forward, I am now doubting he is all in. I push the cards to the side and start to count his chips.
He has a bunch of $500 chips so his stack looked smaller than it was. He had $20,700. As he grabs his backpack and starts to walk away, I stop him and say he has a few chips left. He explains that the other guy at the table has him covered. Player A and a bunch of other players start to tell me that Player A has Player B covered.
I talk over all of them and explain Player A threw in $20,000 without saying anything and Player B threw in one chip which is a call. Player B still has $700 left.
Everyone thinks for a second and nods. They all assumed Player A was betting enough to put Player B all in. I did the same. It was obvious what he was trying to do.
However he did it wrong. He only threw in $20,000 without saying anything. He thought (and I initially thought as well) that it was enough to cover Player B. It wasn't.
I don't know what the real ruling should be, but IMO if someone puts chips into the pot, he can't say he didn't call a bet which was covered by those chips.
In cash PLO, my understanding is that it is not at all rare for one player to bet more than pot and another player to call more than pot, and it is considered to be fine because both players agreed to the bet. This isn't exactly the same as that, but it's close enough.
