How “Bad” is this…

Nothing to do with that. RROP was far better, and cash games should have some different rules than tournaments.

What in the world.

They do have some different rules. You don't have to throw your hands up and say "welp!". The applicable TDA rules act as a nice and familiar base for cash games. The effort by rooms to do that has helped immensely to normalize rules across borders and continents.

The far worse experience is for a poker room to use an evolving, prescriptivist specification written by a trusted and regularly convening body for one half of their room and a dead, descriptivist document written by a single dead author for the other half.

TDA is fine as a basis for cash, but it's funny that you are in the discussion and don't know what RROP stands for 😉 (Robert's)

The dealer in one of my games pulls the bets in as they are made -- even in PLO. Drives me insane. He refuses to listen to me even though I have more experience in more rooms than any of them.

Who is updating cash game rules nowadays? Probably none, as Bob Ciaffone sadly passed away in 2022. Could there be TDA with an appendix about how cash differs?

albedoa, or so it seems.

He did talk about Ciaffone, RIP, though. Abbreviations are always hard, did the googling.

My life is abbreviations 😉 Could be that, or maybe he just doesn't like RROP.

Nah you're right man, I had no idea what "RRoP" stands for when I made a direct reference to the lone and deceased author of RRoP. That is a sensible and normal thing to think.

TDA is cited often because it's the only published rule set that is regularly updated. Yes, some specifics issues need separate rules for cash and tourneys but I think a lot of people over-estimate how many that is

What exactly are the differences? We could take TDA, and just fill in cash with a different color. Easy-peasy.

Pretty obvious he was indicating shock anyone would prefer RROP.

What is funny to me is how everyone says ‘well, RROP has not been updated in XX years. While this is true, and there are things which need added or tweaked, it isn’t like live cash poker has changed massively in XX years.

I would love for some person or organization to “take control” of RC’s copyright of RROP. Then update the rules. Not only do I not know the logistics to make this work, I don’t know of an organization to do this.

An alternative would be TDA to make a set of cash game rules based on their tournament rules. 5here ate differences but it’s not like we are talking about baseball vs cricket. Outside of penalties, the overlap is probably 90%+.

It would be great to have a widely recognized and accepted set of cash game rules. Ofc cash games are more difficult because they tend to be more open and push the limits of what is allowed and these limits are differ3nt in different jurisdictions.

One simple area is straddles. Since what is allowed is different in different jurisdictions, there needs to be flexibility.

Another, penalties. Giving a cash game player a round off means nothing. You cannot force a player sitting out to post money (cash chips are money, tournament chips are not) since that is effectively theft. Also wo timed raising blinds, missing hands has no direct impact.

There are other areas of difference but probably outside penalties, the overlap is 90%+. But there are differences.

At least some of the differences between cash and tourney rules are simply customary and have no real basis in the actual difference in game play between the two. An example is the way that all in bets with no further possible action are handled. Tourney rules are that all players involved must immediately table their hands. In cash games players need not ever table their hands, but only must do so if they wish to make a claim on the pot. A player with a losing hand need not show.

Is there a tangible difference between the games that is great enough to make such a rule difference necessary? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t really think so. I do know that a lot of cash players would gripe if the tourney rule in this situation were adopted for cash games, though. Mainly, IMO, it just is because the rules have always been different and that’s what players are used to, rather than because it would somehow significantly make cash games worse to use the tourney rule.

Here is my perusal of things in TDA that are not relevant to cash:

7: Random Correct Seating
8: Alternates, Late Registration, and Re-Entries
10: New Players and Players from Broken Tables - different
11: Balancing Tables and Halting Play
16: Face Up for All-Ins - could or should be different
23: New Hand and New Limits
24: Chip Race, Scheduled Color Ups
27: Re-buys
33: Dodging Blinds
63: Chips Out of View and in Transit
64: Lost and Found Chips - maybe
71: Warnings, Penalties, and Disqualification - needs a major overhaul for cash
RP-6. Efficient Movement of Players
RP-7. Timing of Dealer Pushes
RP-8: Hand for Hand Procedures
RP-9: Number of Players at Final Table
RP-11: No Ante Reduction
RP-15: Proper Tournament Staff Communication - I actually like this but would need renaming
RP-16: Player Absent on a Breaking Table
RP-19: Reducing Stalling

possible cash game topics missing (I'm sure there are more I'm not thinking of):

Forward Moving Button instead of Dead Button
Must Moves and Table Changes
Min and Max stack sizes on broken tables, table changes, rebuys
Straddles
Kills
Buy the Button, Coming in Between
Seat Changes
Posting
Side Bets
Dinner Lists
Playing Over
Cash Playing / Cash on table
Tipping Etiquette
Rake / Time / Time Pots / Time Flops
BBJ / Promo Drops
Winning BBJ / Promos (e.g. coded language)
Collusion / Soft play - might be covered in TDA

There's more there than I thought. The difficulty with a "uniform" set of rules for cash is that there is a large amount of variation today in cash games. I can think of places that allow only UTG straddles, while others will add button straddle and others will allow a straddle anywhere for example. I think the majority of rooms do a decent job on the difference for cash as a whole.

There is a specific reason for exposing all in hands in tournaments. There is a specific reason this is not needed or used in cash.

You do not want chip dumping in tournaments but in cash this is not a concern. My buddy needs chips, I just hand it to him from my pocket. Can’t do this in tournament and chips are power in tournaments

I don't know why the rules should need to be updated. Seems like it should be an extremely rare thing.

Almost all NL games have buy in restrictions, so chip dumping can definitely be a problem.

You're exactly right. The interim goals of a specification are predictable, low-impact steps toward maturity. The long-term goal is relatively stable maturity. (I had a colleague who argued that we shouldn't follow a certain technical spec because it hadn't received an update in the seven years since it reached v1 stable I had to explain to him why that is a feature of a spec.)

The TDA rule changes are plateauing as the Association addresses the more nuanced aspects of the game. If they were planning a wedding, they'd be picking out napkins. The venue and dinner menu are locked.

That isnÂ’t quite true. You canÂ’t give chips from your stack to your buddy legally in a cash game. Maybe youÂ’re deep and donÂ’t want to play deep. Your buddy is short. IÂ’m not sure itÂ’s a significant problem in cash games but IÂ’m also not sure why it is such a big deal to just table the hands either.

It also can be about collusion other than chip dumping. Suppose player A is short stacked and goes all in, say for $40 at a 1/3 game. Folds to player B in the SB who calls with $260 behind. Player C in the BB has B covered and is player As buddy. Player C shoves. Player B folds, the cards are run out, player A shows his cards and player C mucks. How do we know that C and A arenÂ’t colluding here? If C had to show, it would be easier to determine. If C shows 72o, we should be calling the floor over and C should be given a rack, donÂ’t you agree? With current rules we could never detect this.

I know the rules ARE different. I just am questioning why they should be different, other than “that’s the way it has always been”.

One of the issues with updating cash game rules .. as told to me by Supervisors in two different Rooms .. is that if these particular casinos want to update their cash game rules they have to also push those changes thru their Gaming Board, which opens up the door to Gaming examining any other 'games' attached to the original request to operate poker in those facilities. This apparently is not something that upper management wants to 'risk' at these facilities. So it's much better to ask for enforcement forgiveness, which will probably never happen, than actually update the rule set.

However, for Tournaments they simply referenced TDA in their license applications. This certainly opens up the door for cash to simply reference TDA or potentially another 'alphabet' rule set instead of a list of locked in rules.

This reminds me of how companies handcuffed themselves when they set up their ISO or QS quality policies and caused them to make much higher expenditures over time.

One of the most popular differences for cash v tournament is the raise sizing. Tournaments use the 50% rule, but I play in a couple of cash rooms where the raise must be full sized or it's just a call .. even if it's within $1.

I think cash rooms will always have something they do locally that would deviate from a rule set, but it's still not a bad idea to try and standardize somehow. Another issue is that tournaments have interested parties like WSOP, WPT and all the mini-tours who want their tournaments run the same no matter the venue. However you have thousands of poker rooms that probably don't give a hoot as to whether or not they do it the same in their house as someone else. GL

This is not at all a popular rule. I wouldn't try to extrapolate from your experience with this example.

Only if you believe big stack poker is a thing in cash. Not saying stack size doesn’t have any part of cash, but definitely not even close to the effect it has in tournaments.

Also no cap and match stack are quite common, at least regionally

I guess if collusive chip dumping were to become a problem in cash games must show all ins could be invoked. But I have not seen it as an issue plus we still have the IWTSTH. That can be more effective since it doesn’t require all in to be used.

But honestly, chip dumping can be accomplished even with both rules if the parties have brains. Ofc an unexpected table change can s5op this in tournament.

Thus why I said give him chips FROM MY POCKET.

Also in cash games, I have never seen it in tournament, we have the IWTSTH rule. This isn’t supposed to be used to garner info like some abuse it. It was int3nded to be a check on collusion and it doesn’t require all in.

Fact is that the forced to show rule isn’t very effective at preventing chip dumping anyway if the players involved have a half a brain.