Hello. My hubby was playing in a tournament today and this came up.
A player goes all in for $5500. The dealer announces that the player is all in for $3900. Player A calls and Player B calls. When action gets around to player C the dealer looks back at the player who was all in and announces, oh, I made a mistake, the player is all in for $3900. The dealer called over the TD and explained to him the mistake. Player A did not want to call the 3900 and was given the choice to forfeit the $3900 he originally called or put the correct amount of chips into the pot, because a player behind him had acted. Is this correct?
I am confused. You said the player is all in for $5500, but 3 sentences later you say,
"oh, I made a mistake, the player is all in for $3900". Then you say, "Player A did not want to call the 3900 ..."
I am assuming that the original raise is in fact $5500 and that Player A did not want to call the additional $1600 on top of his original call of the $3900.
So the question is, "What constitutes "Substantial Action"?
I was not able to find a definition in Robert's Rules of Poker or in the TDA Rules. However, the 2010 WSOP Live Game Rules, in Rule 100 I found the following: "...In button games, substantial action is considered to occur when a player has raised the pot or someone has called and the next player has acted on his hand..."
Based on my interpretation of this rule, I would agree with the decision.
However, I would like to know more about a couple of things,
1. experience level of the players,
2. were the chips pushed forward so the players could see them,
3. were the chips 'stacked' by size,
4. why didn't Players A and/or B question the amount of the all in, etc.
Depending upon these (and maybe some others), I might be inclined to invoke Rule #1 and back up the action.
After posting the above I saw MikeB's response and I totally agree. In the post referenced by MikeB, I submitted that an error of 10% or less would be reasonable grounds for requiring players to 'call' the additional amount. Here the difference is more than that, but unless there are really serious extenuating circumstances I still agree with the TD's decision.[/list]