K-lo,
I believe the question by Spence was referring to the initial round of betting. At the point of the dealers tap and burn, all players are in for all bets. The issue is whether the board should be reshuffled because the BB was not offered his raise option by the dealer before he dealt the flop. I don't understand how any substantial action could follow the BB in this instance?
Oooh.... I see - this is an interesting point indeed.
Basically you are saying that under the "two player" rule, the BB could always argue that there hasn't yet been substantial action when it comes back to his turn after the flop is dealt. Will have to try that at the next TDA Summit game. lol
I have to admit, I have primarily applied the "substantial action" rule/definition only when considering whether or not there has been a misdeal, and not with regards to situations involving skipped players. In my opinion, the misdeal situations are different because the cause of the misdeal may not necessarily be apparent to every individual player when it is his or her turn (e.g. cards were dealt to an empty seat). In the skipped player situation, however, each individual player knows (or ought to know) that his turn is about to be skipped once something -- anything -- happens after him before he has acted.
I never liked RROP Rule 12 and the explicit reference to 3 or more players because in my mind, it is a bit of a red herring -- it should not be about how many players have acted. The critical issue IMHO is how long the player who was missed delayed drawing attention to the irregularity, and was that delay reasonable. In some cases, only one subsequent player may have acted prematurely while the second subsequent player takes time to think... at that point, there is still technically no "substantial action", but clearly, the missed player should have said something by then. As soon as he realizes something has happened after him, he needs to speak up... the fact that 2/3 players have acted should be but one possible factor to consider whether there has been what I would call "undue delay". Similarly, if we can confirm that the dealer prepared to deal the flop by announcing the number of players, tapping the table, burning a card, counting out three cards, and then dealing the flop, then this fact should be given a significant amount of weight when determining whether there has been "undue delay".
In contrast, if the dealer had a brain freeze and didn't do any of those things for whatever reason, and just dealt the flop out such that the missed player didn't really have a reasonable chance to stop the dealer until it was too late, then I think this should also be taken into consideration.
I would prefer to have a rule that states that if a player's turn is missed, but that player does not bring this fact to the attention of the dealer
as soon as reasonably possible, and without undue delay, after the next player in a betting round has acted, or if he is potentially the last player to act in a betting round, then before the dealer initiates any further action (e.g. prepares to deal flop/turn/river or calls for a showdown), then his hand will be ruled dead if check was not an option, and may be ruled dead if check was an option on that player's turn.
(What is "reasonably possible" and "undue delay" should be determined by the TD in consideration of various factors, which may include, but should not be limited to e.g. the amount of time passed between the next player/dealer action was made and the time the missed player made the table aware of the irregularity, the number of players that have subsequently acted, the speed at which any series of subsequent actions occurred, the actions that were or were not performed by the dealer in dealing further streets, etc., and some factors may be given greater weight than others depending on the circumstances.)
I prefer to see something closer to Nick's view in that the dealer's actions when dealing the flop should be enough warning for the skipped player almost all of the time. In my mind, it is not really a question of whether the action that followed falls under the definition of "substantial action" or not. In Spence's original example, I think Nick's argument makes sense, although theoretically I think there might be some rare situations where a reshuffling of the flop might be justified if there really was no undue delay on the missed player's part.