Classy move by the the game host.

[Zetack]

This probably isn't interesting to anybody else, so my apologies...

My regular "home game" (the guy really had it set up as a money making venture, but it was the only semi-reasonable regular game I had found), recently went to hell and I bailed on it.

I've found another game, much nicer, although a bit lower stakes and I'm having to adjust to that. They play a league setup with a 40 dollar buy-in with ten bucks going toward the food and toward an end of the season tourney, with the players getting points toward their starting chip stack in the season ender, based on their finishes in the weeklies. Pretty decent structure with the winners taking about 5.5 hours to win. 25-30 players regularly. Cash game for the bust out-ers. So a pretty nice set up.

They are on their 23rd tourney of the season so they've been going for a while--you have to figure their rules are pretty set, and I'm over there for only the second time.

Blinds at 200-400 and UTG goes all in for his last 675. At that point the dealer announces that because the all-in was for less than the minimum raise, nobody else can raise. Several of the regulars nod and agree.

Um...what? No, no, I explain, that's not how it works...a less than minimum raise doesn't re-open the action but it certainly doesn't close it for anybody who hasn't acted. After a bit of an argument (not heated or anything) they say ask the host. He confirms the rule. After making my point, and the host saying no, no, this is how we've always done it, I shake my head and say, well of course house rules control.

I sit back down at the table thinking of all the nutty permutations this rule could engender, and thinking I've finally run into one of those no-sense house rules everybody is always talking about when everybody starts assuring me that, no this isn't a house rule but that its how it works online and in casinos and "that's why we do it, because that's how they do it for real." Um...Ok. I say I'll bring the rules next time.

Next day I get an email from the host saying he checked the rules, I was right, and from now on they'll do it the right way.

I was pretty stunned. I thought they would be completely invested in the doing things the way they'd always been doing them. And for this guy to pro-actively research the rule and change thing was way cool.

So anyway, there's my anti this-is-a-nutty-home-game-rule story.

Quite frankly, around a poker table is one of the last places I expect to find actual reasonable behavior, so that was quite the pleasant surprise.

--Zetack