Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Playing last night in an 8 person home tournament. Low stakes, decent players though despite the lack of $$$ available to win.

Two players are college kids, both pretty decent. Our first game ends around 8:00 PM, one of the kids who drove the other one has to leave at 11:00 PM to work. From what we understood, he could not be late or call in.

So they say if we do a slightly accelerated blind structure, they'd play. I'll call the one who drove (and has to leave for work) Player 1 and the other one Player 2.

The game goes on for a while and Player 1 is eliminated when his 7-7 goes up against 8-8 and cannot improve. It is around 9:45 PM right now and he is the second person out. I have no idea how Player 2 thinks we're finishing by 11:00 PM.

Anyways, the game goes on and it gets closer and closer to 11:00 PM. Player 2 starts making very loose calls and raises (such as calling an all in on the turn with a 9-5 os on a board of 9-4-2-A when he had no other draws besides the wheel against a tight player who had been betting the whole way).

It gets to be 11:00 and Player 1 tells Player 2 he has to leave, period. Player 2 just shrugs and says he has to go. Nobody else could really give him a ride because he lived over an hour from where all of us were.

He gets up and walks out and goes with Player 1 who is already in his car waiting. We don't even get a chance to say anything to him about his chips or anything.

The TD (host) makes the decision to divide up his chips evenly amongst the remaining players and absorb them. Now the question of his money.

Technically he wasn't eliminated and still had an average stack, however during the last half hour he did make some wild raises and calls hoping to get it down to the top 2 (who got paid).

Since it wasn't an emergency and was something within his control (aka he knew he had to leave at 11:00 PM regardless), would you even consider refunding his money and playing for one buy-in less? Why or why not?

Both of these guys are in our regular ring game circle and we see them often.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Nope, wouldn't refund at all.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Why not just let his stack dwindle naturally? Why the heck would he get his buyin back? They knew what they were getting into when they signed up.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

dividing his chips of evenly hurts those who had bigger stacks. He doesnt seem to care about the buyin, and I dont see any reason why his stack shouldn't be blinded off.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

If it's really just a "friendly home tournament", take his buy-in out of the prize pool out of the prize pool and give it back to him next time you see him.

If it's anymore serious than that (there are people still playing that aren't regulars that might object, etc.), tough luck for him.

Doesn't seem like a big deal regardless since he voluntarily left without bringing up money.

And as far as his chips, just blind them off naturally.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Since he didn't bring up the issue of his buy-in, he clearly isn't worried about that. So I'd say no on the refund issue.

As for his chips, just pull his chips off the table. Dividing his chips amongst the remaining players is unfair to the big stacks, but blinding him off is a pain in the butt.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

I don't think blinding someone off is ever good, because it gives the people in a position to steal his BB a big advantage. I also think just take his chips off the table.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

take the chips off the table and money stays in the prize pool. not even close.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

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Why not just let his stack dwindle naturally? Why the heck would he get his buyin back? They knew what they were getting into when they signed up.

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Agreed. Let the stack blind away. If he had an average stack there is a chance he could finish in money, depending on your payout of course.

P [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

I would say it depends on how many chips he had left. If he was a short stack, say less than 1/2 of everyone else I would refund his money.

Whether you decide to or not is really more of a function of how strict your game is with respect the rules.

If I were in player 2's shoes, he should just have to eat the loss. (eg. "thanks for the game guys, cheers.")

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

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take the chips off the table and money stays in the prize pool. not even close.

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This is how we handle it at our tournaments. Pretty standard, actually.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

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take the chips off the table and money stays in the prize pool. not even close.

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This seems to be the easiest solution for a home game.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

A refund is comepletely unfair to everyone in the tourney. I have never heard of such a thing and hope I never will.

I can't see any action other than playing this like he busted out. You take his buy-in, you take his chips off the table, and you pay him for whatever place he came in when he "busted out".

Blinding off his stack to see if he did in fact place in the money would be a very huge concession.

This sort of thing makes a good arguement for a pre-determined set of tourney rules to handle these situations.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
take the chips off the table and money stays in the prize pool. not even close.

[/ QUOTE ]

This seems to be the easiest solution for any game.

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Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Removing the chips might be a good home game solution, but that's about it. I prefer the standard blinding off.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

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Blinding off his stack to see if he did in fact place in the money would be a very huge concession.

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Not a concession at all unless there is a rule saying that you are disqualified if you miss more than X hands in a row. He would be allowed to sit there and fold every hand without looking at his cards, which is all that you are doing when you blind him off. Is someone allowed to go take a dump and tell you to fold his hand if he's not back in time?

I agree with removing the chips ONLY because it is a home game and the effort of following the procedure in most casinos (of blinding him off) may be too big of a pain in the ass. Either way, agree in advance how this will be handled.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

blind off the chips, no refund. Removing chips from play or splitting them up does have its problems.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Play cashgame next time

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

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blind off the chips, no refund. Removing chips from play or splitting them up does have its problems.

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Splitting the chips would be the last choice I would make.

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

Hi there, [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

here's what I found concerning "check-fold" situations in tournaments in Robert's Rules of Poker (SECTION 15 - TOURNAMENTS, p.40/41: VERSION 10):

"4. The appropriate starting amount of chips will be placed on the table for each paid entrant at the beginning of the event, whether the person is present or not.
5. If a paid entrant is absent at the start of an event, at some point an effort will be made to locate and contact the player. If the player requests the chips be left in place until arrival, the request will be honored. If the player is unable to be contacted, the chips may be removed from play at the discretion of the director anytime after a new betting level is begun or a half-hour has elapsed, whichever occurs first .
6. A starting stack of chips may be placed in a seat to accommodate late entrants (so all antes and blinds have been appropriately paid). An unsold seat will have such a stack removed at a time left to the discretion of the director.
7. A no-show or absent player is always dealt a hand . That player’s stack will post chips for blinds and antes , and have the forced lowcard bet put into the pot at stud.
[...]
A player must be present at the table to stop the action by calling “time.”
13. A player must be at the table by the time all players have their complete starting hands in order to have a live hand for that deal. ( The dealer has been instructed to kill the hands of all absent players immediately after dealing each player a starting hand .)"

If you don't go by the rules of Robert, any solution will be fine, as long as you and others are ok with it depending on how strict you want it to be managed.

I'd prefer the check-fold solution, as stated in RRoP.

Besides, he might return wanting to re-enter the game; in this case, you would have done no good in killing his stack [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] remember, anything can happen in poker.

Take a pick [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Player has to leave home tourney: His $$$?
 

SorryBoutCHYA is all i would have to say and as far as blinding him off or dividing them up you cant really blind him off unless hes gonna be back its not fair for him to get 2nd potentially and make $$ while having not played
i would divide them up to the most even number possible between the remaining players and take the rest off the table or maybe jsut take it all off of the table