To speak or not to speak, that is the question

[EWillers]

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ExampleL years ago I was playing in a small tournament. I raise before the flop and get headsup with a player who is behind me. On the flop I miss but I make a continuation bet. She calls me. The yurn comes and I bet out again. She now makes an extrememly blatant string raise. The dealer says nothing and no other player says a word.


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The string raise issue definitely cuts both ways. I was at a 2/5 game one night where the donkey attempted a raise on the river with a board of K K 7 7 Q. Player A led out 125. The donkey attempted to raise to some amount but screwed up the procedure and thus attempted a string raise. Would be do-gooder who wasn't in the hand spoke up and the attempted raise was disallowed. Player A had K Q and donkey had K whatever. Effect stack was about 1000.

As far as doing good vs. doing not good, it cuts both ways.

What I find interesting re: the string raise mistake specifically is what is the best rule for combating it. There are 3 main choices.

1) Dealer should be always active. Anytime a string raise is made the dealer should disallow it and explain the rule if necessary.

2) Dealer should be active only when the pot is not head-up. The thinking here is that though the string raise may actually benefit a would be offended player, there is a 3rd party involved, and thus the dealer should actively correct the mistake to protect the 3rd party.

3) The dealer should allow the offended party to bring up the issue if he chooses. The dealer should never actively correct the issue.

I imagine in a perfect world, the rule used by a house would depend on the size of the game. Entry level games would use #1 or 2, while larger games would use #3. I'm not sure if this is practical to do within a given house given the crop of dealers at the casinos I frequent (prolly 1/2 would be able to do it no prob; the other 1/2, it would be a disaster.)