Decision at WPT Gulf Coast Championship FT

[JohnnyGroomsTD]

During day 3 of the WPT Main event I had a "non-standard" ruling come up. Often times when one of these situations happens, there is no black and white decision, just many different shades of gray. I made a decision that, though not by the book, was reasoned out to the table and made every efoort to protect all players involved. Here is a synopsis of the decision.

Blinds: 10-20K, 3K ante

Tom Franklin opens the pot from the butoon for 65K. Bill Edler, in the small blind, deliberates for a few seconds and announces reriase, as he put in the 65K calling amount. After a pause of a few seconds, the player in the big blind announces reraise, before Bill has the opportunity to announce the amount of his reraise. Before acting on his hand, Bill asks the dealer to call the floor.

I come to the table and get the details from the dealer, repeat them to verify what has happened, and begin to make my decision. Bill asks me what his options are, and what will happen in different scenarios. At this point, I tell Bill that I do not want to divulge the details of my decision until after he makes his decision, as different outcomes will result depending on several factors. At this point, Tom decides to tell Bill what he thinks will happen, including but not limited to making the 3rd player minimum raise after Bill's reraise. Bill asks m to verify this, and I refuse to do so. I did agree that Tom's decision could be a possible outcome, but would not necessarily be true if there were a "Gross Misunderstanding of the required calling amount". In other words, if Bill had raised exactly half of the players remaining chips, I would not have made him move all-in.

This was not an easy one. In this situation, I felt that any decision I made that was a standard decision would be completely unfair to one of the 3 remaining players in the pot. if I allowed Bill the information he asked for, he could effectively manipulate the pot and have last action on the hand, forcing a decision out of Tom that may or may not be the right one. This gives Bill way too much information on the hand, and allows him to completely shut Tom out of the pot. If I allow the verbal action to be taken back under every circumstance, I allow the 3rd player to completely pull a shot, by letting him off the hook and not binding him to an action that he should be comitted to. He then gains a big advantage in the pot, and Bill is put at a disadvantage. I felt this was a bad way to go, as I would be rewarding the guy who made the mistake.

To sum it up, I felt that any decision I could make would be grossly unfair to one of the 3 players in the pot. Due to the varying circumstances, and the fact that it was the final table of a 10K event, added pressures existed, as well as a WPT camera recording the whole decision. I am not sure that my decision was right, and ask for open criticism and discussion by all posters, as I would like to see a standard set on a decision like this to help us all moving forward. I have spoken with jan Fisher at TDA, and will probably ask Matt, David, Linda, and any and all TD's to chime in with opinions on this one. Establishing a precedent would be a good idea on this one.

Let the debate begin........