Not enough chips to split in a multiway split pot (tournament)

[MarkGritter]

This situation arose in the Omaha/8 tournament I played in today at Canterbury, and I'm curious how y'all would choose to deal with it.

Four players see showdown. Two of them are all-in, so there are two side pots. The smallest denomination chip in play is $100.

Side pot #2 is resolved normally. One player has a flush + wheel, the other only has a wheel, so the flush gets the high half (including an odd chip) and the low half is split evenly.

Side pot #1 has only three chips in it ($300). The all-in player who is eligible for this pot turns over a third wheel!

(To add to the confusion, all-in player #2 turned over a wheel as well.)

Who gets how many chips?

[Photoc]

The player first from the button going clockwise direction gets the extra chip on the high hand. Since 2 people had the same high, it goes with this rule.

If it was actually a chop with a high and low hands going to different players, again the high hand would get the extra chip.

[Forbin]

You missed the point entirely. The problem was the last side pot, which contained only 3x100 chips. 1 person had a flush plus a wheel, and 2 other people had a wheel.

So the one person gets the high half, which would be 2x100 (extra chip going to the high part). That left just a single 100 for the low. How you split that, I have no idea. It's quite an odd problem. Even if there were only 2 people splitting the low, you'd still have to chop that chip in half to effectively split the pot.

Quite a messed up situation.

[Nate.]

Mark --

Here's how it seems to me.

3 = 2(1) + 1. So there are 2 chips for the high side and 1 chip for the low side. Flush gets 2 chips.

1 = 3(0) + 1. So each low gets 0 chips. Award the odd chip however the house rules dictate (usually first clockwise from the button).

It doesn't seem fair -- one or two players will get nothing from the 3-chip pot with a wheel -- but these things happen, as far as I can tell, in split-pot tournaments. We saw a few strange things in the WSOP O8 tournament.

--Nate

[Nate.]

Oh, the other important thing to do in this situation is to pre-emptively take some Tylenol in anticipation of the inevitable whining about the proper procedure for awarding odd chips, small pots, etc.

(The WSOP $3k O8 was dubbed the "Las Vegas Dealer Abuse Convention;" anyone who's played O8 should understand.)

--Nate

[youtalkfunny]

Nate got it right.

Flush gets two chips; first wheel ("clockwise from the button", as RN would say) gets the remaining chip.

[2461Badugi]

Secondary question: what's the worst ruling you can come up with? And will it be worse than the actual ruling was?

[treo650]

evil game where you can have a winning hand but
still lose money.

Or in this case, have the nuts but still bust out
of the tourney(!?)

[MarkGritter]

I agree with Nate that the proper procedure would be to give two of the three chips to the the flush (for high), then give the remaining chip (for low) to whichever of the three hands was closest to the button.

The tournament rules specify "There will be an exception to this rule [about the odd chips going to the high hand and to the left of the button]: An attempt will be made in identical hand situations to split the pot as evenly as possible: Example -- a wheel in Omaha/8." (I believe what this means is if there are, for example, 18 chips, then two wheels will each get 9 instead of the "high hands" splitting 9 chips with one player getting 5 and the "low hands" splitting the other 9 chips with the same player getting 5.)

So maybe it would make sense to ensure that if the wheel closest to the button had already gotten an odd chip for low, he did not get another odd chip. But the split should still be two for high and one for low.

What the TD actually decided to do was to give one of the three chips to the flush for high. Then she introduced another black chip into the tournament (!) and gave each of the three players in that side pot one of the remaining chips. (3=2+1+1)

I think the extra chip should only be introduced if the player "rounded down to zero" might be eliminated--- as is done in chip race situations. But there were enough chips in the main pot that this was not necessary.

[Photoc]

[ QUOTE ]
You missed the point entirely.

[/ QUOTE ]

My bases were correct but I missunderstood the context of your post.