Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: All In raise

« on: November 12, 2008, 08:07:01 PM »

For some reason this has come up like three times in the last couple games.  Here's the scenario:

Player A bets $20.
Player B goes all-in for $30.
Player C wants to raise...can he or must he only call $30?  I say he can raise what ever he wants as long as it is at least $40 (since the $30 all-in was an incomplete bet).  Lately though there are those who say player C can not raise and can only call or fold. 

I do know that had Player C only called $30 then Player A can not reraise.

We've already addressed this with the actual rules, but just for completeness on the bold part: given that player C has not acted yet, how on earth could anyone believe that something players A and B do prior to C doing anything at all could ever possibly take away C's inherent right to raise?

That's just obviously wrong. You always have the right to raise when you are making your first action in any given betting round. Nothing that A and B do, short of them pulling the fire alarm, can take that right away from C (ignoring nitpicky exceptions like: if A bets more than C has, well obviously then C cannot raise at that point, but that's a nitpick that misses the main point)

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General Discussion / Re: All In raise

« on: November 12, 2008, 07:53:55 PM »

In my experience, the best way to understand this is to understand that IN NO LIMIT (the rules for limit are different), any incomplete raise is best understood as not really "part of the game" but rather as "additional action" (think of it as a side bet, not to be confused with a side pot).

So, let's say it is after the flop (just for the sake of example, to avoid having to talk about the blinds) and the following scenario occurs:

Player A bets $20
Player B calls $20
Player C goes all-in for $30

The question that was asked here earlier, "can player A raise?" is easily answered if you understand that player C's incomplete "raise" (of the extra $10) is NOT to be intepreted as part of the game, but rather an additional side-action bet. In effect the player has only called, but also proposed (outside of the game, if you want to think of it this way) an additional $10 side bet (except that if you want to continue playing, you MUST accept this bet, so it's not really "outside of the game").

Given this, player A cannot raise, because all that has happened behind him are calls, there has been no raise. There has been a call by B, and a call by C but with that extra $10 side-bet that needs to be accepted as well.

Now take a different scenario:

Player A bets $20
Player B goes all-in for $30
Player C wants to raise

What is the minimum valid total amount for player C's raise? $40? $50? $60?

Again, this is easily understood if you understand the incomplete all-in as "a call plus additional action".

Given that player B "called" (with $10 of additional action, that we can ignore for a moment), the minimum amount that C can raise to is $40. Of course, C is obligated (by the rules of the game) to also participate in the additional $10 action proffered by B.

Therefore the minimum legal raise for player C is to $50 total, which is to be understood as a raise of $20 on top of the $20 bet from A and B, plus matching the $10 of additional side action on B's all-in.

Now if A wants to reraise, *his* minimum bet (for a reraise) would be to $70. Again this is because C's raise was to $40 (which is $20 more than the A bet), so the raise increment is still $20. Thus A can reraise to $60 but also still has to include the $10 side action for B's all-in.

Sounds complex but it is actually quite simple: an all-in that itself is not a legal raise is really just a call plus an entirely separate side-bet for the additional amount. That side-bet has to be included in all other subsequent bets, but otherwise does not affect the state of the bet/raise/call amounts dictated by the normal rules.

It is certainly possible for any given house to have its own interpretation of this situation; however, this is the rule as described (not very well) in Robert's Rules.

3

Help Me / Re: Break Screen

« on: March 29, 2008, 07:02:10 AM »

Hmmm, I just tried this and still got the same result... my "sit back down" screen set triggers during the round.

The closest I've found to a workaround involves having a screen set just for breaks (no time trigger, only the break trigger) and having two screens in it with carefully chosen display times. This sort of works, but it's a bit fragile for several (obvious?) reasons.

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Help Me / Re: Break Screen

« on: March 27, 2008, 12:38:08 PM »

Ok, how about: how do I (or can I?) define a screen that will be used only when there are two minutes (or less) to go in a BREAK (but not 2 minutes or less to go in a round).

It seems that the conditions on the screen set conditions page are OR'd together? I tried putting <= 120 into the time remaining and also putting "ALL" in the breaks on the conditions page, but the result is that my "two minutes to go please sit your butts back down" screen fires during the rounds too...

5

Suggestions / Re: Adding pictures of players

« on: October 30, 2007, 07:13:42 PM »

Putting in my two cents for a player *sound* in addition to a player picture.

I have a real life donkey sound that I sooooo desparately wish I could automatically play when a certain player busts out. Oh, and some other sounds too for various humorous nicknames my players have.

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Help Me / Re: Event/Trigger Help

« on: October 01, 2007, 03:13:46 PM »

Ah, found the variables in the test conditions thingy. Never mind, now I've got the list. No way to test for a specific player (I guess the expression parser isn't equipped to do string syntax and comparisons?)

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Help Me / Re: Event/Trigger Help

« on: October 01, 2007, 03:08:12 PM »

I'm guessing, from this thread, that there's also no way to do something we want to do: write an event that would trigger a specific sound when one particular player busts out.

We have a donkey in our group. Everyone, including the donkey, knows it. It would be hilarious to be able to play a hee-awwww! sound automatically whenever he busts out.  If I could write an event triggered by a player bust out with the condition "name = Joe" that would be ideal.

As a more general question: I can't seem to find the documentation for the conditions that you can use in an event. The pre-defined events and the occasional passing description to a feature here and there are the only places I found that document what can go here. Is there a comprehensive list somewhere?

I realize I have other ways of making a donkey sound play at my command. But we started to imagine specific sounds for a half dozen different "characters" we had in our tournaments and thought it would have been fun to program that up...

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General Discussion / Re: with in the law holdem game

« on: February 27, 2007, 10:58:27 AM »

I live in a state where you can not legally play cards for money . So Instead of playing for money we all bring a $10 scratch off lottery ticket ... Not sure if it would hold up in court

Unlikely. I don't know which state you are in and what the law says, but most likely it refers to gambling "for value" as opposed to "for money". Lottery tickets have value, so you are stlil violating the law.

Any even if it referenced money specifically, the court -- despite what you see on TV shows -- isn't stupid and doesn't generally like being treated as such (hey, it's not money, see, they are lottery tickets! ... that argument is going to be thrown out for being, well, ummm, stupid).

It's still a cool idea, but I wouldn't pin my hopes on it being legal (if playing cards for money is illegal as you say)

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Help Me / Re: Not managing players

« on: August 13, 2006, 03:01:25 PM »

lol I must not have seen that, or, as sometimes happens, got stuck on an idea and just bull-headed my way through it.

It's still a clever way to have a player DB that is easy to use for tournaments where we don't want to track individual players, just want the software to calculate stuff for us (prize pools, total chips in play, etc) from a number of players entered.

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Help Me / Re: Not managing players

« on: August 08, 2006, 01:30:07 PM »

Is "no way to do that" still the current answer?

What I did as a workaround for tournaments where we just want to "set a number of players and go" was create a list of players with "names" P01, P02, P03, etc. I also wanted to turn off the table mgmt. So I made one table that seats 99 players. We have our own way of managing table movement.

So at the beginning of the tournament I just click the right number of players (easy because the names are the numbers and they sort in order), I "seat" them (all at one table), and we're good to go.