Thursday, July 30, 2015

Let's Go to the Tape

During the session I described in my post (here), I witnessed something I’d never seen before in a poker room, and I thought it was unusual enough to report on it.

Three players saw a flop. Player A, first to act, may or may not have checked.  Players B & C both behind him checked behind him, whereupon Player A moved all in.

Players B & C, almost simultaneously protested that Player A had checked.  Player A insisted he had done no such thing.  The dealer said he did not see the player check.

Now, all three of these players had been playing together for a good two hours.  This had never come up before.  I personally hadn’t seen it, I believe I had my face buried in my celphone putting in a note about a recent hand.

Everyone was insistent on their position.  The dealer said he didn’t see it, but when the other two continued to insist A had checked, he asked if he should call the floor and B & C said yes.  The game was halted, the floor came over and had the dealer explain the issue.

I expected the floor to make a ruling right then and there.  Since the dealer hadn’t seen the check, I would have expected the floor to go with that and say the bet could stand, he has to go with his dealer in this instance.

But no, that’s not what happened.  After hearing everyone’s version, he said, “Well, do you want me to go to the tape?  I can look at the tape right now if you want.”  The players agreed to that.  And so, the floor disappeared, and the game was held up for I guess around 5 minutes.  When the floor returned, he said that there was no check and the bet that Player A made stood.  The other players weren’t happy, but they reluctantly accepted the decision.


Interesting.  Has anyone else ever seen that?  I think there was only previous time I actually witnessed a tape being reviewed during a poker game. And that was a dispute about much the pot should have been in an all-in situation.  The floor tried to recreate the pot, and when it didn’t add up, he went to review the tape.  Meanwhile, the game continued on. He came back about 20 minutes later and confirmed that the person questioning it was entitled to some more money from the player who had lost (it was less than $100 as I recall).  I probably would have blogged about it at the time but I think it came from a session I’d just as soon forget (I wasn’t one of the people in that hand).  I don’t recall if the floor person (who was the shift manager) claimed to have reviewed the tape himself (doubtful) or he was getting word from the surveillance people.

But that was quite different, because reviewing the tape didn’t hold up the game (though the floor trying to recreate it manually before the tape review did).  But in the check/no-check dispute, the game had to be completely held up while the review was being made, We were all sitting there waiting for a ruling, which fortunately, wasn’t too long in coming. 

I wonder if it’s just because PC is so much smaller than a Vegas casino that they could do this so quickly that they even attempted it?  I imagine with all the gazillion cameras that must be going at a big Vegas casino at any minute, it would take way too long to find and the review the tape (assuming the tape was capable of proving whether or not there had been a check).

So that was a first for me.  Anyone else ever seen a tape review of phantom check?

16 comments:

  1. During a tournament, we went on break and they did a color up of green chips. When I returned, my green chips (maybe 1000 of them) were gone, but no bigger chips. When I complained, they went to the tape (but the tournament continued), and later the player who did the color up had to give my whatever it was I was due.

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    1. Very interesting.....my first question is, did they suspect the guy who bought up all the green of doing it on purpose? Was it more of a dealer error (dealer should have been on top of it anyway.

      Other thing is that it is kind of bad that it took them awhile. What would they have done if the player with the extra chips busted to someone in the meantime. Could you have gotten them back from the player he busted to? It also might have affected bets/all-ins from either one of you too. Weird situation.

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    2. The said it was a dealer's error. He tossed the color-up guy X green chips. The guy tossed him Y black chips. The dealer, perhaps distracted, tossed the black chips back to the guy doing the color up instead of putting them in front of my stack (I was on break).

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    3. Thanks, MOJO....I can definitely see something like that happening.

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  2. Replies
    1. You clearly missed the point, sir. Those pics are included because the girls are wearing TAPE. I hadn't even noticed the boobies.

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    2. So this is why I haven't replied in a while. It must be the lack of boobs that kept me away.

      Steve007

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    3. And here I thought you guys read it for the articles.

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  3. I wonder if he even checked the tape? Maybe he just went back for a few minutes, then went with the dealer's call.

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    1. LOL...I actually did think of that too, in fact I meant to put it in the post. Definitely a possibility. I mean, the guy probably had to go to the restroom anyway, right? :)

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  4. I used to work in a sports book on the strip and the question of tape came up. All the clerks who had been there a while said those camera's have been broke for years. Meanwhile a clerk came up $2500 short one day and there was never any tape proof of what had happened. He got fired though.

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    1. Interesting...but I thought Gaming insisted on having those cameras and making sure they worked?

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  5. I doubt this could happen in Vegas, especially as quickly as it did in your scenario. People always ask to check the cameras and unless its a big pot, its not really going to happen because its gonna take a lot of time for everything to process. Either that pot gets locked up and the game continues or the game comes to a stand still for a good amount of time, which upsets the other players that want to play.

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  6. I've never seen this or had it happen while I was playing, but the interesting thing here is use of the word "tape", because almost no one uses videotape any more. Everything is recorded on digital media, either digital cards or hard drives. But as someone who shoots video for a living, I know that there are still people who say "Roll tape". This past Friday I shot a remote interview that was later played back on a TV show, and that is still called shooting "live to tape." And to sum it all up, I like the photos of the ladues with tape covering certain areas as opposed to digital blurring. At this point in my life, things already look blurry enough.

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    1. Ha ha....thanks for that clarification. It's sort of like "dial a phone," and :"hang up." No one does those things any more but we still say those things.

      "Let's go to the digital" doesn't have the same ring to it.

      Digital blurring drives me crazy, obviously.

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