Beginner’s guide: Your first casino tournament (part 2)
Multi-way pots can be ‘fun’ to deal with, they tend to happen a lot in the early stages of rebuy tournaments when everyone at the table utters the universal cry of “I’m getting good value now – I’m all in (with my J-4 unsuited)”. Usually a proficient dealer would work out the main pot and side pots in order, but most players at self dealt games have very strong opinions about how much should be in each side pot, and start changing chips up themselves, usually from the wrong pot. Blessed is the person, when everyone’s all in, who cries out “let’s just leave the chips in front of each person and work it out when the hand’s over”
If you get any problems whilst at the table (and this is very very rare to be honest – in several hundred games at probably half the UK’s casinos I’ve never seen a novice treated badly) then raise it with the tournament director / card room supervisor. It’s poker, not a knitting circle, so the odd bit of swearing is to be expected, as well as toys coming royally out of prams, but the vast, vast majority of poker players are polite, friendly and helpful. They want your money, sure, but they’ll want you to come back if nothing else 
Then we come to the subject of “was it a call or a raise?” and the whole thorny issue of verbal declarations. The simplest way is just to announce what you’re going to do it, then put either the right amount of chips over the line or if you don’t have it exactly then after you’ve announced your action put an amount of chips closest (above) the desired amount and you’ll be given change.
You’ll see people just tossing chips in without saying anything, and what’s fun is when several chips greater than the call amount go in. The ensuing argument would make me rich if I were an arms dealer. The official rule for oversized chips being thrown in without a verbal declaration is as follows:
- If a single oversized chip is thrown in without verbal declaration, it will be taken as a ‘call’ and change will be given.
- If multiple oversized chips are thrown in without a verbal declaration it will be taken as a raise of the exact amount of the chips and no change will be given.
- If multiple chips are thrown in which total more than the call amount, but are not enough for a legal raise, the player will be made to make it up to the legal minimum raise.
Does anywhere enforce rules 2 and 3 systematically? Do they ‘eck.
