11- 5-04, LearnTexasHoldem:

Adding Money In Middle Of Hand

Question: I ran into a heated debate about poker rules last night that was never resolved, so I am hoping you can answer this question better than I was able to. Last night I was playing in a NL texas hold em cash game with eight buddies of mine. I play NL cash games on the internet all the time and I Play the same rules used on Party Poker in my home games. We all bought in with 25 dollars and agreed that chips could be replentished as often as one wants as long as they don't exceed the 25 dollar max. We came down to a situation where a person was bet 10 dollars on the turn when he only had 5 dollars left. Naturally I explained to them the concept of a side pot, because there was other people still in the hand willing to call the bet. The person with only 5 dollars left wanted to buy more chips in the middle of the hand. I tried explaining to him that you can't buy chips in the middle of a hand, because it would give the shortstack an unfair advantage. The advantage being that since we play sidepots, the shortstack would have the option of using the sidepot if he only had a mediocre hand, or buying more chips if he thought he was going to take the pot. He argued that he doesn't have an advantage because even if he buys more chips he's not guaranteed to win. It ended being a pretty heated argument. I know that on Party Poker you can replentish funds in between hands as long as you dont exceed to table max, but you cannot replentish funds in the middle of a hand. It makes sense to me, but I had trouble getting the point across to my buddies. I was wondering if you could explain a little more clearly why in a cash game you can't buy chips in the middle of a hand, so I can better explain this concept to my buddies.

Great Webpage !

Thanks Jarrod

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Answer: Thanks for the question Jarrod. You are exactly right, you are not allowed to bring more money into the game while you are in a hand. You can add more after the hand but not during it.

The main reason why that isn't allowed is the one you mentioned -- you could just limit your risk until you had a really good hand, then put all the money in you wanted. That is true for both limit and no limit holdem. In limit holdem they even have a rule that you can't buy in for a short stack more then few times. For example, you can't keep buying in for only 10x the small bet all night.

The next that I can think of is that it changes the dynamics of the game. In NL holdem, a lot of your decision making process is based on "how much it'll cost me." If I see that a person only has $11 left and it is my BB and the blind is $10, I'll call with any hand for $1 more. Likewise, if we've been battling it out in a hand a scare card comes on the river, like the flush getting there or an Ace, and the person doesn't have that many chips left I'll call.

It wouldn't be fair if at that point he could go into his pocket and make me pay more to call. Holdem is fun because of the flop, turn and river play. If people could see if they liked the flop before risking more money then it pretty much undermines the whole game.

This question reminds me of a poker movie I saw recently with Sly Stallone. First of all, in the movie they portrayed a top poker player as someone who could cheat better then other players instead of using logic and perceptiveness to win. Then when they were actually playing cards one of the characters was actually going to have to fold because he didn't have enough money to call after another player reached into his coat and brought out stacks of $100s.

Talk about lame. They could have at least consulted with one person who knew the rules of cards and mentioned "all-ins" and "side pots." Oh well, it was only millions of dollars for the project, why get the details of the game right. hehehe

Go set your buddy straight and let him know!

Cash plays, chips play, cars play, but it has to be on the felt before the cards are dealt.

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