Long one, cliffs at the bottom.
Stupid situation in my latest home game that I’m trying to wrap my head around.
8-handed NLH cashgame 5/5 SEK ($0.5/0.5) with 500-1000 buy-ins. There is a mix of experienced players and amateurs. At least one that I know is a bit uncomfortable with the stakes. In order to manage the game size, buy-ins are 1000 max and rebuys upto half the big stack. Straddles are not allowed.
One of the players start doing dark raises to 25 whenever he’s UTG and another player follows suit and does the same some of the time. I’m not a fan as I feel it’s sort of a work around to the staddle ban but I also don’t see what I can do about it. After all, it’s just a raise whether or not one has seen his/her cards. No one is complaining about it or is visably upset so I figure it’s not a big deal and nobody else does it.
As it happens I’ve got position on both the dark raisers and I start 3-betting them a lot lighter than I normally would and quite large as the original dark bettor calls very light. Nothing crazy, but I definitely do it a few times making it 100-125. It makes the game play plenty bigger once or twice every other round but nothing super crazy happens as a result.
The player to my left (the most experienced player at the table) clearly is not having a good night. He has lost a few buy-ins worth and is visually and verbally upset and cranky. Not very pleasant. At about midnight after losing some more he grabs a barrel of chips from his stack and SLAMS them on the table. It’s clay chips, he knows they’re expensive and that they’re a big deal to me. I don’t say anything but feel the pain of the chips. 10 minutes later he does it again. This time I speak up and tell him to please mind the chips as they might not stand too much abuse. He mumbles something, gets up from the table and paces around for a while before asking me to cash him out. Then he gets in his car and effectively takes half the players with him as he is their ticket home.
The 4 of us that are left joke about his pissy mood all night and keep playing (one amateur player left). No one has yet mentioned anything about not liking the dark raises. The only issue is that players behavior.
Fast forward to yesterday: I invite to a new game and don’t really feel like including him since he wasn’t very fun to have around last time. I decide to send him an invite after all without mentioning last time. I get back a long answer about how it’s my responsibility as a host to make sure the game stays as announced. He feels I took advantage of the situation with the dark raises by making big raises on top of them and that that made the game uncomfortable for the rest. (This the first I hear of it from anyone). Now he doesn’t want to play in my game anymore and the same goes for one of the players he brought in.
I have checked with my players and no one thought the occational big raises were an issue.
Who’s the asshole here if anyone? How to deal with this in the future? I can’t ban dark raises, but I guess I can just ask players to refrain from it. Which I feel he should have done if he thought they were such a big issue.
Thoughts?
TL;DR
Op hosts 5/5 game with some restrictions.
Two players start raising in the dark.
Op as a result start 3-betting those light.
Another player gets upset and doesn’t wanna play in OP’s game anymore.
Stupid situation in my latest home game that I’m trying to wrap my head around.
8-handed NLH cashgame 5/5 SEK ($0.5/0.5) with 500-1000 buy-ins. There is a mix of experienced players and amateurs. At least one that I know is a bit uncomfortable with the stakes. In order to manage the game size, buy-ins are 1000 max and rebuys upto half the big stack. Straddles are not allowed.
One of the players start doing dark raises to 25 whenever he’s UTG and another player follows suit and does the same some of the time. I’m not a fan as I feel it’s sort of a work around to the staddle ban but I also don’t see what I can do about it. After all, it’s just a raise whether or not one has seen his/her cards. No one is complaining about it or is visably upset so I figure it’s not a big deal and nobody else does it.
As it happens I’ve got position on both the dark raisers and I start 3-betting them a lot lighter than I normally would and quite large as the original dark bettor calls very light. Nothing crazy, but I definitely do it a few times making it 100-125. It makes the game play plenty bigger once or twice every other round but nothing super crazy happens as a result.
The player to my left (the most experienced player at the table) clearly is not having a good night. He has lost a few buy-ins worth and is visually and verbally upset and cranky. Not very pleasant. At about midnight after losing some more he grabs a barrel of chips from his stack and SLAMS them on the table. It’s clay chips, he knows they’re expensive and that they’re a big deal to me. I don’t say anything but feel the pain of the chips. 10 minutes later he does it again. This time I speak up and tell him to please mind the chips as they might not stand too much abuse. He mumbles something, gets up from the table and paces around for a while before asking me to cash him out. Then he gets in his car and effectively takes half the players with him as he is their ticket home.
The 4 of us that are left joke about his pissy mood all night and keep playing (one amateur player left). No one has yet mentioned anything about not liking the dark raises. The only issue is that players behavior.
Fast forward to yesterday: I invite to a new game and don’t really feel like including him since he wasn’t very fun to have around last time. I decide to send him an invite after all without mentioning last time. I get back a long answer about how it’s my responsibility as a host to make sure the game stays as announced. He feels I took advantage of the situation with the dark raises by making big raises on top of them and that that made the game uncomfortable for the rest. (This the first I hear of it from anyone). Now he doesn’t want to play in my game anymore and the same goes for one of the players he brought in.
I have checked with my players and no one thought the occational big raises were an issue.
Who’s the asshole here if anyone? How to deal with this in the future? I can’t ban dark raises, but I guess I can just ask players to refrain from it. Which I feel he should have done if he thought they were such a big issue.
Thoughts?
TL;DR
Op hosts 5/5 game with some restrictions.
Two players start raising in the dark.
Op as a result start 3-betting those light.
Another player gets upset and doesn’t wanna play in OP’s game anymore.
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we also rake 1BB per pot over 20BB, then when we have 10BB that goes into the middle as a bomb pot. Seems to help refrain the bigger degens from pushing the action too much (me)...
but could it be because he is not aware of how expensive / valuable are those chips are?
screaming in my head)
.
