At online poker games, a lot of, um, altercations arise from a simple misunderstanding.
I almost got into a fistfight with someone (actually, several someones) playing casino games like poker because the buy-in amount was increased from the time I got the invite to the time I arrived at the game. It turns out that the food cost more than the host expected, and he was demanding extra compensation. Eventually, it was agreed that he shouldn’t have gone so crazy with the food, and that we’d stick to the original buy-in.
Another notable shouting match occurred when the last three players in a home tournament discovered that no one had figured out how the pot would be split. The top two were fighting over what the split for first and second place should be, and the low stack was fighting to get his buy-in back for coming in third. Eventually, the host calmed things down and the game finished without any further incident.
If your hosting a home game and you want to avoid similar situations, all you have to do is establish your house rules to everyone before the game starts. By keeping everyone informed of the buy-in, the winner’s splits, and any other rules that you want kept, you’ll avoid any misunderstandings as the evening wears on. This is not the case for poker online though, where every table has rules already established.
