By Kelli Mix | Published on July 7, 2009

Ruling! #5 – Where Are My chips?

The Scenario

A player wins a nice pot and he drags the pot toward his remaining chip stack. Shortly afterward, the player to his left says “Where are my chips?” and it turns out that the other player accidentally scooped his opponent’s chips that were not part of the pot. They cannot agree how many chips were lost. What is the ruling?

Kelli’s Ruling

Typically in this situation the dealer and other players at the table try to help determine approximately how many chips the two players had before the start of the hand. Together, they can then retrace the bets & calls to determine what the pot should have totaled. If this is no help, the floor will have to be called and security will have to check the table camera to gauge how many chips were in each players stack. This can be a very long and arduous process that will halt the game – probably break up the game – but sometimes it is the only solution.

Kelli Mix is a poker player and author of the ‘Game Day Poker Almanac – Official Rules of Poker’. Kelli is from Georgia, and is the state director for the Poker Players Alliance.