Table Stakes
Tables Stakes is a very simple concept, easily understood in practice but often the reasons for table stakes are not well grasped by the beginning player. Table Stakes simply means that you play any hand of poker with the money (or chips) in front of you. You may not add chips to your stack or take money out of your pocket or purse during the course of a hand. You may buy more chips between hands in most games to increase you stack, unless you are playing in a game with a fixed cap on buy-in and you are at or above that limit.
The other part of Table Stakes is that you may not remove chips or money from a table while you are still playing at that table. This is the part that many players do not fully understand. The term “Going South” refers to pulling part of our stake off the table and this is not allowed in any public card room. If you want to “lock up” part of your win, you will need to cash out of the game completely and then, if allowed, you can buy back in. Some houses require you to wait a minimum amount of time to re-enter a game under such circumstances and, if there is a waiting list, you will be moved to the end of the list.
The reason is that winnings are not winnings until you actually take them away, up until that time those chips are table stakes and are in play at the table where you won them. Players have the right to not have big winners pulling chips off the table and playing from short stacks to limit their loss exposure in a situation where they have already won chips in that same game.
The simple rules of table stakes are these: 1) you play each hand with only the stake you began that hand with; 2) you may not take chips off the table unless you take them all off and cash out.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #118
