You count the chips at the end of the night and the table is 20 short. Or 20 over. Everyone looks at everyone else.
It happens in almost every long-running home game. Here's how to deal with it without a fight.
Why it happens
Almost always one of these:
- A buy-in or rebuy wasn't written down
- A player took chips home, or left a few in a pocket
- Two players swapped chips or cash directly and nobody recorded it
- A stack was miscounted, usually a big one with a lot of small chips
- A chip was valued wrongly when cashing out
Check in this order
Count the chips again. Make the player who owns the stack count it in front of one other person. Most gaps close here.
Compare against the buy-in log. Total buy-ins should equal the total value of every chip in play. If you handed out 600 worth of chips and there are 580 on the table, 20 is missing. If there's 620, a buy-in wasn't logged or a chip was valued too high.
Ask the room. "Did anyone rebuy and forget to say?" resolves more of these than any amount of counting.
When you can't find it
Sometimes it's a few dollars and nobody will ever know why. You need a way to settle that everyone agreed to before it happened. The common options:
- Winners absorb it, in proportion. The people who finished up take a small cut each, sized to how much they won. If the table is 20 short and Dana won 200 and Lee won 20, Dana absorbs about 18 and Lee about 2.
- Split it evenly across everyone. Simple, but it means losers also lose a little extra.
- The bank eats small gaps. Fine for tiny amounts, but not something to ask a host to do forever.
Our view: winners absorb it in proportion. Someone who lost 80 and owes it is fair game for the maths, but asking them to pay another 3 for a mistake they didn't make is where the arguments start.
If the table is over
The same options apply in reverse. A surplus usually means a buy-in is missing from the log, so check that first. If it truly can't be found, the winners share the extra in proportion, or the money goes into the pot for next week.
Stop it happening again
- Keep one record of buy-ins, and update it when money moves
- Put chip values on a card on the table
- Count out stacks in front of a second person
- Agree a rule for gaps in advance (see house rules worth agreeing on)
Our free settlement calculator tells you straight away if buy-ins and cash-outs don't match, and by how much, so you spot it before anyone has paid anything.