The Complete Guide › Module 2: Bank, Buy-Ins & Color-Ups

How to Do a Poker Bank Fill

True Poker Dealer · Module 2, Lesson 4

A fill is what happens when your bank is running low on chips and you need more to keep the game moving — cash goes out, chips come back in, and because it's a slower, more visible procedure, the whole table ends up watching you do it. Learn the procedure cleanly and it's a non-event. Fumble it and it's the kind of thing a floor supervisor remembers.

When a fill happens

Fills happen between hands, the same as most bank maintenance — some rooms allow it mid-hand, but unless your supervisor says otherwise, treat between-hands as the standard. Take your cash out and display it exactly like a buy-in: starting on the left, broken down clearly, counted out loud so that both you and whoever's receiving it agree on the number before anything moves.

Handing off the cash

Scoop the counted cash together and place it where the person picking it up can take it without reaching over your bank or blocking the tray from surveillance — never let them take it directly out of your hand. Once they've seen the amount, they'll set down spacers representing it, and that display has to stay in place the entire time the cash is off the table. That's your (and surveillance's) record of exactly how much is supposed to come back.

Receiving the chips

When the chips come back, the layout flips from a normal buy-in: short stacks go on your right instead of the left, because during a fill nothing is going out — that side is free to use differently. Full stacks build on the left. Break down one of the largest-denomination stacks, prove it against the others, and count the total out loud to confirm it matches what was displayed when the cash went out.

Getting it into the tray fast

Once it's proven, get it into the bank quickly and correctly: one hand always picks chips up, the other always places the spacers — never cross the two, and never pass a stack hand to hand. Roll each stack toward yourself (or away, either works) to drop it cleanly into the tray without needing to shake it loose. If you know your bank well enough to know exactly where everything's going before the chips even arrive, set up your short stacks and spacers ahead of time — it makes the whole thing noticeably faster.

Where fills actually go wrong

The procedure has a lot of small steps, but the real risk isn't any one of them individually — it's accepting or sending out the wrong amount somewhere along the way and ending up with a bank that doesn't add up. That's the mistake that gets noticed and gets remembered. Slow down enough to count correctly, every time, and the rest of the procedure becomes close to automatic with reps.