Tell me who you think is right here.

It's a cash game at Commerce Casino. We will call them "John" and "Chris".

John has at the table longer than Chris.

As is common at most card rooms, the rules at Commerce state that the player who has been at the table longer has first choice in seat moves, and in fact can overrule other players who start to move to a seat and say "Actually, I'll take that seat".

Chris wanted to move to a seat immediately to John's left. He threw a dollar chip to "lock up" that seat, but did not move anything over there because he was playing to his blind, which would take another 5 minutes.

Just as Chris stood up and was getting ready to move his chips over to the new seat, John piped up and said, "Are you taking that seat? Actually, I want it."

Chris felt he had the right to the seat because John hadn't said anything about it for 5 minutes. He asked, "Why didn't you say anything when I threw my dollar chip over there 5 minutes ago?"

John replied, "I didn't see you throw it. I didn't know you were moving here until now. Had I known, I would have said something when you did."

There is little question that, by Commerce rules, John has the right to the seat. A player is not considered "in" his new seat until he actually sits there and nobody objects.

Knowing he would lose a challenge to the floorman, Chris gave up and stayed where he was. He made several angry and nasty comments to and about John, regarding the situation, feeling a breach of etiquette had occurred.

Do you feel that this was a breach of etiquette, or was John in the right here? If you were John, would you have let Chris take the seat?

One note before you decide: The act of "overrulling" seats based on seniority at the table is very standard and common at Commerce, so that's not what this was about. Had John immediately said to Chris, "No, actually I want that seat", there would have been no issue. The question is whether John committed an etiquette breach by saying it 5 minutes later, because he apparently hadn't seen that Chris was going to move until Chris stood up to do so.