Stop telling a brand-new table its players are broke, and give it a way out

Following on from seating the table: a dealer who names six people and hasn't yet
said what a buy-in is gets told

    Nobody at the table has chips left. Add a buy-in to deal.

with no buttons on the bar at all. Both halves are wrong for that table. "Left" says
the chips were had and lost, which sends the dealer looking for a rebuy — and a
blocked prompt with nothing to press is a dead end, when the fix is one field in the
sidebar the message never pointed at.

A table where nobody has ever bought in is now told what is actually true, and given
the way out:

    Nobody has bought in yet. Set what everyone starts with, or give each seat
    their chips.                                      [ Set starting stack ]

The button opens Table Setup, scrolls the starting stack into view and selects it, so
the next thing typed is the answer. A seat with no stack of its own falls back to the
table default, which is why one number is enough to seat everybody's chips at once.

A table that genuinely busted out is a different situation and still says so, with no
starting-stack button — there the fix is a rebuy, not a default.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_015bnp7xKUPFFSpwkYNFaPgb

JoshHeaps.Net/wwwroot/js/casino/holdem/actionBar.js

@@ -593,9 +593,18 @@ const ActionBar = {
             // thing: "only one player is dealt in" is wrong when four are sitting there
             // and three of them are just out of chips.
             const withChips = seated - broke.length;
+            // "Nobody has chips left" is the wrong story for a table that never had
+            // any. A dealer who has just named six people and not yet said what a
+            // buy-in is gets told their players are busted, which sends them looking
+            // for a rebuy button instead of the one field that fixes it.
+            const nobodyHasEverBoughtIn = this.state.seats.every(p =>
+                !(Number(p.buyIns) > 0) && !(Number(p.stack) > 0));
+
             if (broke.length > 0 && withChips < 2) {
                 line.textContent = withChips === 1
                     ? `Only ${listNames(Betting.liveSeats(this.state).map(s => s.index).filter(i => !broke.includes(i)))} has chips — ${listNames(broke)} ${broke.length === 1 ? "needs" : "need"} to buy in.`
+                    : nobodyHasEverBoughtIn
+                        ? "Nobody has bought in yet. Set what everyone starts with, or give each seat their chips."
                         : "Nobody at the table has chips left. Add a buy-in to deal.";
             } else {
                 line.textContent = seated === 0
@@ -605,6 +614,26 @@ const ActionBar = {
             line.classList.add("dealPromptBlocked");
             wrap.appendChild(line);
 
+            // A blocked prompt with nothing to press is a dead end, and this was the
+            // one a first-time dealer hits: six players named, a sentence saying they
+            // have no chips, and no button anywhere on the bar. The starting stack is a
+            // single field in the sidebar and the message never pointed at it.
+            if (nobodyHasEverBoughtIn && seated > 0) {
+                const row = document.createElement("div");
+                row.className = "actionButtons";
+                row.appendChild(this.button("Set starting stack", "actionDeal", () => {
+                    const field = document.getElementById("defaultStackInput");
+                    if (!field) return;
+                    const panel = field.closest("details");
+                    if (panel) panel.open = true;
+                    field.scrollIntoView({ block: "center", behavior: "smooth" });
+                    field.focus();
+                    field.select();
+                }));
+                wrap.appendChild(row);
+                return wrap;
+            }
+
             // Named seats that aren't in the hand. Naming a chair now seats whoever is
             // in it, so reaching this takes something else — a table where everyone was
             // sat out, or a save from before that was true — but the way out of it

tests/holdem/seatingTheTable.test.js

@@ -132,3 +132,50 @@ describe("the way back from a table where everybody is sat out", () => {
         assert.equal(state.seats.filter(p => p.inHand).length, 1, "empty chairs stay empty");
     });
 });
+
+describe("a table where nobody has bought in", () => {
+    // Different from a table that has busted out, and the difference is the whole
+    // point: one needs a starting stack named, the other needs a rebuy. Telling a
+    // dealer their brand-new players have "no chips left" sends them hunting for the
+    // wrong thing.
+    const neverBoughtIn = state => state.seats.every(p =>
+        !(Number(p.buyIns) > 0) && !(Number(p.stack) > 0));
+
+    test("six freshly named players have never bought in", () => {
+        const state = emptyTable();
+        ["Ann", "Ben", "Cal", "Dee", "Eve", "Fay"].forEach((name, i) => {
+            state.seats[i].name = name;
+            state.seats[i].inHand = true;
+        });
+
+        assert.equal(neverBoughtIn(state), true);
+        assert.equal(Betting.blindPreview(state), null, "and there is no hand to deal");
+    });
+
+    test("a table that has busted out is not the same thing", () => {
+        const state = makeTable({ seatCount: 6, seated: [0, 1], stack: 200 });
+        state.seats.forEach(p => { p.buyIns = 200; p.stack = 0; });
+
+        assert.equal(neverBoughtIn(state), false, "they had chips — they lost them");
+    });
+
+    test("one player still holding chips is not a never-bought-in table either", () => {
+        const state = emptyTable();
+        ["Ann", "Ben"].forEach((name, i) => { state.seats[i].name = name; state.seats[i].inHand = true; });
+        state.seats[0].stack = 50;
+
+        assert.equal(neverBoughtIn(state), false);
+    });
+
+    test("naming a starting stack is enough to deal", () => {
+        // The one field the message now points at. A seat with no stack of its own
+        // falls back to the table default, so setting it seats everybody's chips at
+        // once — which is why it's the right thing to send the dealer to.
+        const state = emptyTable();
+        ["Ann", "Ben", "Cal"].forEach((name, i) => { state.seats[i].name = name; state.seats[i].inHand = true; });
+        assert.equal(Betting.blindPreview(state), null);
+
+        state.defaultStack = 200;
+        assert.ok(Betting.blindPreview(state), "one number and the table can play");
+    });
+});