In our home mix game we have a separate dealer who alternates dealing with 2 decks to speed up the games. In a game of stud, three players were all in on 5th street with no further chips in play. Hero wins the pot after 6th & 7th street is dealt. Hero rakes in the huge pot and turns over his down cards for the next deal, but suddenly sees that the 4th street card is from a different deck - so are the 4th street cards dealt to the other players.

Question: is this a misdeal and all chips returned to original players, or should the play stand as is. It seems harsh either way, one school of thought is that a misdeal can only be called if the mistake is caught before the action, or if a duplicate card comes out during play making it obvious the deck was misused. In this case all action was completed in good faith and hero did not have any advantageous info over others when all the chips went in. However no one could have declared a misdeal until after the hand was over (unless they saw the dealer using the wrong deck to deal 4th street).

Any comments from you experts would be really helpful, thx.

Seems like having two decks doesn't really save all that much time or the dealer sucks...

Were any of the cards duplicated for anyone else's hands?

yes yes and no

What were the stakes?

Not sure that's relevant, but it's high stakes enough to hire a separate dealer, and high enough to cause great anguish for those involved. The game was pot limit stud, and it was 5-bet on 3rd street; potted on 4th; and all-in on 5th.

Hand stays as played, fire the dealer.

this is really tough. It's clearly a fouled deck, but it sounds like it wasn't discovered at showdown, but after the hand was completely over. I think I let the hand stand.

I played self-dealt games with 2 decks for decades, and never saw this come up. I'm curious as to who was making the 2nd deck and how it got within the dealer's reach.

I would probably let the action stand and fire the dealer.

You might get a better answer in the Home Poker forum.

The dealer makes the other deck herself. I now realise this can lead to mistakes but she's been dealing for years and we never had this problem before. It was an honest mistake on her part.

I'll take your advice and repost in the home game forum, thx

It sounds to me like the dealer put deck 1 down for a minute, then picked up deck 2 and started dealing from it. Not that the 2 were mixed.

Hard to believe though that she picked up the wrong deck by mistake for just one round, then put it down, then picked up the correct deck again, all without realizing it. Good chance that she realized it when switching back to the correct deck and just hoped no one would notice.

This is a fouled deck. Absolutely not a valid hand. Unwind the action and give everybody his money back. If the "winner" tabled a hand that included two A then that's what you'd do. This is no different. More of a hassle since the pot has been shipped, but so what.

It is different because it appears the fouled deck wasn't discovered until after the hand was over. That's the key here. If it was at showdown, you unwind it, but it wasn't until the pot was pushed, hands were mucked, etc. that the guy flipped his upcards up and then noticed it. If you notice a foul deck with the first card dealt of the next hand, or on the shuffle, you don't go back and unwind the hand. This situation is obviously close enough for debate, but I think the hand as described was about the bubble for being over and not unwound.

Nobody can disputed it was a foul deck. The key question to answer is was the hand over or not. There's a difference between tabling a fouled hand at showdown and realizing it after showdown has been resolved.

If the pot is awarded in a flop game, and as the dealer is collecting the cards it's observed that the river card is a duplicate card, the hand would be unwound. This is the exact same scenario.

You would immediately notice it's a duplicate card.

Stipulated not noticed until shipment.

Unsurprisingly, electrical is right here. Unwind the action as best you can and give everyone their money back.

Presumably the dealer noticed that she was dealing from the wrong deck and switched back. What she should have done is told folks what happened, unwind the fourth street action, and then dealt fourth street again from the proper deck.

And I probably don't fire her over this one incident, but if stuff like this happens with any regularity, find someone else.

What dealer in her right mind puts down the deck in play to begin with? I've done my fair share of dealing in home games with 2 decks and never, ever put the deck down when I'm dealing. Can't say I've ever seen a professional dealer put the deck down even with only 1 deck on the table. Sounds fishy.

Yeah, but in a home game with two decks there is usually a position assigned to make the deck for the next deal. Here they're trying to speed up play and the dealer is expected to both deal and have the deck made for the next hand, so she has to put the deck down to shuffle. If she doesn't, there's no point in having two decks.