Low stakes home league game - tourney. Here's what happened. We start with 2 tables and someone at one of the tables busts and we announce that we're moving to the final table. Cards have already been dealt at the other table and we establish that we will play that hand out before consolidating.

So...the button raises 3x BB to $3k, the SB folds and the BB shoves and gets called by the button. The BB thought the button was trying to steal right before the break and shoved with 9-2 off. The button was not stealing and had AA! The cards are dealt and the board runs out 2-Q-K-2-8 and seemingly the 9-2 hand cracks the AA. The 9-2 player had approximately 13K in chips which covered the AA player's 11K so AA player is eliminated. There is a lot of commotion because of the hand itself - people from the other table had gathered around to see what all the yelling was about and also that the consolidation process had started.

After the hand, a good few minutes pass and the player who had the AA hand cracked says out loud, "I think we have a problem" and he holds up 4 red cards (A-A-9-2) and a bunch of blue cards. We play with 2 decks, a red and a blue deck to keep things moving and apparently the flop, turn and river were all dealt with the wrong deck. It also appears that the red deck from which the flop, turn and river should have been dealt from were still intact but we couldn't be positive. There was a big discussion about what to do and the 9-2 player offers to give the AA player his chips back to the level they were before the hand and call it even. The AA player accepts and we move to the final table with 9 players. For ****s and giggles we deal the cards from the red deck and it turns out that the AA would have held on a 2-3-3-9-K board. There was discussion that the right thing to do would have been to continue the hand with the red deck and totally dismiss the cards that were dealt erroneously from the blue deck but since the AA player harmed was ok with the deal made we just moved on.

What is the correct ruling? Is what we did acceptable?

And yes the dealer of the hand in question had consumed numerous brews and we watched his deal the rest of the night!

I'm pretty sure the ruling is that both players should give their chips to the first person to bust out of the tourney!

Since nobody acted based on the wrong cards (they were all-in preflop), I attempt to reconstruct the proper board the best we can figure out.

I'm bothered by the uncertainty here, since we don't want the player with AA to be lying about the flop being from the blue deck. If you're sure the dealer used the wrong deck, though, deal the board from the correct one.

If any action had taken place based on the blue-backed cards, the hand is voided, all chips go back and we redeal:

RRoP, Irregularities:
I'm adding the part that a wrong-color card only voids the hand if someone acts on it, just to keep the dealer from having a cheap way to exit the hand by grabbing the wrong deck -- other players should have a chance to say "stop, wrong deck" before things get irreparably fouled. In a casino, one wrong-deck card hitting the board probably would void the hand, but there we don't have dealer/players, and the way decks are handled there's much less opportunity to get them intermingled.

Anyway, voiding the hand is a fine, but the small blind should get his chips back too.

A couple dealing procedures could have helped avoid this. Ask players not to set the next hand's deck next to the dealer (a bigblind shuffle helps this a lot). Also the dealer should pick up the board and the shuffle should start right away after the hand ends, even if tables are moving. Discovering this sooner would have made it much easier to fix. Leaving the board out when people aren't all paying attention can lead to a lot of uncertainty, which breeds suspicion.

I believe you should have gone with the correct flop. Essentially you made the hand irrelevant, which it would have been had you not ruled that the final hand should've been played. Honestly there was a mistake and it should be ratified. The player with AA would've had a much better stack to start off and one player less involved. I understand the rule in a more friendly environment but I still think for fairness to both players the hand should have counted.

WOW. In this case, I don't think I object to declaring it a no-hand.

I think if you know the stub is correct, you need to deal out the board.

Since you can't, return all chips.


obv KITN for dealer

I'm confused. Was the player on the button not the player dealing out the hand? If he was, that could have been a pretty sick angle.

Clearly I think what the players did was correct. It was acceptable to all parties that it be reverse-engineered the best way possible and give all the chips back as best they could.

Seemed like an honest mistake. I've actually seen this happen at home games quite often, and it's usually just worked out exactly like how this group did.

I'm confused. Was the player on the button not the player dealing out the hand? If he was, that could have been a pretty sick angle.

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Yea - I was just texting the guy who was the button on this very point. I was trying to remember who was where at the table and we reasoned that the small blind actually picked up the cards and dealt them out since the button and the BB were all in. True confession - I was the BB and LOL at my picking up a physical tell too that looked like the button was going to fold before he raised.Note to self - start bringing my glasses to these games!

I now feel bad that I cut the deal and did not allow the button to win my chips.

ha, forget giving him his chips back then!

From the story that was told I say give chips back and continue with the tourney. If the error is found as soon as the hand is complete and we know for a fact that the red deck is still sitting there waiting to be dealt then we scrap the blue board and deal the hand out like we would have from the correct red deck. Since you say a few minutes past and people were merging onto the table and no one could be sure that the red deck was still intact, I think the way the decision happened is what should happen.

KITN to the small blind for dealing out the board though.

If there hadn't been a delay, you would deal out the proper cards from the proper deck.

Since there was a delay.... the solution proposed was good.


It's when you have action post-flop, with the wrong deck, that decisions get hairy.

Not really. Any action and all hands are dead and bets returned. RRoP.

I'm torn between Larry and Rottersod here.

The Rule(tm) is, of course, that hands are dead and bets are returned.


I just don't like sending bets back after action is offered and accepted.

This, plus....

The hairy part is explaining the difference to people, if they've experienced the pre-flop version, Rottersod.

I'm ready for that. RRoP lists only two reasons to void a hand, and this is one of them. If we put a card on the board, and people bet/call/fold/check whatever, that gives away a ton of information that simply cannot be unwound. In virtually every other case, players have the ability to protect their own hand by following procedure, but in this case, acting in turn based on the visible cards, their hand has been compromised through no fault of their own.

This doesn't apply if the money went in preflop, and someone temporarily put the wrong board out. Correct the error, and no real harm is done.