You are making the assumption that the dealer and other players would all not say anything if the player didn't try to take his bet back .... but how can you know that is the case.

You might choose to assume as others in this thread have that the other players all want the K out there are going to stay silent. But maybe one of them doesn't. Maybe without the player acting like he doesn't like the K someone else will object. Maybe the dealer is realizing what has happened and is going to call the floor without any players objecting to the card anyway.

I get that you read this situation as one of those where everybody is going to pretend that what happened didn;t happen .... but how can you know that. Even if you are there .... how can you know what would have happened if things were different.

I can tell you for sure that based on how the hand played out, 2 players didnt want to the K to stay and 1 did. One of the ones who didnt want the K to stay said nothing.

I thought the only reason anyone really noticed the card was premature was because the bet was taken back.

Did the dealer burn and turn because

1)he saw him moving the 4 chips forward or
2)because he didn’t notice he was in the hand/hadn’t acted?

This might help with ruling. Maybe go with it stays if 1 and new river if 2, since that would be ruling if he totally hadn’t acted.

Seems to me an objective way to handle it.

That's pretty much what happened. MP was clearly calling and had his arm outstretched. He was lowering his arm to the felt to drop the chips when he saw the card. It was a "bang bang play".

I dont know. He deals pretty quickly which is normally a good thing, but just got ahead of himself this time. He didnt say what caused him to do it.

Im kind of surprised at the opinions here. IMO if the guys clear intent was to call, and he told the floor he was calling, its a call and the Kh stays. It would be different if he hem haws around and says "Uh, Im not sure I was still thinking" even though it was obvious he was calling. But if he admits he was calling, I dont see how he should get an advantage by changing the river card.

IMO if the hand was out there AND the player admits to trying to call .. then it's a call and the card stays. I'm not letting the player take advantage of a technicality in the process when they fully admit (and were in the action) to a call.

I agree with above that we might lean the other way if the Dealer admits to 'missing' this player. But I've been in these hands and the Floor has actually asked the player if they were going to call or fold AND THEN rule on the exposed card.

There's no way to eliminate angles either way here. In my very last post (different thread) I stated that once a Floor is called then 'intention' should be set aside and we rule on the actual 'action' of the hand. In that case there was additional, un-reverse-able, action that occurred which is not the case here.

We also could flip this and walk into the spot where this player insists he wanted to raise. In that case the card goes back into the deck and we move on with a shuffle and pulling the top card off the deck. Certainly an angle spot for MP, but he has us a little over a barrel here with what 'actually' happened. GL

If one player saw it was premature how would reach the conclusion that no one else at the table saw it and would have spoken up?

I dont understand the question. The guy making the call happened to be looking at the board when the river came out so he stopped himself from calling at the last second. I didnt say anything about nobody else seeing it or speaking up or not.

Lets say the Dealer doesn't prematurely put the river out there.

The player moves his hand out to make the call (as you describe) and a player in the hand inadvertently flips his cards face up.

He has the nuts at this point and the player who is about to make the call brings back his chips and decides to fold. Can he do that?

If he can do that, then in the case at hand, the river card has to come back. If he can't do that then the river card stays. It really depends on house rules as to what constitutes a call.

FTR if I was the player in question I would say nothing and just drop my chips in your case. The funny thing is I was in a similar situation, I dropped the chips after the turn was flipped and a different player in the hand called the Floor over and had the Turn taken back...

If I was the Floor and had to rule that the river comes back I would be sorely tempted to escort out the player who "called", for a 24 hr break.

edit: I think that what the Dealer has to say matters here. If the Dealer put out the river because he saw the player calling then I would say its a call and the river stays. If the Dealer didn't see the player in the hand then house rules rule.

The context of this line came from chillrob's belief that had the player not tried to take back his bet the card would have stood because no one else would say it was premature

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I'm confused ... so you would kick yourself out for something that you did? GL

yeah, that sounds incredibly harsh. From what I'm reading, the guy was going to call, had the chips out to call, and the dealer put the cards out early. I'm not sure getting the noose out for the guy at that point is warranted.

By "called" I believe Mr Rick was referring to the person who called for the floor. (But I could be wrong.)

In my room he hadn't completed his action yet, so this would be a premature card and we would complete the turn action and shuffle the river back in. I don't care what the player claims he was intending to do. That cannot affect my ruling.

If this is true then you should do the exact same thing if he was calling. Why would changing it to a raise change the ruling?

It seems really odd to me that so many are arguing that he has called because they think he would have called anyway.

Would they make this argument if he had just picked up his calling chips and not moved them forward?

Would they make this argument if he has moved them forward but never released them?

So why does releasing them after the card has been exposed change their opinion?


(I fully understand those who are used to a rule that chips moved over the line completes the action would see this as a call because by that rule it was a call before the card was exposed)

There we go ... I sometimes get into trouble since I like to take either side just to make sure that there is a full discussion about a topic. There was also another thread where 'intention' came up and lots of opinion was leaning towards ruling on the intention side of the spot. (Where a player released his call chips and then announced raise/all-in 'less than a second later' while Hero was exposing his cards.)

I have seen this spot handled a minimum of 3 different ways while playing ..
1) Forced call due to chips over the 'betting' area ... even though the room doesn't have that rule in place.
2) Floor asks player if he was calling/folding/raising and then decided what to do with that card. Calling/raising=new card & Folding=card stays (This is in a casino and I've seen it more than once!!)
3) Card goes back in and action continues on player in question.

I actually prefer #2 although it certainly gives 'power' to the player in question. Nothing like the moans and groans after this happens and 'player folds' ... and the card changes for the remaining players.

#3 Is certainly the letter of the law if enforced consistently in lieu of a 'forward motion' room. GL

#3 is best, but #2 isn't super awful, since the player who makes the decision that impacts the outcome can't angle for his own benefit. Its main downside is it lets players team collude (my partner signals he likes the card, so I say I am folding so it stays), but that is usually a pretty minuscule risk that also has to line up with the dealer screwing up.

Still, better to just do #3 and avoid that risk entirely, and also make the ruling more consistent.

It's not just the idea of team collusion in the sense of partners playing together. It can be a player with a marginal decision now factoring in how it helps or hinders players he likes or doesn't like. Or feeling pressured by others in his decision making.

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No (well sometimes I might, but not this time).

I think it is unethical for the guy who was about to call to change his mind because he didn't like the card that was going to be the river. It may not be cheating (depending on the room's rules for calling) but it is surely angleshooting.

Fair enough. No noose is good noose.

Tricky spot

Clearly dealer made a procedural error but if it was the player's intent to call AND he had started the process of making said call (which players at the table say it looked like) I think floor should just let it play out - not dealing the natural river is harmful to all players

Protecting the game from cheating & angle-shooting is important but I'm not sure if justifies changing the card here

Edit: after reading some other posts I think the concern that mp is actually the one perpetrating an angle by trying to force a new card is reasonable


Edit2:
If player says he had not finalized an action and decides to fold floor is forced into dealing a new card because of undisputable dealer error

Maybe it's because I spent time playing online with continuously shuffled decks, but I just don't share this obsession with the "natural" river card. I get that gamblers are often superstitious and I suppose you may want to cater to the superstitions of idiots a little bit to keep them from getting up and leaving, but any harm due to not dealing the natural river seems to be purely a matter of perception and not anything real. Protecting the game from cheating and angle-shooting seems more important to me.

I couldnt care less about the natural river card. I wouldnt care if the dealer pulled the river card out of the middle of the deck. What I care about is, a guy who had already decided to call, was in the process of calling, and fully admitted he was calling...being allowed to change his mind AFTER he saw the river card that he didnt like.

Suppose as this happened, before the player released the chips on of his opponents saw the card being exposed and immediately objected saying the card was exposed.

Would you say the the card should stay because the player had already decided to call, was in the process of calling, and fully admitted he was calling?

If the card would come back in that case aren't you now giving control over whether the card stays to a player in the hand .... who could object or not based on whether he liked the exposed the card?

How is that protecting the integrity of the game?

The rule should be the same for a guy who intended to call and was in the process of calling but hadn't reached the point of no return as it is if the guy was a complete scoundrel who will try to angle-shoot and lie about whether he intended to call.

Poker players are often scum. You are better off not relying on players to be honest. What do you do if he says he wasn't calling, he was just moving his chips around in a way that wasn't a call in order to get a read on his opponents? It should be the same exact procedure so that a player can't gain anything by lying about his intentions.

Let's consider a scenario where Player A bets on the river and Player B, after thinking it over, decides to call, is in the process of calling, and admits that he was calling, when Player A prematurely exposes that his hand is the nuts before Player B has crossed the threshold for whatever that room's rules consider a call. While Player B intended to call, he didn't actually call, so shouldn't be made to put in a call. What is or isn't a call should be the same in this situation as in the premature river situation and I don't think it is a call in this situation.