I don't know if the villain's declaration was an angle-shoot...it certainly wasn't against the rules. But the villain is a complete dirtbag for trying to win the pot after you show your hand.

Unless it was utterly unretrievable, the best hand should always win at showdown. Contrary to folding when facing a bet, there's really no good reason why forward motion or a betting line should constitute a binding muck at showdown.

Okay, it was a slight angle - everyone happy. I believe the OP has stated the villain even admitted as much. BFD. The point is no one gets angled unless they allow it themselves. We can ***** and moan about stuff like this all we want, but at the table the only one that has responsibility to protect your interests is you.

So even you admit that when you have a pocket pair that makes a set, along with a pair on the board you would say "kings full" or pocket kings, and not simply "kings." So that is the very scenario in the OP where the villain said "tens" because if he had indeed had pocket tens he would have said tens full or pocket tens. The villain said none of the things people normally say if they had a full house, so there was no reason for the OP to assume he did.

As for the two pair, if you just tabled a pocket pair with another pair on the board and said nothing at all, the dealer would announce that as two pair. Because that's the hand.

Just never muck your hand based on what someone says and youll never have this problem.

People misread their hans, misread the board, could angle, etc. You definitely created your own problem by muck8ng your hand for no good reason.

Forget "angle." For starters, nobody can even agree what that means, so a semantic argument about it is silly.

Let's agree on helpful instead.

It's not helpful to declare "two pair" on a paired board or "one pair" on an unpaired board. Specifically, the time you save is outweighed by the time lost when your opponent needs to clarify, which is the vast majority of the time.

That's not the case for "set" on an unpaired board - set over set is rare, so when you declare "set" rather than "middle set," the time you save arguably outweighs the time lost to clarification. And likewise if you have a straight flush on a QsJsTs board you can just say that without specifying whether you have the royal or king high or the queen high straight flush.

And this is obviously action dependent. If you bet on a 4-flush board and get called by a nit, "no flush" is probably as helpful as "one pair." But when you get to showdown on an unpaired ace high board, it's often helpful to not only specify your pair "I have an ace" but the kicker too, e.g., "ace, queen kicker."

Sure you can go overboard and be a real douche. Someone once complained about me declaring, "ace, eight plays" (it was like an AJJ76 board and my opponent could not have had AT+ but almost certainly had an A, and I wanted to highlight that I beat A7/A6 as well as A5-). But my intent was to be helpful.

There are several things here that I will say in order of importance (IMO):

(1) The key question in this whole episode is not about the ruling. Its also not about whether this was an angle or not. Its about how OP can learn from it so it won't happen again.

(2) A number of posters wisely suggest that you wait until you see your opponents cards before mucking. This sounds easy but it is hard. I still have to fight the temptation when my opponent is someone I know and trust. And people make mistakes. Sometimes they misread their hand. Sometimes they declare ambiguously as was done here. Sometimes I mis-hear. Sometimes the Dealer mis-declares the hand when it is turned over. I have seen all of these happen.

The one constant is that I never muck my hand until I have seen and evaluated the turned over hand. I sometimes turn my hand over after my opponent declares his hand even if his declaration beats me. Because that is the single most effective way to defeat a showdown angle or mistake. And most of the time (as was the case in this OP) everyone knows what I have anyway.

(3) The ruling was horrible. You should have lost the other $300 bet at the end (because house rules are house rules). You were very lucky. And you were very very unlucky. Had you lost the full amount of the pot, this lesson would be much more painful and you would be more likely to learn from it. As it stands you seem to believe that choosing rooms with rules that will protect your hand better is more important than protecting your hand yourself (at least that seems to be the focus of the thread).

You should never have been in the situation where you are dependent on a Floor ruling. That is the essence of most every angle. They require an interpretation of the rules so that a technicality will hold up against the spirit of the game. This is true of every room. Because there are angles for almost every rule.

I have had rulings against me in most rooms that I play in, that supported various angles or penalized mistakes that I made. No matter how angry I am at the absurdity of the rulings, in the end it always comes down to what I can do to protect my hand.

Its not just about this thread. Its about always. If there are situations where I cannot protect my hand under the current rules and procedures of the room then I will not play in the room. However this thread is not one of those situations. Not even close.

FTR I think their house rule sucks. However, it does have some advantages. It negates the ability of a Dealer to stall when mucking a hand that he "knows" is a winner.

(4) This was clearly an angle. Because the guy admitted that he was essentially mis-declaring his hand in order to get a better hand to fold. Its an angle and not cheating because technically he declared his hand correctly. It wouldn't have been an angle if his intention was just to declare his hand as a pair of tens. Similarly for the "I have two pair" angle. Its an angle if the intention is to get a guy with a better two pair to fold because he doesn't realize the board is paired. Its not an angle if the intention is just to declare your actual hand.

But again the importance of it being an angle is only that you can't trust this guy. In poker or in life. Other than that it is not relevant. You fell for the angle and it cost you money. Until and unless you hold yourself accountable for losing the pot you will continue to be a victim. In poker and in life.

It is good to recognize angles when they are happening. But it won't always be possible. You can't possibly learn about and memorize every possible angle.

The important thing to take away from falling for an angle is figuring out how you can develop procedures at the table so that angles will not work on you. Again this is learning how to protect your hand and/or your action in all types of situations.

I have spent many years working on perfecting my process and I still see vulnerabilities, which I try to correct when the pain reminds me.

First, I won't concede that the declarations you described above aren't helpful, I will acknowledge they are not maximally helpful.

But we seem to be arguing two different things here. The original premise was that the villain angled here and tricked the hero. This is what I have issue with. There is no evidence here that the villains actions were deliberately or maliciously duplicitous.

If you want to argue that the declarations above were not helpful, I will go you one further and say stop declaring and just table the dang cards. Cards speak, are unambiguous, and cannot be misleading.

So we can argue back and forth whether or not villain was out of line in how he declared, we can argue what level of specifity is appropriate when declaring a hand, we can argue whether or not your declaration should include your hole cards or the complete hand....or you could just table your cards.

Helpful? I'm not expected or even encouraged to help you read your hand.

If I have a straight I'm gonna announce "straight", while tabling my hand,
whether I'm playing both cards for the nuts or I'm playing the board.

Fair enough.

This isn't a court of law and Villain doesn't get off on technicalities. If someone asks you if you've read a book you haven't read, and you answer, "Not in English," your answer is both 100% correct and 100% misleading.

OP should have protected his hand but Villain's move is still a huge douche move. And while there's enough reasonable doubt to prevent him from getting banned, we all would totally mentally mark this guy as an angleshooter.

Every time I suggest this exact thing I can watch the e-veins throbbing on peoples' e-foreheads.

To be clear, I totally agree. I fastroll and declare maximally helpfully 100% of the time when I am the last aggressor and fastroll and declare maximally helpfully at least 50-60% when I am not.

If Villain was really trying to angle, why did he bother tabling his hand right away while you were mucking? You'd think he'd either not table his hand, or wait until your hand was actually mucked.

I really feel like your hand may have been further mucked than what you're telling us.

"I have a deuce."

Do you explain to your opponent exactly what it would take to beat your hand?
That would be maximally helpful.

Which means your hand is... two pair.

So, again we get back into the idea that you are inserting malicious intent to mislead into what is a perfectly valid way of declaring a hand. Multiple players have stated that when they hear 'tens' they do usually expect a pair of tens as the playing hand, not a set of tens. Given that, it is very difficult to say that the villain here was purposefully trying to mislead while staying technically correct. That is the crux of the matter. You interpret an ambiguous (actually, I do not even think it is that ambiguous) declaration as an intentional attempt to mislead, I am saying that in all likelihood, he was declaring his hand straight up.

So, you are saying that if you are playing a hand of ATT22, it is more accurate to declare that you have a deuce?

On that board, yes. Wayyyyyyy over 50% of people when they hold 32 on a board of AT882 and say "two pair" are hoping that someone has something like JT or 99 and mucks, not realizing that they also have "two pair". That is literally the only advantage of "two pair" over "I have a deuce" or even "eights up" or "eights and deuces".

Someone declared "two pair" at showdown when I was playing recently on a board of AQ774, and tabled AQ, and I remarked "wow I don't think I've ever seen "two pair" declared on a board like that and the person doesn't have like 54" and everyone at the table laughed and agreed.

Similar would be having 2h on AhTh7h5hKx board, and saying "ace high flush". I have no problem with "flush", "deuce of hearts" is most accurate/helpful. I also on that board would have an issue with KcQc saying "I have the king", but not "pair of kings" or "I have a king."

Why though?

Is this going to make you muck your hand before you see their cards? If so, you must hate money.

People say these things. Some do it on purpose and some just don't have a clue. Who cares? Wait to see the winner or just table your own hand and there will never be a problem.

Why what though?

I'm not going to muck. But, a new player might. And then that new player may decide they don't like poker because people cheat them out of money. And now I have a problem even though I wasn't in the hand.

My question would be why say "two pair" instead of staying silent and tabling or saying "deuce", "eights up" or "eights and deuces" holding 23 on AT882, if you are NOT trying to get someone to muck a better hand than yours?

The discussion isn't "should OP have mucked" at this point, obviously he shouldn't. And I don't think saying "tens" in that case is misleading. Slightly ambiguous, but not misleading. When he said "it was an angle" I think he meant seeking to have OP's hand killed for "mucking", not saying "tens".

Why do you want to help your opponent?

I'm not required to declare my hand so accurately that it helps my opponent read his hand.

"Ace high straight" while tabling two small cards...
If my opponent isn't sure what he has he can lay his hand face up on the table.
Until then it's one player to a hand.

Not an angle to not announce that I'm playing the board IMHO.



When showing a set on a four flush board do you say "I've only got a set, any club beats me."?

You're not required to declare your hand at all. You can just table it in turn. If you elect to declare your hand, you are doing so to:

1) Make the showdown process quicker, allowing everyone to move on to the next hand, with the pot expediently pushed to the winner

or

2) Hopefully induce your opponent to muck a hand that beats yours while we are at showdown.

I don't think #2 is a legit tactic at a poker table.

If you just table it silently, the dealer is going to declare "two pair". So if a player isn't looking at the tabled hand, and mucks, did the dealer shoot an angle? Of course not. Two pair is two pair, and pairs on the board are included in that. Understanding hands is a basic poker skill. If a player doesn't understand how hands are correctly announced, he needs to learn that, not accuse the other player of being an angle shooter.

The dealer, IME, isn't going to just say "two pair", they will say "eights and deuces" or "deuce" and additionally will push up the 2 and the eights on the board.

Please describe the reason for saying "two pair" instead of "eights up", "eights and deuces" or "deuce" that doesn't involve your opponent erroneously mucking at showdown.

To be clear, I'm less annoyed when people table the 32 and announce "two pair" though I still think there's no good reason for it. The real issue IMO is the people saying "two pair" without tabling.

When I'm dealing a three or four way split pot, I would say 90% of the
time someone mucks their hand face down and I split the pot one less way.

Announcing "Playing the board" would alert the other players that they get a share.
Wouldn't that violate one player to a hand?


In my experience the vast majority of players you think are angling are simply
announcing their hand with no thought that what they are saying could be misleading.

You seem to have a problem with players announcing their hand. I don't understand.

Your example of: "My question would be why say "two pair" instead of staying silent and tabling or saying "deuce", "eights up" or "eights and deuces" holding 23 on AT882, if you are NOT trying to get someone to muck a better hand than yours?"

You have a problem with me saying "two pair" when that is exactly what I have. I'm not misrepresenting anything.

If a new player mucks here without seeing my hand that is their own problem and they will likely never know unless I am forced to show by another player in the hand. In that case, they will learn their lesson the first time and realize they made a mistake. We are not going to make rules to protect players from folding winners because they don't wait to see they're beat.

There is a rule however that protects them if their opponent misrepresents their hand. But if that doesn't happen, like in OP, then it's on them.

My read on this has always been, he has the worst two
possible pair, knows he's beat, hopes he doesn't have to show.

Your take is he's angling to get a better tow pair to fold.

Interesting.