You don't want to go around letting everyone know you'll call all ins with AA.

this x 1000

you CANNOT ever touch the cards of a live hand that is not your own. sometimes a dealer will toss the cards on top of each other, or mistakenly skip a player and toss the next card to the player to the left, to which they will then instruct the players to pass the card back one seat, but that is it.

once all the cards have been dealt, if someone touches another player's live hand without against their will, and you make a complaint against the state gaming commission, they will fine the casino if they check the tapes and find out that is what happened.

some rooms take that very seriously and will give a 24 hour ban to the offending player.

If someone was able to put your cards into the muck, your hand was not at all protected.

And yet here we have this thread.

Grunch

Pot 100 times out of 100 should be awarded to you. At the very least, this guy should be reprimanded hard and threatened with banishment if another incident like that occurs. If I were floor, he'd be gone for somewhere between the rest of the night to 1 week.

Wow honestly just read the outcome. I am tilted so hard right now by both V and floor. Ugh, sorry DanielSC. I have no idea how that was the resultant ruling.

If you are going hiking and i tell you to protect yourself, and in response you put on sunscreen .... you are protected ..... from sunburn. But if you come back covered with insect bites .... you failed to protect yourself properly. You should have put on insect repellant as well. And if you come back with blisters maybe you should have gotten better hiking boots, and if it rains on you maybe you have brought rain gear ....


Same thing applies to protecting your hand. Protecting your hand doesn;t mean put a chip on your cards. Putting a chip on your cards is one tool you can use. I don;t usually put a chip on my cards does that mean I am not protecting my hand? I protect my cards with vigilance. I use my anontomical hand to protect my cards if needed.

Actually, no one should be touching your cards in this scenario regardless of if you have a chip on them or not .... Why you think a chip makes a difference is completely beyond me.


Sure and the OP presents a really easy case for you make that call here .... but just for the sake of thinking about things let me give you some things that might make this more difficult.

1) In this case the Villian admits to a somewhat malicious intent (he doesn;t admit he was beat but he admits that he knew OP was still was there and was just saving time) how does your attitude change if Villian genuinely believed that OP had walked away from the game for good and was abandoning his hand?

2) What if there are three players in the pot and an innocent third player has a better hand than the Villian (but not better than the OP claims he had) ..... where does the pot go? OR another variation of this would be that the pot was heads up and Villian was a player who had already folded.

Now I don;t ask you this because I want see your answers .... I actually ask you this so you can think again about whether the hand was protected......

Wow. I really hate to kill hands, but here I think it's absolutely warranted. Id award Hero the pot and let V have the evening off. This is absolutely unaccteptable behavior, and I don't mind making a loud example. I don't even care what Hero claims his hand is.

Villain basically cheated here. Rolling back bets, giving everyone their money back, that's all just copping out. Talk about a free-roll: miss your draw, or got a feeling your going to lose? Just muck your opponent's cards, then it's like the hand never happened!!

what a ****in bull**** ruling. his hand should be declared dead and you should get the pot. seriously, they're letting this guy get away with stealing money.

OP, name the casino, please. You said you're never going back (I wouldn't either).

OP should have protected his cards better, based on previous evidence that V was a scumbag.

Why'd you stand up? Were you planning on going "Whooo!" after you won the pot?

With that being said you should have been awarded the pot, but not all rooms can be run like the Bellagio.

A week off for the V seems about right to me. Maybe the room has a rule that all cards mucked are dead regardless of how it happens IDK. Seems like a place full of "regs" where stuff like this can happen over and over again. Not a positive experience for certain. You learned stuff too for future reference if you do decide to go back.

Whoa whoa whoa. There's a BIG difference from when a dealer accidentally mucks your cards vs when a player deliberately mucks your cards(reaching over, removing chip from your cards, taking them and mixing them in with the muck while also TELLING you why he did it!) are all deliberate actions and that's plenty enough reason for me to rule his hand dead now and award it to OP.

Yeah, getting up while you're still in the hand is not the best route to take, but to all the Floorpeople here, please don't use these examples as part of the reason for not shipping that pot to OP. You HAVE to make an example of this reg and tell him that mucking players untabled cards is just not going to be tolerated. This is an out and out blatant form of cheating, I mean, what else could it possibly be? Villain doesn't have a cinch hand with that board, thus, his actions aren't even remotely justified.

Regular players of the room don't do crap like this---this is WAY over the line even for someone who is "well liked"(which really surprises me after this stunt). And because he's a regular, him of all people should know better. He needs a stern warning so he never pulls this stunt again.

Pot foes tobhero and 1 week to 1 month ban

hero could have had a 4 as well. . seriously though... gaming commission and name of casino

I want to know what you were doing when you were standing. You you directly behind your chair? How about at the a few more feet away talking with a friend/alt dealer etc. Paying attention?...or did you come back and find your hand mucked?

JFC. I just quoted like 10 posts and made a super long response but then somehow backed out of the page and lost it all. Basically...

- OP did not protect his hand. If it ends up in the muck, then it wasn't protected. Protected means protected from everything, and yes, that includes somebody else mucking your hand. The poster that made the walking across the street metaphor is dead on.

- Suit's ruling is best. My initial idea was similar to Suit's but in the event that the hand was irretrievable, I'd probably rule a voided hand (all money returned) and I would comp the **** out of OP (obv villain gets tossed in all scenarios for 60-90 days minimum if I have a say in the matter). After reading Suit's post I like his idea of making a exception and digging through the muck this time.

- Ruling is unfortunate from OP's perspective but this is why you need to protect yourself. Any time a floor is called, you put yourself at risk of ruling that won't be in your favor. There are bad dealers and bad floors out there. There are even good floors who might struggle with a ruling as bizarre as this one. Keep in mind that these threads are filled with people who will see a sports replay at super slo-mo speed from 8 different cameras angles spanning 5 minutes of time, and then will criticize the referee who botched the call in real time. It's easy to take a few minutes, read some responses, and come up with a good ruling. However, the floor does not have that luxury. They have to make a very quick decision.

Random thing that I don't think many have touched on; Massive KITN to the dealer. How they let player muck another player's hand is beyond me. If I'm in the box my hand is protecting the muck and when Villain tries this I will push the hand back to OP face down and call the floor.

What are any issues with declaring the Mucker's hand dead and awarding the pot to OP? Why do you think this is an inappropriate ruling?

But why so much focus in this thread on protected vs. unprotected? In my opinion this is irrelevant- because V by deliberately grabbing his opponents live hand and tossing it towards the muck, is cheating and has disqualified his own hand; V's hand is killed before the hero's cards hit the muck. At that point, the only live hand, the hero's, gets the whole pot. Poker players are not allowed to grab their opponents cards, protected or not. Any ruling that results in the V taking even a penny of the pot is horrible.

I wouldn't say I would call it inappropriate. As I said, these rulings are a lot more difficult when you're called to the table, explained everything in 10 seconds, and are expected to make a ruling in 15 seconds. My original issue is that there is no set rule for anything like this. There's not a rule that states "If you muck your opponent's hand, your hand is dead". I know, some people will just point to Rule 1 but IME if they call the gaming commission they won't always accept that. Perhaps I should just cross that bridge if/when we get there and even if it happened and Gaming reversed my decision, just try to get my MOD to pay OP out of house funds or comp the hell out of him anyway. That's probably a better idea.

What if Suit goes through the muck, and no possible combination of cards found in the muck could make the OP win? Should OP still be given the whole pot? I vote no.

Edit - Suit ruling is probably the best one. I'm not arguing that. I was simply posting my first reaction. Again, when I'm called over the the table, I'm not able to take forever and discuss it with as many people as a wish. I have to come up with a rather quick decision of what I think this best.

We are focusing on OP's actions because they are the only things OP can control, so we are trying to help him from being in this position in the future. OP can't stop the other player from decided to be an *******, OP can't stop the dealer from deciding to be dumb and muck the hand, and OP can't stop the floor if he comes over and shrugs "tough break, villain gets the pot".

Again, nobody is saying OP is at any fault here, but this could have been prevented pretty easily. Just like if your crossing the street at a crosswalk and get hit, it's not your fault, but it still would have been a good idea to look both ways. Then maybe you would have seen the maniac driving 75MPH with no signs of slowing down. I'd rather not get hit by a car, then be in the hospital chanting "Not my fault! Not my fault!"

I had something similar happen once but not serious consequences. I had raised pre flop with one caller. I bet flop and villain grabs my cards and mucks both of our hands together saying to give me the pot. He also said he was "saving us time." Must be a certain type of douche that does this. He was also a guy who knows pretty much knows everyone in room and gets away with everything.

Floor probably didn't want to piss action player off by awarding you the pot but they should have. I always insta reveal at showdown to avoid antics like this

"In the interest of fairness..."

[/thread]

I do not feel I would have stood up. But if I did and saw villian mucking my cards, I probably would have quickly forcefully knocked his head to the table and given him a taste of his chips.

I stood up because I stand up every time I'm all in. It could be a $50 pot or a $5000 pot. I do it for superstitious reasons, yea yea, I know it's dumb, but I do it every time. I'm sure I'm not the only one that has strange quirks like that when I play poker.

No I don't yell "whooo!" after I win. I take my cards, flip them face up, If I've got the winning hand, and sit down and stack my chips.

Also to the person who asked how far away from the table I was. I was standing right beside my chair, not even behind it, right next to it. I was not talking to anyone else, I was focusing on the run out of the cards.