This situation came up in a tournament recently. Two players in the hand, and the board played out AQJTx (the play before the river isn't particularly important for this question). Player A bets. Player B raises, and player A calls. They both turn over Kx for a chopped pot. One of the players at the table objected saying that player A should have reraised because he had the nuts and was last to act, thus deserving a penalty. Player A said that he realized that player B must have also had a king as well (neither player was a mouth-breathing moron), and so a reraise would have been a waste of time.

I thought that the rule about not checking the nuts on the river only applied when a player had the absolute nuts, not when the pot is likely to be chopped. So are both players expected to eventually go all-in in the above situation?

No one checked the nuts in the hand you described.

I'm no expert on rules but iirc it's precisely about checking back the nuts. So if it goes check check on the river the one in position gets a penalty. Penalizing both players here would be a joke imo.

I probably should have said "not raised with the nuts" instead of checking. (>_>)

I personally didn't see anything wrong with the hand, and luckily neither player got a penalty from the floor. Thanks for the info!

why would you ever chose to just call with the best possible hand?

It makes sense, when you know, your opponent wont call with worse anyways, so you can see their hand. You get more information at zero cost.

Typically the rule says the final player to act must make an offensive action (bet or raise) when holding an unbeatable hand. Since it wasn't checking back the nuts but rather just calling with them, there shouldn't be any penalties given here, but probably a warning is in order. I'm sure neither player intended to do something nefarious, but they still should be reminded about the rule.

Btw while we're on this, note the interesting scenario in split pot games where you most certainly are allowed to check back the nuts if you're afraid of being fractioned, and it is relatively frequently correct to not bet/raise with the nut low only on the river, but this is just an aside.

In this case the rule would only apply if you had the nuts both ways, e.g. A24K on KQ743

Okay. So then in this situation, both players are expected to go all-in? To be clear, no one was accusing them of collusion, which I know is why the rule exists. I guess I'm a bit surprised that they have to go through the formality of calling all-in.

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yes, and why not. you have the best hand, you want as many chips as you can get.

could understand it in a raked game, infact there has even been examples of folding the nuts where it will be a split pot because you'll end up losing with rake.

no it doesnt