So, I'm a little rusty, hence the question to clarify a pretty basic question.
Hero and villain both get to the river with counterfeited small pocket pairs in a JTT77 board that goes check-check.
Villain in early position shows the entire table including the dealer pocket fives and throws his cards face down into the middle of the table but does not touch the muck.
Dealer catches the cards and tables the pocket fives forcing hero to show pocket sixes and chop the pot.
It's not a big deal, but just curious what the official rules are.
Its a muck and dealer should ship you the pot without turning them over. Its unlikely, but possible the house has strict rules to prevent players folding or mucking in this type of situation.
Its also possible that dealer turned the hand over because he was thinking of tournament rules.
Showing the table your cards isn't tabling your hand. His action could (IMO should) be construed as a muck, and the standard procedure is for the dealer to muck his hand and ship you the whole pot, no need for you to show your cards. The dealer definitely shouldn't have tabled the player's hand for him, that's a OPTAH violation for sure.
If V exposed his cards face-up, and the dealer saw them, the over-head cameras likely also saw them. I would think the card room might have a policy that the dealer has to table the hand once the cards are exposed in a situation like this, so that no one can claim the room cheated them. It's a matter of game integrity.
There's also the principle of "the cards speak". Once the hole cards are exposed, it doesn't matter if the player thinks he won or lost. It's the dealer's job to award the pot correctly.
The rules about showdown vary from place to place, though, so it's understandable to think V surrendered when he tossed his cards in face down after exposing them.
The TDA rules are such that it is up to the TD to decide if the hand is live or not in the situation where someone shows their hand, then toss them down. It does explicitly say to the mere fact of discarding your cards face down does not kill them at showdown.
I'm going to guess this is a house rule. One can argue whether that is a good rule or not.
This doesn't sound like a player trying to table their hand and the cards take a weird bounce and end up face down. This seems more like a case of a player showing table mates how unlucky he was to get counterfeited before folding his hand because he automatically assumes he lost the pot holding 5 high.
The goal of showdown isnt to create some sort of gotcha situation. The muck isnt a magical place to kill your hand. He showed his hand to the table, it was retrievable. The player obviously has the choice to not show and not get his half of the pot, but he did show.
Yeah, I'm asking if the dealer should have turned his hand up or not?
Absolutely not. The dealer was out of line. The hand was mucked, she should of placed the cards into the muck and pushed hero the pot, but instead she un-mucked a hand and declared it a live hand which is horrible.
