There's no solid answer. At a great many places, in the muck is dead. But not everywhere. It also depends on the sophistication of the floorperson and the overall attitude in the room. I have two extreme examples that happened while I was dealing.

Play it Smart! - 3/6 FL game. Folded to the SB in the 1 seat, for whom English is not a primary language. SB calls, BB asks, "Check check?" meaning check it down. SB thinks it means "Chop chop?" and tosses his cards forward. Barely 1/16th of an inch on the corner touched the muck. I give the cards back and they check it down. SB makes a straight. BB calls the floor. I demonstrate what happened, floor kills the hand, awards the pot to the BB.

Pacheco Nuts - 2/3 NL game. At showdown heads-up, I misread a hand and over-declare two pair for a player. The other player mucks. As he's mucking I notice the mistake and I stop cards from moving. The other player says he had two pair. His cards are about 1/4 to 1/3 into the muck. The floor comes over, nobody disagrees those are his cards, his hand is retrieved, and it's live.

So, y'know, it depends. On lots of stuff.

(And I'm better at dealing now, thankfully, so I'm able to prevent this kind of thing before it happens.)

I have to say that I 100% agree. The fact that the guy with A9 said "two pair" and then following through by tabling his hand for the guy with QQ to see... I don't see anything wrong.

That being said...

I also 100% agree with the bolded part above. From a guy who seems to be an experienced player (casino dealer), he knew exactly that the way he went about the hand, he might be able to get an inexperienced player to fold his hand. From the tons of live card games I have played in, even when a player knows that they are beat, they still somehow table their hand face-up if they are an inexperienced player (which sound exactly like the OP's post to me).

Did the guy with A9 play the hand a bit shady? Perhaps. But I can also see why he did it in the first place. Just trying to take advantage of "a fish." lol

Actually not to derail the thread but I have made players fold on the river simply by picking up chips like I plan to bet, The places I play at all have betting lines and the foward motion rule is not in affect. Against the right player, I would grab a pile of chips and start to make piles like I plan to bet, they fold and I take the pot.

Would you view this as wrong?

It depends.

If you're doing it in a way to make it appear as you're betting, but be able to hide behind, "Oh, I never..." if challenged, then it's kinda sketchy. I don't like to take advantage of someone's unsophistication. I am after clarity of action, so if I see someone on that line, I'll speak up, "Is that an action?"

But if you're clearly only staging a bet in a way consistent with how you always stage a bet, then it's fine. The line doesn't have much to do with it. I've seen plenty of people cut off chips in front of their cards (sometimes across the line), where it was clear they were counting or thinking. Likewise, I've seen people place what were clearly bets behind the line. Intent and context are huge.

It meets all my definitions of angle (creating confusion about the action) and unethical behavior (playing a sport of chip & card placement, instead of a game of betting based on random variables), but somehow my intuition is "whatever".

I guess because I can't think of anyone who would see it as an actual bet. A 9-year-old wouldn't be fooled. If you were creating the real impression of betting, but not wanting to be held to a bet, I'd hold you to it.

In a college freshman "communication" class, we learned these impossibly sophomoric models of communication. Strangely, I'm recalling them 25 years later in a poker context. In one of them, the "sender" creates "message" (which could be anything that carries meaning: a spoken sentence, written note, radio broadcast, nonverbal gesture...), and the "recipient" observes the message and receives the meaning. It's very simple and silly, but you see what it says. If you do ANYTHING that sends a meaning and someone GETS THAT MEANING, you've communicated, and I'd hold you to it at the poker table. across the line, short of the line, whatever, if you want someone to interpret you in X way, and they interpret X, there are no technicalities to hide behind.

Still, at this point, even the most unsophisticated poker player would see your message as "I'm thinking about betting, and probably intend to bet here, but haven't done it yet."

There's obviously a line somewhere.

What's after no counting chips unless you're going to use them? No touching chips? No asking to spread the pot? No pretending to think about your fold when your river bluff gets raised? Poker is a game of deception, after all.

This is why we have betting lines and forward motion rules and verbal declarations.

The games I play at live by the line rule. Chips cross the line then its a bet. If while holding the chips, you cross the line, then drop the chips one at a time, then its called a string bet and you can only min. bet. Of course a oral bet is binding.

Its not about creating confusion. Its moving chips to a staging area while thinking about a bet/raise. To look at it another way, UTG checks on the river, I think about a bet and count out a decent pile, look at the board and/or other player, think about it, then decide the player may be sandbagging so I check.

if there's no deception about the action, no problem.

I don't think you're getting them to fold by moving your chips around. They're waiting for any excuse to fold whatsoever.

Yeah, sounds fine to me.

But if you're concerned it might be misinterpreted, alter the way you do it. No crime in being too cautious.

The difference is that in a card room there is a dealer who will immediately grab that folded hand and mix it in the muck. It's when the dealer forgets to do this that we have these threads in B&M. At home games with no dedicated or professional dealer we have less clear examples for what constitutes a folded hand, but intent should play a big part of this since there's no dealer to put his cards in the muck. This is why I will stick with my interpretation of what happened to OP.

Fair enough. If I'm at a home game, I'm not arguing with a host who rules it dead. I might even back his play. In any game I run, though, I'd probably rule it live, and use it as part of teaching good procedures to everybody. And because I don't want that kind of ambiguity and manipulation from my gaming peers in my game. Gives us all a bad name; we should hold ourselves to higher standards than we accept from others.

(Tho' about 95% of the time in casinos, I either see dealers leave all cards out there, or muck everything together before pushing the pot. Aaargh!)