Playing pot limit crazy pineapple where you discard after the flop bet. This is a self-dealt game. Player A raises preflop and gets a few callers including the dealer. Flop comes out, and Player A bets pot leaving himself with $17. All fold to the dealer who calls. Turn is dealt, Player A puts in his last $17 and dealer calls. River is then dealt.

As the river is being dealt, a player not in the hand chimes in with "hey, did you guys ever discard?" And at that point we realize both players had not discarded.

As the "floor" how would you resolve this:

A. Too much action taken, let the hand play out without a discard
B. Back up the action to the flop, have the players discard, and then put out a turn and river (having shuffled back in the original turn and river)
C. Chop the pot since both hands are fouled
D. Something else.

IMO: Both hands are dead for not discarding before turn. Everyone (including those who put in blinds and/or called pre and folded flop) gets their money back.

Since this is a low stakes , self dealt , friendly home game, and it is heads up, I would just let it play out. Saves a lot of delay IMHO. So I would pick option A. I would avoid killing hands if at all possible and in this kind of circumstance some kind of fair resolution is usually easy.

Now if one player had discarded and the other had not, the ruling becomes more difficult to just play on IMHO.

Of course everyone's idea of a low stakes game is different, but this game is a round by round game of pot limit Omaha variations where the buy-in is $200-1,000, so not entirely small stakes.

However, this particular pot is relatively small (which might be what you are referring to anyway).

We have said that if someone has a proper hand, and someone else has failed to discard, we are going to declare the hand with too many cards dead.

If there is a proper hand left, then it is the winner.

That is not the case, we have two fouled hands. We also have a couple of hands that got bet out of the pot by the fouled hands. If there are on-going questions about angle shooting or straight out cheating, let's hear them. For the time being, I assume it is nothing but a sloppy mistake.

I would let the hand play out with three cards for each player. Warn everyone to keep an eye open for these sorts of mistakes. And remind players if only one of the two hands is fouled, that hand is an automatic loser.

I doubt many folks would look at a $200 - $1,000 buy-in game and describe it as low stakes. . . . It does put the $17 remaining bet into perspective, it was peanuts.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but at the time the others folded, there were no fouled hands. We discard after the flop bet.

Open for $10, get 4 callers (pot is $50). On the flop, Player A potted for $50, others folded to the dealer who called. At this point. no one has a fouled hand.

Turn is dealt without discarding. Player A puts his remaining $17 in and the dealer calls. At this point, they both have fouled hands.

Definitely no suspicion of angle-shooting or cheating, just plain sloppiness.

Pot turns out to be $134 which isn't peanuts, but also isn't obviously a monster pot with a 200-1k buy-in.


We ended up ruling that there was too much action on the turn card to back it up, so we just played it out. I was just curious what others thought and would have done.

Actually I would consider it near the very top of a low stakes type home game, actually mid stakes if most players buy in for the max. Still it was heads up and both players made the same error. You said discards came AFTER the flop bets right? Therefore the players who folded to the bet were not really affected by the last two not discarding as they should after the pre turn bets. Play on is a good move here IMHO with "some discussion" after the hand as to correct procedures.

Easy (correct) decision.

I would have had them discard before the river. Aside from that, good call.

In this particular messed up hand as described in the OP, I don't think discarding before river bets is required, BUT it does not hurt anything or delay very much either. Might be a helpful reminder to those two to discard correctly next hand of Pineapple.

Hadn't considered that, but yes ... that would have been a good decision. Have them discard and then play the river.

My thought is that if one or both players has a made hand with two cards and a draw using the third, we force him to decide now. Better one street late than two. It would really suck if the winning hand uses a card that would otherwise have been discarded.

Agree with the suggestions. No dead hands, no refunds.

+1 to discard when noticed, but not back up action.