This past weekend we had 2 hand screw ups that I want your opinions on.

2 people in hand, roughly $40 in the pot that goes to show down. One person calls and says pair of jacks with ace kicker and shows cards. Other person stands up, looks at board and calls straight but hasn't flipped his hand. The person dealing says "straight wins and rakes the cards into the muck as the guy turns his cards over". There was no straight so pair of jacks actually wins but the cards were mixed and the board could not be recreated. What would the ruling on this be?

Next hand late in the night. 2 people in hand, betting all the way through the hand. Roughly $275 in the pot by the showdown. Player 1 calls 2pr with aces and 3's and flips cards, player 2 calls 2pr with kings and 8s and flips his cards. Cards get raked, chips get raked and player 1 has over half of the chips stacked in his stack when player 2 asks if there were 3 diamonds on the board and if so "he had a flush". 1 or 2 other players say "I think there may have been 3 diamonds but im not certain". Player 1 could not recall the suits on the board 100%.

The way I feel it should have been was hand 1 should have been split pot at best if not awarded to pair of jacks as he was able to call the board exactly on what cards were out there.

Hand 2 should have been awarded to aces and 3's.

Is my thinking correct on these 2?

Pair of jacks wins hand 1, especially if it's obvious that the "straight" couldn't beat a pair of jacks. If it seems like "straight" miscalled his hand on purpose, he gets a stern warning. Splitting the pot because of a weird error is almost never a reasonable solution, and worse, it encourages shady characters to shoot angles to try to split pots they have no legitimate claim to.

And yes, hand 2 is awarded to aces up. Sorry, but waiting until all the cards are mixed up and irretrievable is too late to make a claim like: "Umm, what was on the board? If [condition X was met], I would have won!" Cool story, bro, but you should have told it when the cards were still up there. Everyone had an opportunity to see it, but no one saw it, and now there's no way to check, so the verified best hand wins the pot.

OP were you the guy who misdeclared “straight” in the first hand?

Questions for the OP - - - 1) how much booze / pot is in play? 2) self dealt, or professional dealer, or same guy deals all night?

I was struck by two errors / problems that could have been avoided by allowing a little more time before scraping up the board into the muck.

I can't help but have a feeling that something funny is going on. Hand one the dealer mucks the board before the "winning" hand even hits the felt. Hand two the cards are all mucked before someone ponders that maybe the hand had been misdeclared. I would be focused on who the parties are that "benefited" and who was dealing if there is any overlap especially with regards to the dealer.

I rule the first hand goes to the tabled hand.

I rule the second hand goes to aces up.

But I think the issue could be much more than who should win two contested pots.

DrStrange

Good point, yeah. I second DrStrange's call for follow-up on why people are mucking boards so quickly, especially before a declared hand has been tabled.

No, I was the one with jacks and the one with ace 3 in the second hand. I ended up splitting the pot with the "straight" and giving $100 back to the "flush".

This is a self dealt game and it just so happens that it was the same dealer on both accounts but not the same villain. After this happened I told them that there wasn't going to be any more holding your cards back and waiting etc. It would be either flip your cards or muck. And also, the process would have to be slowed down to keep from these errors happening. The guy that was dealing gets antsy and wants to see as many hands as possible. This will be corrected in the future.

I just wanted to see what more experienced people would say was the ruling on both of those hands because I felt like I had the RIGHT to be the ass and say that both of the villains lose due to the circumstances but I was lenient.

And I don't think any of them are "angle shooting". They don't understand the rules of poker well enough to be able to do that. But there will definitely be a sit down about the rules before next game.

Yikes......Your game sounds like a complete ****show. I would not play in this game.

Okay. I don't know how splitting the first pot is in your range at all unless you were the guy with the lesser hand who misdeclared. And even then I wouldn't understand, but at least there would be a motive. I'm boggled.

Anyway, if the dealer insists on skipping showdowns, make him pay everyone.

It is slightly unorganized as of right now. This is a very new game but the money is going up pretty quickly. So there will definitely be rules in place to keep things like this from happening again. Aldeboa, I genuinely think he misread his hand but he was 100% certain he had it. I knew that if I pissed him off he may A. Leave immediately and not come back, b. Finish the night and not come back. And we are talking about a player that over the 8 games I have played with him, he has lost 7 times. I figured the $20-$30 I was losing in the pot by splitting was not worth the hundreds or more to be lost by him not returning.

You're setting a very bad precedent by giving a piece of the pot to people who improperly claim that they had a certain hand but don't prove it. Slow down your procedures so that hands are properly proven before shipping pots, and stop giving people money because they misread their hands or think they might have had something after the fact. Once would be too much; twice in one night is insane.

Hand 1, no way I'm chopping. TBH, I also wouldn't have let anyone muck my cards until I saw someone table a better hand. I understand the logic of keeping a whale happy, but this might very well have been an angle, in which case he can gtfo. I don't need $50 for all that hassle.

Hand 2, even LESS chance I'm giving the magic flush some money. He turned his cards over, no one saw the flush? Happens, but unlikely. He probably is misremembering. That happens to all of us, heck it happens in the middle of a hand, never mind after all the cards are mucked and the hand is over.

Moving forward...

1. SLOW DOWN.
2. Don't increase the stakes until the majority of players can deal correctly the vast majority of the time. As host, you should watch some videos for correct poker dealing procedures: positioning the flipped cards, displaying the 5 cards that play, mucking losing hand, etc. You will want to have the procedure down pretty well, so that you can introduce (without being anal) the right way for every dealer to go about it.
3. SLOW DOWN.

I definitely agree with the slowing down. I think that will help a lot. I spoke with a poker friend that wasn't there about the situation and he agreed on the slowing down and some of the other things mentioned in this thread. I know how to keep it from happening again, I was mainly curious on the ruling and wondering if my thoughts were correct. My thoughts on the rules were correct, but I chose to handle the situations differently to save the game. I will now make adjustments to prevent it from happening again so I don't have to make those kind of decisions anymore.

You may be right in a short-term-thinking kind of way, but in the long run, the approach you took is likely to hurt the game rather than save it.

In this case, you essentially threw money at two players to keep them from getting upset. But it's not your problem if they get mad over their own mistakes. No one else did anything wrong; the two players in question screwed up in silly ways. And you paid them for it. Doesn't matter if they're whales or not. You can do little things to keep whales happy, but awarding them pots they didn't win is way out of line.

How could this hurt your game in the long run? Because other players saw you do it. When you make a ruling, it sets expectations. Now, other players may expect that the winner of the pot giving away money is the rule when any kind of messiness happens on the end. Obviously you can't keep that up, but if you don't, players may get upset because their expectations weren't met. ("Screw this game! Kittrell just rules however he wants!")

Just don't do it again, I'm telling you. It was a bad mistake already, but you can recover from it if you're consistent from now on.

This is the plan

Sounds like some good advice has already been given.

I'm not sitting quietly for the first hand, and we're taking the time to pull the board and cards back out to reconstruct the showdown. Sorry if V is terribad and misread their hand. KITN to the dealer for the quick scoop. If there was no possible was V has a straight, there is no possible way I'm handing over 1/2 the pot. If there is a chance the straight was there, we'll talk. If I see that they had the straight, best hand wins and the pot goes to the winner.

The 2nd hand gets some kind of heartfelt comment, but no chips returned. I'm pretty sure that when I'm chasing a flush, I know when it hits. A couple of players think there was a chance? Sorry, not good enough.

As mentioned, it's a terrible precedent to set. Should be addressed prior to the next game. You don't need to go over every rule, but at least establishing that there are rules (look for RROP for a great starting point), and reviewing showdown procedures is a great start.

Good luck.

We had a game last night and all of this was discussed. Everyone agreed to the established rules and the game went smoothly.

Good to hear that, and happy hosting!