This happened at a local casino:

Hero flops a full house with top set on a T99 flop.
The runout changed nothing and contained all low cards.
Hero bet on flop, was called.
Hero bet turn, was called.
Hero bet river and gets raised.
Hero thinks, turns over his hand, sees only one hand can beat him, is ready to call.
Villain turns over his hand showing quad 9s
Hero says fold.
Floor is called and says it is a fold and Hero does not have to call.

Is this an angle or is did the Villain make a mistake by turning over his hand ?

It's sort of like that Polk vs hellmuth hand where Polk was pondering the call, flipped his hand, showed the 2nd nuts, and Phil started talking and sort of gave away his hand.

Showing someone your hand when pondering a call to get a read is a bit controversial. Most rooms now allow it but some places intentionally showing your hand kills it.

Villain screwed up by exposing his hand here, plain and simple. I could be 100 percent ready to call but if they showed the better hand first I would always fold.

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Room dependant. In some rooms, for cash game, it is (or used to be) allowed to table your hand if there was no action behind you. It sounds like that this is what happened here, that the full house tabled his hand to try and get a read, not necesarily to induce an out of turn tabling of his opponents hand.

Something else is going on here, though. I can't even imagine a person with the nut boat (second nuts overall) not snap calling a shove.

This. Hero deserves a KITN and to lose his stack regardless of ruling. Nothing but grandstanding with a monster.

And obviously villain got excited and screwed up.

Villain obviously messed up here, but he probably didn't want to slowroll after assuming hero must have called and tabled what he thought was the winner.

I don't see any reason for hero to do something like that unless he wants to trick villain into tabling his hand.

This doesn't meet the definition of an angle for me. Showing your hand in this situation is allowed.

Could rooms institute stricter rules on showing cards on the river? Sure.

Players accidentally table hands sometimes - it can be very costly but quad player is not entitled to other player's money.

Forget about it being an angle or not. The BIGGER question is why on earth did you turn over your hand showing him you have top FH?? Horrible.

I was not at the table but this is what I was told.
Hero bets river.
Villain raised all in.
What is the downside to hero showing his hand as it was heads up ?

OP says Hero 'got raised', but didn't indicate whether it was an all-in or not (assuming no).

This can affect the ruling in some rooms as indicated .. 'last/close action'

As long as this room allows showing of cards this is just 'gamesmenship' and not an angle. We are not at Showdown yet, so 'poker' is still being played (if within the rules).

Don't really want to get into what Hero was thinking, there obviously are more under-boats than over-boats (none, just quads). We can assume lots of history and Hero knows that V will not call a shove, so why bother and he just goes into theater mode trying to get a read .. and gets it! GL

I was not at the table but this is what I was told.
Hero bets river.
Villain raised all in.
What is the downside to hero showing his hand as it was heads up ?

The only downside is that Hero may lose his right to the pot if showing cards is not allowed in the room, otherwise .. game on. GL

This is an angle whether intentional or not.

If I want to get a read on my opponent in this situation I will tell him that I have not decided on my action yet and then turn my hand over. I do not want to benefit from my opponent mistakenly turning his hand over if he has a winner (or mucking his hand if he has a loser). I have done this exactly one time in 15 years so it doesn't come up much for me. In general I would rather not expose my hand at the table.

Now its true that letting my opponent know that I am turning over my hand to get a read is in all likelihood not going to get a read. But you never know. This is also to me a way of admitting out loud what I have and then hearing it back. Sometimes that is all I need to see things differently.

In tournaments you can't do this unless you are the final two players. And even then some casinos may not allow it.

No downside if hero’s goal is to alienate other players. If he cares about what others think of him, the downside is that some will see him as an angle shooter and others as a slowroller or nitroller.


FWIW, situations like this are the number one reason for me being perfectly fine with rooms prohibiting players from tabling their hand even if it’s heads-up in a cash game.

Depending on the room he could have a dead hand.

IMO villain made a mistake and hero can legitimately fold. Not pretty but not an angle in my book.

I always go with "Chips talk". If there aren't calling chips in the middle you haven't called - even if you said "I call". I'm not showing anything until chips are in the middle and your hand is back accross the line - even if I have the stone cold nuts.
Similarly with a fold. If your cards have not hit the muck you haven't folded. I don't care if you've paraded them around the room while shouting "I fold" at the top of your lungs.

What people say or otherwise do with their cards and chips (like 'forward motion" and all that <self-censored>) has nothing to do with anything relating to poker as far as I'm concerned.

Imo it’s not an angle, it’s just stupid. Especially if you have the best full house on a paired board.

I think we all agree that villain made a mistake. And there’s also not much discussion that hero can fold unless house rules prohibit him from purposely exposing his cards before showdown. All of that has nothing to do with the yes/no question on angle though. That’s the nature of an angle shot, the move is technically within the rules.

Odds are that some of the other players will see hero as an angle shooter while others will think it was an unfortunate situation. And the remaining players were busy on their phones and didn’t even realize something went down.

I do think intent matters as well. Not in terms of the rules, those have to be objective. But subjectively someone who angle shoots is a POS, vs. what otherwise would just be a miscommunication between people, something that happens a lot.

The details of the hand are a bit absurd in this case, because unless the raise was laughably oversized there is no reason to show your hand to get a read or do anything other than just double check everything is on the up and up before calling. I won't say I nitroll people but whenever I'm facing an oversized shove with a non-nutted monster I at least spend 5 to 10 seconds just making sure there are other hands he can do this with, and double checking the cards to make sure I didn't misread my hand or the board.

You don't have to play much live poker to see someone eventually make a dumb mistake that costs them a big pot or a river call like this. Stuff like this happens. In my mind whether it's an angle or not comes down to whether hero exposed his hand in an attempt to get villain to expose early thinking the hand was over when it wasn't. Variations on this are among the most common angles. Saying things like "I guess I'll gamble here" or cutting out the call size in such a way that the villain may have thought it was pushed into play are all dirty tricks made in an attempt to trick the villain into thinking he's at showdown when he's not. Most of the time the angler isn't sitting on the 2nd nuts when they do it though.

If it’s specifically written into the rules that a player can show their hand when they close the action, I hardly see why it would be an angle. I just know that the best players never do this and no one that’s any type of player would do it with this type of hand. Usually I see this move done by shitregs who donk off chips anyway.

My biggest gripe about showing cards is that it just slows down the game.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. RRoP mentions that showing your hand before action is complete is an ettiquette violation that may result in penalties.
According to RRoP, when heads up you can show your hand at any time, which actually is the rule in some rooms. I don't think there is any exception for closing the action before showdown - when multihanded I don't think this should be permitted even if you are last to act, because it can cause an outcome that is deleterious to the other players in the hand, even though they weren't involved.

TDA does also mention it, including specifically mentioning being last to act, but only to say that it may be penalized, but should not result in a dead hand. I guess maybe you could stretch the definition of "allowable" to include this, but it's definitely not recommended or encouraged, and it may result in being penalized.

Sorry, I meant in heads up situations. Which as you said, is in the rules. FWIW I do think it’s bad etiquette.

Also idk why you always go to RRoP since hardly any casino explicitly uses RRoP.

I don't agree that hardly any casinos use RRoP. Many casinos and cardrooms, especially the long established ones, are based on RRoP, even if they don't "explicitly" say so.

Moreover, I have taken to almost always posting the rules from both RRoP and TDA when I quote a rulebook, like I did here. I'm not sure why you would use this post to ask that question. In any case, those two cover probably 90% of casinos, at least in the US.

There are also some cash game issues that TDA is silent on, since it is originally a tournament rulebook. Many fewer nowadays, and lots of the things covered (seating, sitting out, button issues, etc.) are generally considered procedures rather than rules, but there are still some that only RRoP tries to handle.

But, in general, since only TDA is being updated any more, I do agree that over time it will likely become the de facto common rulebook we will look to first, if not exclusively.

"Revealing the contents of a live hand in a multihanded pot before the betting is complete. "

By the way this rule is written, it sounds like the situation where this most commonly comes up, which is headsup and facing the decision on whether to call a shove, is explicitly excepted and allowed. In that situation, betting is complete (one can make the point that a call is not the same as a bet) and it is not multiway.

I don't agree that "betting is complete" when you or another player still have to take an action. Betting is complete for a hand when betting is complete.

I agree that some rooms do indeed allow showing your hand when heads up (and at any time on any street when heads up, not only when you are closing the action). I said so above. These rooms tend to be RRoP based rooms.

Having said that, the "betting is complete" part of the rule is a qualification to limit the rule to the play of the hand before showdown, not to somehow allow this behavior at certain parts during the play of the hand, such as if you are the last to act. Once betting is complete you are at showdown, so of course you are allowed to show your hand. If the rule only said "The following actions are improper: Revealing the contents of a live hand in a multihanded pot", then you could never make it to showdown if multiway (without being penalized, anyway).

And, again, for those of you in a TDA room, they have reworded it to make it much more clear that showing your hand before action is complete is a no-no, even if you are last to act, and even if you are heads up, and doing so may be penalized.

By your interpretation, betting being complete would be explicitly limited to showdown. It seems odd to explicitly specify in the rules that it is OK to table your cards at showdown.