If we have the whole story, the hand is dead, and by most house rules, the player is SOL. Most floor managers (and some dealers) would try to make it up to the player though.

If the player was out of his seat, then the hand is mucked no matter what he has on it. If the dealer tried getting his attention first, the hand is mucked.

I once accidentally mucked my cards into another players at a final table. Since it was tourney, I couldn't just make it up. Long story short, we ended up being the final 2, I had a 3-1 chip lead, and just chopped it with him.

"Poker is a man's game," Josh's daddy used to say, "because it isn't fair." --Sean Stewart, Galveston

I think I saw it happen once, and that was when the player had his cards WAY out. Fuzzy memory, so probably wrong but my recollection is they were protected, but looking like he'd just pushed 'em forward to be mucked. Dealer just figured he forgot to take off the chip and yanked the cards from under the chip. Since the guy wasn't paying ANY attention to the game, it kinda made sense.

Like MSU says above... it's unfair to the other players who did nothing wrong to insist on a misdeal or to give the guy back his blind from the pot. But I've seen floors and dealers do both in situations where someone lost their cards preflop. It's the dealer's solution when he doesn't wanna call the floor, and it's the floor's solution when he doesn't wanna take a blind outta the tray. Guess the floor is figuring a half-dozen somewhat annoyed players is better than one REALLY ticked off player.

My preference:

A, B, D are misdeals
C, the BB gets the top two off the deck (if the Button can get a replacement for his exposed first card, ie, receive 'two cards in a row', then that should not be an objection here. You may have others.)

(i was gonna post this last night but the board was down. sorry if i've rehashed anything too many times.)

thirddan,

i'd really like more info about this if you have it:

you say he got the chip back but the rest is unclear.


advocates of "real" chip protectors,

pending info about how the dealer actually mucked the hand, i think it's very unlikely that the difference in mass between a chip and your awesome blinky spinny metal thing reading BIG SLICK is going to make a difference in the life or death of the hand in question.


all,

misdeal is the wrong solution to this problem. refunding the bb is the least the house can do, but this refund cannot be taken from the pot as that has an unfair and deleterious effect on the players with live hands who have a stake in that pot.


by-tor sans snow-dog,

sorry mate. it was the only current sporting event i could think of at the time. um, go As?

Actually i can think of a few circumstances where this would be understandable (although the fact that it was taken out of turn makes it harder).

For example i have one semi-regular player who after winning a pot does not tip immediately, but when folding the next hand will put the tip on his folded cards. Its usually obvious what he is doing, but i suppose if you got used to this you could mistake some protected cards for cards folded with a tip on them (though $20 would be unusual)

I have another regular player who when sitting next to the dealer will put his big blind on top of his cards, but will not remove them to fold. So a dealer who got used to this could mistakenly think this player was folding even though to someone not familiar with the circumstances would thinhk the dealer had no reason to think the player was folding.

hey tyler,

i don't really know the exact details of how the dealer had scooped up the cards, this whole debate was going on as i returned from the bathroom...i got back to the table as BB was going crazy...

FLOORMAN RULING: HAND IS DEAD, SORRY MR BB...he then whispered some stuff into the dealers ear, dealer thought about 10 seconds and tosses the bb 4 yellow chips from her tray and apologizes...i later asked the floorman what he whispered (because i was interested and am nosy), he said that he gave her the option of either paying the dude his 20 bucks or getting a write-up...apparently getting written up is worse than losing 20 bucks, but i don't know the details...floorman also said they can never require than a dealer pay someone from their tray...

as a sidenote, im on the "you need to protect your hand, its your resposibility" side of things...

Putting a chip on your cards is sufficient and this is clearly a dealer mistake.

There is no magical muck that automatically kills a hand.

I would be very uncomfortable making the player forfeit his blind due to dealer error.

while in dealer school years ago, they used to let a student be the floor for the day. this same exact situation happened once when i was the floor. i asked the player to step away from the table and tell me her hole cards. the exact cards were in the muck, so i retrieved them and play continued. the teacher, who is the floorman at the flamingo, said i made the correct call. he also said that since no significant action had taken place the hand was live. if there had been action before the player said something, the hand was dead.

Cripes to some of these responses. You'd think you were hit on the head with an acorn. My favorite version of that story is when the Loxy family gets a nice big dinner.

Yes, a chip should help protect. Yes, a player should also pay attention. You don't need to bring out knives or anvils.

However, as a dealer, if I did this, I'd pay the BB out of pocket.

How about if it happened on the river and the player had $200 in the pot. How about if he claims he had the stone cold nuts and wants to reimbursed for the whole pot.

If I do that, I deserve to be at the very least suspended.

Not paying attention to players who have been betting substantially throughout is a different situation than getting confused when a bunch of cards are flying my way preflop. DUCY?

But then, I'm one of those wacky dealers who anticipates problems and stops the hand when someone's action is unclear. This is partially why I don't even really look at the board until the hand is over - I'm paying attention to everything else.

According to OP only one player had folded at the time this happened. Not quite a bunch of cards flying at the dealer.

Well, that's still a different situation than folding a player who had bet $200.

So would you still pay it out of pocket? How do you compensate if he claims he had the nuts?

Do any potential rulings change if the stakes were much, much higher (say blinds of 1k/2k)? Is the house comping or reimbursing him 2k? Is the dealer paying 2k out of pocket? Or is the player just out 2k?

Yes.

No.

No.

And Yes.