what has been the player reaction to the dead hand if not within reach of your seat when the first card comes off the deck? Or is that not implemented yet?


I personally like it after my initial knee jerk hating it reaction. Was wondering what your patrons thought...

Haven't heard anyone complain about it yet (though I'm sure it's happened) and haven't had a case of someone running for a hand after I've pitched a card. So too early to tell I guess.

On the surface it sounds fine to me. I really don't care either way as long as it's consistent. IMO, fear of "omg someone could walk behind and see a hand!!" is pretty silly. Protect your cards. Yada yada.

Our room too. Nobody has really complained about the FCOTD rule yet.

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Like anything else, people didn't like the change in their routine, but once they got past that, it doesn't matter to them much.

I've heard some grumbles but not any real complaints.

Dealt this last night and wondered what you all think.

Board is AKK77. Showdown.

Seat 3 says "I have the low boat" and throws the 7s face-up about 12 inches in front of him. His 2nd card is still face down by his chips.
Seat 9 says "no good" and shows AQ.
Seat 3 says "No, I have the boat, and begins to push his 2nd card down across the line and releases his hand from the card. (this was about 6 inches across the betting line. Which isn't binding in any way, just offering a visual)
Seat 1 then says "You have to show the other one" and reaches out and turns over Seat 3's 2nd card. (I had no chance to stop Seat 1 from doing this since he was a bit closer and I didn't really expect he would.)

Does the pot still go to the best hand or is this violation of OPTAH enough to kill seat 3's hand.

Furthermore, what do you guys do in spots like this. Where Player 1 is showing both cards and Player 2 is only showing one, but the one card is good enough to beat Player 1. I always feel awkward saying something like "You must show both to make a claim for the pot" because it seems like it may violate OPTAH. On the flip side, it's usually because Player 1 is just clueless, and it seems silly not to award the pot to the best hand because of a a technicality/ignorance by Player 1.

I call the floor and let him sort it out.

The sevens full should get the pot.
The player that turned up the other card should get a talking to.

I'll say "Aces and kings with a queen is the best hand.".

When the guy says he has a full house I'll tell him it takes both cards to make a hand.

No seat 3's hand is not killed. I growl at the 1 seat and tell him not to touch other peoples cards, not to tell people to show their hand. He will not listen to me but I get to growl.

I tell the player to "Show Them or Muck them" I think this avoids the OPTOH issue because I am letting the player know what his options are ... not advising which option to take.

"I can't read your hand, sir," has always worked for me in this spot.

Someone is always going to impatiently tell this guy to turn 'em both up, that's life in the big city nowadays...but when they inject themselves to point of tabling the hand, it's time to call the floor to give the busybody a warning. For some reason, players take warnings from neckties more seriously than warnings from dealer uniforms.

While I agree the one-card players are annoying, I'll voice again that this OPTAH at showdown nonsense gets in the way more often than it helps. I do acknowledge that people muck winners, and I don't want to get in the way of that, but this dude clearly knows what he has. I personally have no problem with the dealer turning over the card himself, as it would save a lot of time over the dance of cute wordplay and hoping he gets the hint, not to mention the people at the table who sometimes call for the hand to be killed entirely.

I realize this is not reality. Just saying, this is a really stupid rule in this situation. Almost everybody now plays online (at least up here in Canada), and your hand is always live and in play at showdown, without you having to do a damn thing.

Question: What do y'all do about habitual check-outers? Or regulars (who are there more than you are) who habitually fold out of turn? Let's pretend the floor isn't going to back you up. Is there anything to be done?

For me, it seems these things are a lot easier if another player speaks up. Nobody gives a crap what I think about the game, as I'm a lowly service monkey, and therefore less than human. But people care a lot more about impressing the other players. For some, that seems to be their only goal.

Zero can be done about Captain Check-out, and the amount of times someone has complained about that over the years is so small I can't think of an instance. As far as I'm concerned, it's Chinatown. And since Captain Check-Out is more likely to be a player that causes other procedural errors, I'm happy to have him out of the hand as soon as possible.

Folding out of turn you can at least attempt to make some headway, because FooT causes action out of turn behind, and there is at least a visual representation of the damage FooT player is causing.

Oh, I snapped pretty quickly and he didn't really understand why.

"Woah, you can't touch another player's card like that."
"Why? He has to show both!"
"Yes, but that is HIS responsibility. Not yours"

He didn't get it. Pot went to seat 3, seat 9 was upset with seat 1, but didn't really seem upset that he lost to the best hand.


I like this.

Thx all for the replies.

I recently had a 2/5 player complain about this. He said that by doing this, I was encouraging a player to show (since I say "show" first). He suggested I should merely let a player know that the action is on him. I believe this player also had a problem with my saying "Check or bet" to indicate action, for similar reasons.

Newton's fourth law of motion is that if a dealer speaks or moves in any fashion, there will exist a player that doesn't like it.

Ignore them and do your job.

Pulled off a super Pro move just now after snapping the river and attempting to set/spread the stub I managed to expose no less than 11 cards out of it.

Must be your proof for Newton's 4th law!

Just testing the theorem.

I once, somehow, exposed an entire muck in a high stakes PLO game, mid-hand. The players didn't seem to mind--they were relieved it was the muck and not the stub.

I've also encountered resistance from players who object to "Show them or muck them," as they've made their mind up that I'm wrong to say that after hearing the first two words, and they get so mad so quickly, they don't even hear the next three words.

However, no one has ever objected to, "It's time to either throw them away, or turn them up."

If we merely said, "We're at showdown, you're first," I think that would induce even more people to table. Can't win.

That's why OPTAH at showdown is ridiculous.

Not usually.

I'll agree with you here.
When a player turns up one card that makes a winner he knows what he has.
Telling him it takes two to win isn't helping him play or read the hand,
it's informing him of a procedure he obviously isn't aware of.

A player flashing a winner then mucking it is different and no one should say anything.

I don;t think anything I say will induce a player to do anything. I can;t even induce a player to post his ante.

Maybe in this case OPTAH is nonsense.

But this happened in an Omaha HL game I dealt once:

Two players at the river of a decent-sized pot. One player tables a full house without a qualifying low though the board means that a low is possible.

Other player sees the boat and makes a sour face. He is about to throw his ards in when someone at the table who was forced to fold on the river pipes up "Nobody had a low?"

The player then suddenly stops himself from mucking, looks at his cards again and realizes that he has a (crappy) low. He turns his cards face up.

The guy with the boat goes nuts, directing most of his venom towards the guy who opened his mouth.

That was not fun.

Ive seen this on a number of occasions and have seen different calls.
Most often the hand is live and the offending player who spoke up is given a warning BUT..
In one instance a floor-person witnessed the incident and made the ruling the hand was dead, ( he stated is was clear the player intended to muck his hand and reconsidered after the statement) :he had been assisted by another player, and in this case, didn't really get a heck of a lot of argument over the call.

If you follow Matthew Waxman on twitter you'll see his version of crazy guy berating me for being his jinx dealer. It was all sorts of awesome.

They're 5 handed at the final table of a $2500 event and playing for $151k top prize. At 15k/30k blinds, the villain defends his blind with 74o vs a solid competent opponent. Flop comes 986dd and he leads 105k, his opponent raises to 260k, he snap puts his opponent allin for 870k effective and the kid makes a good but tough call with 87o and has him drawing nearly dead. His eight chop outs brick and he loses a pot for like 1/3 of the chips in play and literally just goes crazy. "I ****ing hate this dealer, he's a ****ing jinx! I can't stand him **** **** ****". This goes on for the remainder of the 15 minutes or so I had left with less swearing. It gets to the point where he is actually stalling so that they played less hands during my down and on, what I'm guessing was a trivial preflop decision, he seems me get taps and he snap mucks his cards and says "Thank God!"

Matt told the guy "it's not the dealers fault you put all the money in with 74", and then proceeded to offer the floor $1000 if he can get me back to the table to deal again lol. Ironically I broke the next table and was suddenly homeless but I didn't get back in that area lol