Multiple unprotected face down hands on the felt sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Every time someone grabs one of them and turns over a winner that you missed, you gonna go the the camera?

It could have been one of his and one of his neighbor's. And they have an agreement to chop the money later.

Well when you turned them down if you left them where they were you now have to reach back to get them.

So leaving a non-winning hand off to the side face-up while I push the pot to the winner isn't a crime. Sometimes I worry that I might muck a winner if I didn't see a random straight that no one else saw either so I feel like leaving it face up on the felt isn't the worst thing in the world, whereas if I just cram it face down in the muck, I might be mucking an actual winner. It's not part of my normal routine to leave these face up on the table, but I was just curious if there is a really good reason to get those facedown in the muck ASAP. Thank you all for you time.

Face up is bad. At the very least taking at turning it face down puts everyone on notice that you think it's a loser so if you are making a mistake they know it and can speak up know rather than after the pot gets pushed.

You're supposed to muck the hand!

Between this and the "can a dealer read the hands" thread I feel like I'm living in bizarropoker forum world this week.

So I think my problem has been not fully extending my arm before fanning the 3 cards, this has been making the cards come out skewed a lot of the time because my arm is bent at the elbow. having a straight arm alleviates this a lot.

My next annoyance is that the cards have fairly big gaps between them, I'd rather they came out very close together or touching each other. Should I just apply less pressure with my thumb or what? I see some dealers with their three fingers like underneath the cards as they spread them, it just makes a mess when I try it that way.

ive had dealers get upset with me when they tried killign my winning hand before they kill the loser. if i have the winning hand my hand will be the last one you kill... and i would prefer possession of the pot before you kill it.

I hate when there isn't a gap between the cards. It can make the board harder to read to me for some reason.

Less pressure = smaller gap.

I was taught that any tabled losing hand should be turned face down and not immediately mucked. The winning hand is left face up, push the pot, move the button then gather the cards for the next hand. In 7 years of dealing this procedure has saved me from mucking a winning hand and potentially avoiding a camera review ~5 times. This also allows me to easily show any player who thinks a mistake is being made that they in fact didn’t have a flush/straight/2 pair, etc.

The last audition I went on there was a girl who was straight out of dealing school who was clearly very nervous. During an Omaha 8 hand she killed a hand that should’ve gotten 3/4 of the pot and quickly shoved it deep into the muck. Had that been a live game situation that surely would’ve been a camera review and a delay of at least 10-15 min. Needless to say she didn’t get the job.

Thank you! I was beginning to think I was going crazy.



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I was taught to muck the loser. My job also wants it this way too.

Let's all do it the way 'the bosses' want it done and work on any modifications off the floor in a suggestion meeting. (Do those exist?)

IMO the act of turning the cards face down should accelerate/trigger any claims/questions about how that hands and how they were read 'by all'. I believe that turning them over and leaving them within close reach of the Board is a better way to avoid any escalated pot disputes. Lots of Dealers pick them up to turn them over and the next place they hit the table is the bottom of the muck pile. I think it would be more 'articulate' to turn them over and drag them in more like you would a hand folded during a betting street.

But you also have the flip side where a player needs to protect their hand ... which leads hands being turned over out of arms reach towards the outside of the table and slows things down. I personally show my cards as far into the betting area that I can so 'all' can see them as I typically sit in 2/3/7/8 seats. This does open my tabled hands up for mucking more easily.

Although not impossible I think it's a task to ask a Dealer to 'immediately' muck any holdings that are presented face down by a player and then also expect them to 'just' turn read cards over and go back for them later.

The room managers need to decide the fine line between efficiency and protecting the game. I think we all could agree that the incidents of mucking a winning hand are pretty rare, but they rank 'top 3' in potentially heightened emotions of the players involved.

Had one last week in PLO ... Board 9Q949 ... Player A tabled QJT8, Player B AJ87 ... The most experience 'player' at the table told Player B he lost and the Dealer mucked Player B's hand AND THEN pushed the Queen forward and gave the pot to Player A. Everyone was so dumbfounded that we had already moved onto the next hand before anyone 'challenged' the Alpha player's read of Player B's hand. We called Floor and it was ruled that the hand was over. We've seen threads where Player A is 'asked' to give Player B the pot but the Floor didn't push it and Player A never moved an inch. Unfortunately Player A went on a heater and no karma was found .. GL

While of course we all need to do it the way our bosses want, I see no real purpose for turning over a tabled hand but not mucking it. A dealer can't kill a tabled hand by mucking it. The cards speak. So when the hand is tabled, if anyone at the table realizes it's the winner, they should speak up. If they speak up before the next hand starts, then the winning hand still wins even if it were mucked.

If the hand is turned over face down and left there momentarily, it's not like people can continue to look at the cards and figure out what they have. They either realize it or not. And whether it's mucked or not, they still have only until the next hand starts to speak up. In the PLO example above, the error was the dealer not reading and announcing the hands before mucking anything and pushing the pot, instead relying on a player declaration. But even if he had just turned over the winning hand, it wouldn't have saved that guy because no one realized it won until the next hand started. So it was dead either way.

Of course there is a purpose, it avoids having to go to the cameras and waste 10 minutes to figure out who won if a players tabled hand is accidentally killed but claims to be a winner, and there is dispute (or even just no backup) about what he showed.

Plus, theoretically a dealer cannot kill a properly tabled hand, but the reality is that they can. We've heard from floors in recent days who say their surveillance cameras cannot always determine the cards a player showed. In a room like this, a dealer absolutely can kill a player's tabled hand from a practical perspective, since once their hand is killed, if there is a dispute about what they showed, there is no way for the floor to determine after the fact what it was beyond doubt.

So the question becomes: is it worth it? We've listed some of the downsides (players swapping cards and cheating, either for real or for funsies; making more work for the dealer; just leaving too many cards around creating logistical problems).

Honestly, I don't care either way, because it's not a frequent occurrence to have:
* Player not protecting his tabled hand
* The hand killed
* No one object in time to stop him
* Enough disagreement about what was tabled
* Bad camera capabilities, or an unwillingness to check

On a tangent, what do you do in the following situation? HU at showdown and the guy in seat 7 has the winning hand vs the old man in seat 2. Seat 7, however, is unwilling to release his cards until he is paid the pot, while seat 2, understandably, would like to actually see the winning hand himself, which would require placing the cards closer to the board at the middle of the table.

If Seat 7 has his cards in a reasonable spot for players to see, and seat 2 can't see them I will tell him what they are. If that is not enough for him he should have worn his glasses..... And I'll call the floor.

If seat 7 is being a PITA and holding his cards where they are difficult to see i will tell him to move them out ... he can still keep a finger on them but he can't insist the finger be at the rail.

We teach our dealers to muck losers as soon as they know it's a loser. This avoids players swapping face down cards on one end of the table. The ratio of uncorrectable hands is not enough to require us to leave the cards where they are. It also helps facilitate when there are more players that need to open their cards. If A beats B, then muck B immediately so C and D and E know what hand needs to be beat. Also mucking them right away is more efficient in getting to the next hand quicker. Why make 2 motions when 1 will do?

I can't speak to issues with certain surveillance capabilities. Where I work I would say 98% of the time the cameras can accurately spot the cards. Where they have a problem is with chip stacks.

I don't know of any solution that I'm thrilled with in this exact situation, but I'm in favor of allowing everyone to see the winning hand. What I've done is looked at the guy in seat 7 and told him, "I PROMISE not to muck your hand." That's usually sufficient to get him to (begrudgingly) remove his finger.

I *never* have this problem. No one *ever* refuses to release their cards. They are quite careless with them, to my constant amazement.

You haven't had that problem YET.

I once had a guy in a tournament who would refuse to release his chips any time he was owed change. Like, he calls 250 with a 500 chip and he would hold it down on the felt with the strength of a mother lifting a car to save her child. Not until he got his proper change, and sometimes several seconds later, would he release his grip. Once I tried to pull it out from under his finger and I could not get it to budge until he snapped out of his trance.

Not sure where you work but announcing tabled hands is part of the dealers job in an overwhelming majority of rooms in the U.S.

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Never had a drink spilled all over the flop/pot either...

...until tonight!

I wish I had a special signal to the servers. "When I do this, spill a drink on the game and I'm good for a $20."