I highly doubt there would be any serious kind of “investigation”. The poker room would send over a video that shows a player tabling his hand, another player mucking and, after some discussion, the first player getting the pot. That’s it.

If anything, the gaming commission would be way more interested in a video that shows the only player with a live hand not getting the pot.

He could have also asked the dealer to kill the losing hand before releasing his cards and/or accepting the pot, I guess, but that would be an overreaction 99% of the time, would cause the dealers to get defensive, and would cause the players to be annoyed at slowing the game down.
I think you're missing that hero also made a bet, which opponent responded by throwing his hand in face up and putting in no chips. I would say at least 50% of the time that happens it is a fold, if not 90%, not "the last player with a live hand", so I'm not sure surveillance would see it as black and white (and in that direction) as you do. Let alone the fact that the player who made the bet was pushed the pot. Though I agree, it is doubtful there would be any investigation at all in general.

One of the reasons gaming commisions take complaints from customers is that the casino employees are not the arbiters of these types of disputes- that is the gaming commission job. They like to show off their power when possible. Im sure the Michigan casino fined 200k for allowing Polk to play a showdown hand thought they were the final decision makers, too.

You can cause a headache for the floor and dealer if they have to provide statements or testimony regarding what happened, which may worth you filing the initial complaint. And internally, if you just complain to the manager, he can sweep the problem under the rug easier than if he has to explain the gaming complaint to his bosses in some report.

It might not get you any compensation, but the casino isn't voluntarily giving you any either.

Aurora, what is a poor precedent to avoid - the poker rooom manager fairly correcting an error by his staff if it is within his discretion?

We know that from this thread. The gaming commission will know from the casinos statement that the player verbalized a call, witnessed by two other players. The video won’t conclusively show at what time the player called, so gaming might assume he did so before tabling his hand. After all, there’s no rule against verbalizing a call and immediately tabling your cards.

Maybe by that time, the dealer also remembers that the player called and that he just had a brain fart by initially pushing the pot the wrong way.

I would not be surprised if the events "change" as Dumaa has already started down this path.........

Weak excuses, like these really bother me.

In a previous job, I pointed out an error to a co-worker. He said that he was at the end of a nine hour shift. I immediately said that I was at the end of an eleven hour shift, and my performance was still as good as it was at the beginning of the shift.

And, when people say "Mistakes happen," they are saying that they expect themselves to make mistakes in the future. I expect myself to be perfect. It is a difficult target to hit. But, if I can be close to perfect, I am doing better than most.

Please. Saying mistakes happen just acknowleges the reality that dealers are human and make mistakes. You say yourself that at best you will be close to perfect, which is another way of saying you know you will make mistakes in the future.

The issue in this thread isnt that mistakes were made. That's obvious. But rather what is the fairest action to take by the floor given that the mistakes happened.

I think the player's hand is unduly influencing how the ruling was made. Imagine the player turned over 9 high instead of tptk, would the floor really rule that the player deserves the pot? The player never put any money in the middle and never clarified to the dealer that they called until after the opponent through their hand in the muck. To me, that indicates that they have forfeited the pot even if they had said "call", which is not even really clear here since only 1/3 of the table heard it and over half did not hear anything.

I am not 100% sure that the dealer killing the hand would have mattered

By TDA rules "C: Dealers cannot kill a properly tabled hand that was obviously the winner."

If the hand is the only hand tabled at that time, I don't think the dealer just flipping them over and mucking them after being properly tabled would kill them.

The only thing the player could have done in my opinion is to ask the dealer to confirm the action, or to confirm the action himself with the other player. But that would get tedious if you had to do that everytime. I really don't see anything reasonable that the player could have or should have done.

Everything he could have done to prevent this would slow the game to a grind if you had to do it every time a dealer stated action.

Dealer: Raise
Player: can you confirm directly with the player that he actually raised?

Sure, a properly tabled hand isn't dead when the dealer mucks it, but the player who claims he called doesn't have a leg to stand on if he doesn't object when the dealer tries to muck his cards, but instead waits until OP's cards are released and in the muck.

In this case, sure he does. He could claim that he didn't understand what was happening until the dealer started pushing the pot to the other player. By that time, the other player had al;ready mucked their untabled hand.

He could claim that, but it would be a worthless claim. A dealer doesn't muck a winning hand when another player still has cards. If he remains silent, he loses all rights to the pot.

What you write is vague. "Fairly correcting." So should we give him an ICM comp? How do we know what the mistake is "worth"? Or any mistake? He was still in the tournament so anything could have happened on the very next hand. As much as we want to be perfect like another poster talked about, we're not. Refunding a buy-in opens the door to too much opportunity for others to free-roll based on mistakes. Live poker involves humans. I hate that this happened just as much as anyone but it's very bad business to refund buy-ins.

What it would have done is added one extra action that could have allowed for the V to object. Every poker player in the world reacts when a dealer starts to muck his hand improperly. Every one. That didn't happen here, so V didn't object until the pot got pushed. Then OP's cards get mucked immediately after and you have the problem.

I think "bad business" is vague also. But I would definitely define it as:

1. Having two "very experienced" employees making such major mistakes
2. The manager immediately realizing recognizing the mistakes and offering inadequate compensation
3. Then when the mistakes get some notoriety online, the manager makes a bunch of weak ass excuses - partially blaming the player, minimizing the effects and claiming gaming would agree the mistakes were actually correct actions.

"Good business" would be owning up to the mistakes and making good with the customer but casinos are always so concerned about the slippery slope of getting ripped off by the customer.

Of course, fair compensation is also vague because it is determined by what the two opposing parties can agree upon.

I agree 100%

Fair compensation is very vague. The problem is this:

1. The player is never going to feel fairly compensated without the casino going well above what they are willing to give.

2. The casino is not obligated to compensate the player at all. (Realizing this part is the key, but everyone thinks they are entitled something)

Good business would absolutely be for the casino to compensate the player, but don't expect to get what you want. In this situation, I personally would possibly offer a free entry into a smaller buy in event or some other comps like a room or food credit but that's about it.

Took the words right out of my fingertips.

I agree with you more than i disagree. Your concept of refusing to engage in good business (by not offering fair compensation because you guys think the players are greedy) is the ironic, encapsulated thought process of a monopolistic business. Too bad there is not more competition inthe casino business.

This is why, if I was OP, I would file a gaming complaint and not patronize this room rather than attempt to resolve the matter.

We are talking about an egregious mistake whose official explanation barely had a chance to stand before being torn apart by scrutiny. If a casino is making so many such mistakes that it would hurt to fairly compensate the aggrieved when they happen, then I understand why that casino wouldn't want to establish that precedence. They have some serious problems to work out.

But in even a half-decent room, mistakes like this should happen close to never. This is what close to never looks like. The question about fair compensation is open, but the assignment of blame is unanimous. That's pretty rare when it comes to these things, and so the casino should have no problem taking the bad end of what they think is "fair" at a rate of close to never.

I know how it is in reality. The whole "very bad business to refund buy-ins" thing reeks of a slippery slope argument and a passing of costs that you don't find in other customer service industries. Imagine if Disney World were in the habit of making similar excuses. "Well, who knows how long you would have stayed in the park after our corndog made you violently ill?"

Here we have a customer who suffered some unknown damages due to your negligence. You are certainly able to go above and beyond when you **** up this badly. You just don't want to. Edit: I hope it's obvious that I am talking to anyone who actually can make those decisions, not to a room manager whose hands are tied or to the two people I quoted.

Don't lump me in with "you guys". I never said anything about it being because I think players are greedy. We just disagree on what is fair. If I went around giving players what they thought was fair every time one of my staff made a mistake, my room would be in the red.

A couple of things:

First, for those saying, "don't go to this casino any more", there's a problem. Colorado has very limited poker room choices, even less so for tournament players. It's not LA or Vegas where you can just go down the street.

Golden Gates is, in my experience, a quite good room. Their tournaments are well-run and the structure is at least decent, not a shove fest after just a few levels.

This is an unfortunate one-off event.

Second, one thing I don't remember seeing is any confirmation that the villain made any call with chips. I remember OP being asked if he'd even moved one chip forward, but don't recall a response.

Seems like that should've been taken into account when surveillance video was watched. If there are no chips moving forward, that seems like a pretty big angle for villain to exploit.

If true, the room manager has some explaining to do how villain could both have a live hand and not called action to him. If not, it would be nice if he clarified that.

Not really. Many floor calls involving a dealer error cost someone money whether it is a burn and turn or mucking a live hand, etc. Almost every time it is completely the dealer's fault or at least could have been avoided if the dealer followed the correct procedure. What is fair to these players that lost a huge pot that they would have otherwise won if the dealer didn't screw the pooch? Should I give them cash equal to the size of said pot to make them whole?

I don't disagree with you so much about the rest of your post. It really is just a question of what should be done to make it right.

Now the OP said "The pot had 52k in chips in it (starting stack was 30k)." but he never said what level this was or how big his stack was at the time. For all we know this was a relatively small pot at this point in the tourney and may have done him almost zero damage. IMO that is relevant information, because he did continue to play with what could possibly be a perfectly good chance at cashing/winning.

I agree with Suit that we have no real info to gauge the significance of the error based on it being a 52k pot and 30k starting stack. I was under the impression it was early in the tournament and was almost a complete double up, but nothing in OP posts confirm this when I reread them.

So fair compensation to me is somewhere less than the buyin rebate but greater than $50 comps.

I've seen plenty of dealer and floor errors. I've never seen so many people so bent out of shape about one. Say, "Well, that sucked," and get on with your life. Maybe post it on 2P2 as a good learning experience for others. It's not like OP had eye cancer and the surgeon removed the wrong eye so now the surgeon has to remove the eye with cancer and OP is going to be completely blind for life.

Or, if you want a poker one, OP isn't exactly Estelle Denis who shoved in the 2009 WSOP main event and had her cards mucked. It's a $300 tourney; get over it.

Then again, in one of our self-dealt home games, I once hit a set on the flop and went to check my cards to verify it, only to realize I had mucked my own cards, so perhaps I'm such an idiot my opinion doesn't matter.

A+

would read again