Not sure if this is a typical decision or if this has been posted before. Let me know.

I was playing 1-2 NL last Friday night at a card room in a PA casino. On the turn, the dealer burned a card, and then accidentally drew 2 cards. Everyone at the table saw both cards. It was very clear in the opinion of EVERYONE at the table which card was the top card that was going to be played and which card was going to be the burn before the river card.

The dealer stopped things and called over the manager and explained to them. Many players at the table pointed out which card was going to be played. I wasn't in the hand anymore. I'm not sure how people in the hand were advocating. FWIW there was a flush draw on the board and the cards happened to be both of the flush suit.

The floor manager took the two cards. Shuffled them facedown on the table. And then drew one of the cards. It actually was the card we all thought should have been played anyway.

The extra card was shown to the table again and mucked. The dealer burned what would have been the river card and played the next card as the river.

I thought it was odd to shuffle the cards when it was pretty obvious which card was should have been played.

Anyone know if this was a good decision or not. Didn't affect things too much. I'm just curious.

Common wisdom is that it is hard to be sure which card is the right one, because if you were sure, you wouldn't have ended up with an extra one to begin with. (This is more often argued with a 4 card flop than a 2 card turn or river, because it's hard to be sure which of the three peeling actions grabbed two cards, but still.)

If the cards had remained face down, it is more acceptable to agree which one is the "right" one, because no one knows what the cards are anyway. Once you flip them over, that becomes a very bad policy, because players can try to argue that the "right" one is whichever one helps them more. It's not entirely clear if this happened in your OP, but I think so.

Given the above, washing the cards and having the floor randomly select one to be the burn is the standard ruling. Mucking the extra card and then using the river as a burn and getting a different river is very non-standard, but to the non-superstitious among us it's fine. The problem is that many players are superstitious and would rather keep the river card the same. So it would have been better to just use the extra card as the burn, which is the standard way to do it.

It is also a better practice to have the dealer scramble them while the floor isn't looking, then have the floor select a card, however, because that removes another possible vector for collusion and cheating (not that it's particularly likely anyway).

It is also generally done the opposite of what you described, where the floor will select the card that will become the burn card, not the card which will play. It is more obvious why that is if you consider a 4 card flop - this way the floor only has to pick 1 card rather than 3.

Thanks for the reply. I haven't played in a long while, so it's good to hear from others with experience.

FWIW, in this hand the dealer still had both cards in her hand. So she had drawn the cards and turned them over in her hand, but hadn't put them on the table yet. She was still pinching the cards between her two fingers.

Is the idea that the dealer might be purposefully misdealing to help someone?

If shuffling is standard procedure in similar cases, I can see why they would do that.

Thanks.

All good except I don't think we burn again. Just put the 'exposed' card on top of the stub and use it as the burn card if we go to the River. There will probably be some chatter that too much time will have passed correcting the Turn so we really can't say we protected the top of the stub and should move on, but IMO it is an option and one that you would probably see in some rooms.

If a Dealer fumbles a burn card and calls the Floor over the top of stub is potentially 'exposed' for the same period of time in both spots ... and we don't burn again in those cases. The discussion on this point will be that there's no action that will take place prior to putting the card out on the Board anyway, so there's nothing to be gained by 'seeing' the top card.

(See, I countered my own point ... ) GL

The shuffling has become standard even if the cards aren't exposed. It's a much cleaner way of getting to a point where the hand can continue.

This procedure is not the same if Board cards are pre-exposed, only when there are too many. GL

Since it's only 2 cards, shouldn't we know 100% which one is which? Especially since her fingers are still on the cards?

Much different if it's the flop.

Agreed, if the cards are still in her hand, pinched between her fingers, I'd be fine "unflipping" them back on top of the stub, then grabbing just the correct top card. (you should probably expose the burn card then too.)

Once they hit the felt and get spread, though, that's not acceptable any more. (though for a turn or river they wouldn't really get spread I guess.)

This is another spot where a Floor could rule with common sense based on the physical evidence. But it also opens the door up to debate as to whether the Floor caved into the masses when making a ruling. Much cleaner to just have a procedure in place and go with it ... although I cant' say I wouldn't be swayed by the 100% resolve of the Dealer. GL

This. We know which card it is, just fix it and expose the other one as the next burn.