He didn't pick the muck up and throw it on the dudes hand. He slid it from in front of him to his left rather quickly, and one card slid off the pIle, across maybe 6 inches of felt, and on top of the guys hand

What gets me is why even make a fuss about it? If no one at the table is making an issue of it why try to punish the guy and kill his hand?

I have never seen it, the dealer shouldn't have done it. That does not relieve the player of his responsibility to protect his hand. Note that as described it sounds like the player did protect his hand in that his cards were separate from the muck moving into it. I would recommend protecting your hand with your hands if you see a muck moving towards it. In general you need to avoid hiding your cards; however, nobody will fault you for hiding your cards if a muck is actively roaming the table.

That's what happens at a card table. Cards fly around, sometimes unpredictably. It's chaotic.

I will not apologize for this chaos. It's part of the game, it's baked right in! I CANNOT PROTECT YOU FROM THIS. If you CAN protect yourself, but you WON'T, don't look to me for sympathy.

So basically unless someone is hiding their cards, the dealer shouldn't apologize?

When a dealer takes a player's cards and mucks them he is doing what he was trained to do. I won't address what the dealer should do in the OP's case; I know I would never have a dealer that would do such a thing. Dealers apologizing can lead to a host of other problems.

There is no way that this isn't a dealer mistake. Yes, player could have prevented it, but the dealer is the one who actively created the situation through careless mishandling of the muck. Of course the dealer should acknowledge his mistake. If he wanted to include a bit about 'Dealers are human, we screw up, that is why players need to protect their hands at all times', fine. But to try and make this as if the player primarily at fault for not protecting their hand against an unexpectedly mobile muck is kind of ridiculous.

The main thing the player needs to understand, and this is a perfect teaching moment, is that even if the dealer does screw up, the player is the one who will get the immediate consequences (the dealer may be written up later, or not, depending on the screw up). So yeah, you can be right and the dealer can be wrong, your hand will still be dead if you don't protect your cards.

God, I wish I could just walk away from this thread. It's like shoveling against the tide.

What will it take to get you players to understand that nothing unexpected happened here?

You're not in the Poker Business. You're in the Hand Protection Business. And people tasked with protecting something are VIGILANT. NOTHING comes at them "unexpectedly". They *prepare* for what others would call "unexpected". They keep their head on a swivel, they don't get blindsided. They take the task *seriously*.

You guys don't WANT to accept this task as your responsibility. "I pay rake, so I shouldn't have to concern myself with this." Yeah, no.

You can't say a card moving across the surface of a card table is "unexpected". That's what cards are designed to do: move quickly. You guys sound like you're standing in the middle of a highway saying you were unexpectedly hit by a car, and you want the driver to apologize to YOU???

EDIT TO ADD: I should point out, I'm not just speaking as a dealer. I'm also a player, who has NEVER had a hand fouled, let alone mucked or otherwise killed "unexpectedly". I was fortunate, my "teaching moment" came at showdown, and my cards were retrieved. That was 20 years ago. I've become more vigilant, since. When they told me it was MY responsibilty, I didn't get defensive and cite the rake I pay--I saw their point, and I do it their way, and I've never had a problem since. So if you guys will also do it this way, the world becomes a better place. THAT'S my agenda here, it has little to do with the fact that I'm a poker dealer.

See, as mentioned by someone in another thread...it's not you that is getting this wrong. It's everyone else.

See, I'd think playing poker at the poker table is the poker business.

This accurately describes noone in the world.

No, the analogy would be sitting inside in a Cafe reading a newspaper while eating a sandwich, and a car being driven like a madman comes through window and showers the room with glass. You are like, "there are Cars people!! Cars can crash!! You expect an apology?!?"

ytf this is not a good look dude. It's especially wild coming from someone who recently and awkwardly posted the "12 Angry Men" quote about politeness in another thread. For the vast majority of us, there is no decision making, no calculation, no consideration for message balancing or lesson teaching. We automatically apologize without thinking about how it will benefit or cost us. Because we ****ed up. Because that's what it means to be sorry. Because that's how we were raised.

You said something wrong and bad, and now after seeing the reactions you are painting yourself into a corner in an attempt to defend it. This hill is too small my man. Even now, it's not too late to say "whoops" and back out. It's okay!

This is ****ing weird. You're not going to find anyone who agrees with you here.

"Because that's how we were raised."

Nice!

You should know that I apologize more than anyone, as I cited above.

"This is ****ing weird. You're not going to find anyone who agrees with you here"

RR agrees with me. I'm sure other Old School guys (bigfishhead?) do, too.

You think RR agrees with you that “nothing unexpected happened here”? I’ll have to — ahem — apologize if he does.

I doubt it's more "old school" than "macho."

Old School is taking care of your own ****, and leaving others to take care of their own ****. Macho is refusing to take care of your own ****.

The key is that something unexpected did happen, as it will from time to time. If everything operated as we hope it does in the normal course of play, we wouldn't need floormen and we wouldn't need to protect our hands. Yes, it is unexpected that the dealer would pick up the muck and move it. No it is not unexpected that at some point during play something will happen and a player will have to defend their cards. Perhaps instead of telling players to protect their hand we should tell them to defend their hand, maybe that would make it clearer. You are protecting your hand from the dealer, from the unusual or unexpected.

The most extreme case I have seen of a player failing to protect his hand was in a 60-120 game many year ago. He was sitting in the one seat cussing at the dealer most of the down. On this player's big blind there was a raise from the other end of the table, about the 7 seat. While everyone was looking that direction the dealer pulling the big blinds cards out of his hand and mucked them. The floor was called and the player was told to protect his hand. That was definitely unexpected (and wrong), but had the player been vigilant in protecting his hand he could have kept the dealer from taking them.

I'm with YTF. I've never had a hand killed on me.
Seemed obvious to me as a player from day one that all the cards look the same on the back.
Cards fly around the table all the time on accident or on purpose, they can easily foul you hand.
From the moment that first card arrives it's up to me alone to protect it. I'm amazed how careless people are with their cards.

Are you honestly saying that when you sit down to play poker, you expect the dealer to move the muck towards your hand and spill cards onto it? I guarantee you that you do not.

I am not arguing against a players responsibility to protect their hand. That is basic. Since the player has the most to lose, they should have the most vested interest in protecting their hand.

What I am saying is that of course the dealer moving the muck suddenly and fouling a players hand is a dealer screwup. It is stupid to paint it as anything but a dealer mistake. And the dealer should own that. They can apologize, but also explain (ior have the floor explain) that mistakes happen, which is why a player should always protect their hand.

Trying to argue that a predatory muck is a normal and expected part of playing live poker is a very odd stance to take.

I could not agree more.

It actually pretty fairly describes me.

I've learned from this forum to protect my hand against any and all kinds of human error. The only time I don't is when talking to a waitress, so I try not to talk to them while in a hand.

I have never had a hand fouled or mucked by a dealer. I have deflected many mucked cards by players that would have touched my cards if not otherwise protected. I have lifted my hand so cards would fly underneath.

I always blame myself when I make a procedural error. I know full well it is my responsibility to protect my hand in any and all circumstances.

And yet I would like an apology from a dealer when they screw up. And the dealer clearly did here.

Not even close. I always concern myself with this. No matter what the cause of a procedural screwup I always look to learn from it what I could do differently to make sure I don't get screwed again. Or to protect someone less careful from getting screwed in the future. One of my goals is to keep newbies coming back.

In this case my takeaway is that the dealer should not be messing with a muck pile in the middle of a hand. If the dealer apologized I would get that he is going to learn from the experience. If he doesn't, then I will make sure he takes responsibility for his mistake. Either he will own it or a Floor will be called over for educational purposes.

The reason I do this is to minimize this from happening again.
I'm pretty sure both of these analogies are crafted to bolster the argument. Neither is really what is going on at the table.

It is more like standing on a street corner in NYC waiting for the light. When the light changes you start to cross the street and get hit by a bicycle going the wrong way on a one way street. It is clearly illegal for the bike to be doing this and yet it happens all the time. You will win the lawsuit every time. It wasn't your fault. And yet you will also be hurt, hospitalized , or even worse, possibly killed. It always pays to look both ways. And I would expect an apology from the cyclist.

Everyone seems to be talking about apologies. If I were dealing and mucked someone's hand, I would apologize. If I were on the floor I would prefer the dealer not apologize. Firstly, I don't want the player getting it in his head that he was wronged and entitled to something. The other reason is the dealer is better off not engaging with a player that just had something bad happen and will be looking for someone to blame. Let the floor handle it, the floor can walk away from the table so if there player wants to cause a scene it will be away from the table.

This thread got weird.


I always apologize and then explain that it sounds cold but that it's on the player to protect his hand and that there's a ton of things they can do to guard themselves against possible mistakes that I might make. "Nobody is looking out for you except you" is a common phrase I tell my player pool. I make mistakes and I want you to correct me if I'm ever wrong about things. I know that if I reach over and take your aces from you when you're in the 1 seat, it's something I should NEVER do, but if I do, ultimately it's on you to ensure I don't make that mistake and there won't be any compensation for it.

I love courtroom movies and tv shows. One of the things I've learned from those is that some evidence is deemed worthless if it's "inflammatory nature" outweighs its "probative value". A famous example was the debate about the Mark Furhman N-word tapes in the OJ Simpson murder trial. It's hard to remain objective, and set aside biases, when your prejudices (pre-judgements) are inflamed.

It is my opinion that most of you who disagree with me, are under the impression that something unexpected occurred in this hand. Many of you keep using the phrase "the dealer moved the muck". The idea of a dealer doing something so unusual has inflamed your passions.

I submit that the dealer in this case, never did any such thing. Here's a clarification from the OP:

I guess most of you didn't see that, because the retraction in the back of the newspaper never gets as many views as the erroneous headline that ran on Page One, Above The Fold.

What OP describes in this correction/clarification HAPPENS EVERY HAND! Traditionally, the muck is kept on the dealer's left. Every time the dealer gathers discards from his right, they must be *moved* to his left. In this case, ONE CARD got loose. One stray.

Do you know how often I see stray cards fly out of the control of the people who set them in motion? If it's not "every single down I deal", it's close!

Sorry, folks, but I can't take seriously any post that has appeared since that clarification that talks about the unexpected movement of the muck. Discards get moved towards the muck every single hand, and Seat One is in the line of fire.

Can we all agree on that? That the Predatory Muck is a myth?

BTW, I work tonight. I'm going to try to keep a tally of how many times in 8 hours I see a card fly out of control. If that number doesn't approach 10, I'll be shocked.

Of course, a number of those times, the person losing control will be me, the dealer! While you expect better from me, you should actually expect the opposite--I handle a lot more cards than you do, so of course I'm going to lose control of a lot more! I get a lot more at-bats than you do, of course I'll have a lot more strikeouts.

The dealer doesn't have mucked cards hit players live cards every hand. That was the problem. It was technically the dealer's "fault". It's okay to say sorry.

What sword are you falling on here? No one is saying it should never happen and that you should be fired. They're saying mistakes happen and it's okay to apologize even if it's ultimately the player's responsibility to protect against mistakes.


If you were instead playing and you tossed your hand in to fold and it bounced off a wayward chip and bounced into someone's live hand, you'd apologize. It was a mistake, but your intention wasn't to try to get the person's hand killed, even if it's ON THEM to protect their hand.

a steadfast refusal to apologize is bizarre to say the least

I think you should show this thread to your boss and let us guess whether you get fired or not.

I am pretty sure his boss read 2+2.

My current boss DISCOVERED me on 2+2!

Had about 6-7 cards go astray tonight, and I was responsible for almost all of them. No one was harmed. Only close call was when the 10- seat mucked, except his cards flew to the RIGHT! and landed near Seat 9's cards!

But seat 9, sitting nowhere near the muck, had his cards protected. He didn't see this as unexpected.

I love how some people seem to think that it is reasonable to defend your cards against expected things but not the unexpected events. Like if you knew it was going to happen then you wouldn't need to defend your cards the whole time now would you.

No, I probably wouldn't see an astray spacetime warping killer muck coming my way. However, if I knew when it was going to come then why would I defend my cards at other instants? You defend your cards for the unexpected, not the other way around.