Black Hawk CO Ameristar
Hand gets to showdown and player 1 bets $100.
Player 2 calls the $100.
Player 1 flips over cards and shows straight.
Player 2 throws cards in muck face down.
Then says no wait. Calls floor.
Floor pulls them out of the muck after player 2 said what cards she had mucked.
Floor tables hand and it ends up being a split pot.

Classic thread ...
1) Edit ... 'Hand gets to RIVER' (not showdown) ... nit picky grammar ...

2) Typically if cards are 'identifiable' then they really aren't 'mucked' and may be turned over at showdown.

3) If these cards were 'fully' mucked and the Floor allowed the player to 'name' their cards and then they went hunting in the muck for them then that would be a SUPER stretch of the 'normal' implementation of the rules used in other rooms.

Not saying this would never happen, but I don't believe it should happen. Every room has it's own line in the sand for mucked cards. Hopefully this wasn't just taking care of a local reg when the room was full of out-of-town players. GL

Player 2's hand should be dead.

Many rooms will allow the "no wait" hand to play as long as the player who tossed his cards forward says something before they are actually in the muck. It's fairly unusual for a floor to pull them out of the muck unless there was an extenuating circumstance, such as the other player misdeclaring his hand, causing the player to muck a winner. But to go into the muck just because the player made a mistake is unusual. But as with every ruling, it's the house rules that matter, as there are few truly universal rules.

The rules on mucking and when cards are dead certainly can vary. Having the floor go through the muck and pull out the cards and declare them live is likely not that common. But the rules are whatever the floor says they are and personal relationships can't be ruled out as a reason.

If you believe the floor is making a ruling that is wrong, ask for the shift supervisor or poker room manager, whomever is the highest authority available. Things might not change, but they might.

If the cards were not identifiable (such as just touching the edge of the muck, definitely the 2 on top of the muck, or the like), then this ruling is almost certainly wrong. If the rules in that room allow this, then those rules should be changed. It would be one thing if the dealer had grabbed and mucked the cards against the player's wishes, and even then it's probably too bad, hand should be dead. It should be an extreme circumstance before the player can tell the floor what they had, and the floor can root through a much with up to 18 cards and pull out 2 of them as described.

If you were the victim, talk to the room manager David Clark about this the next chance you get. At least maybe you'll get a food comp or something if the ruling was wrong. And hopefully he'll educate his staff to not do this kind of thing in the future.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

What are you defining as the muck?

Did the player toss their cards into the pile of already discarded cards, making identification difficult, or did they toss them forward to the edge of the pile, making identification of the cards easy?

So the floor went fishing into the muck to find the two cards this lady said she had?

If that's the case, this has to be one of the worst rulings ever.

I doubt there was much fishing

Sounds like the cards didn't get fully entered into the muck pile

Just the edges

But I'm just going on what most likely actually happened

As if a poster says 'showdown' to mean river, then s/he says 'pulls them out of the muck' - to mean they were part way in but clearly identifiable

And the floor asking what the cards were [when they knew which cards they were anyway] would be a standard things to ask [I would have thought - as in I have seen it work this way before]

Depends what you mean by "In the muck". If the cards were touching the muck but clearly still identifiable, then IMO it's a live hand and P2 should be allowed to retrieve the hand. If the cards are buried in the muck and nobody knows which two cards they are, the hand should be dead and P1 wins.

bad ruling. the act of touching your cards to the dead pile is acknowledging a fold.

The hand is at showdown, folding is not an option. Just show or muck.

Rules about what happens to a hand when it touches the muck vary by room, but I think most well run rooms don't automatically kill a hand when it touches the muck if the player keeps control over his cards. I think most but certainly not all rooms rule a hand dead if the player releases his hand on top of the muck even if the cards are still identifiable and retrievable.

As always, house rules apply. I do believe in that best hand shown, wins (or chops).

However, this ruling is pretty far down the list in general acceptability IMO. The cards should be at a minimum readily identifiable in the muck pile before being pulled out. Even if the floor decides he can root through the muck searching for the cards, he should be asking both the rank and suit of the cards, which I doubt a player like this would remember. Hopefully, it wasn't a 4 card straight on the board and she said, "I had a 7 and some sort of face card with it."

hands in the muck should always be dead. it means the player let them go there .

a retrievable hand doesnt always have to be his cards just because he identified tow cards the dealer slid out. very easy and possible to have an accomplice help him. many here didnt play in the days of old and assume everything is peachy all the time. things go on in gambling and thats why they made those rules in the past. and they worked for the most part.

That's true, most of us didn't play with Wild Bill Hickok and things were definitely handled differently back then.

In the above example I don't think the cards should be retrievable.

We had this one at our local casino a couple of weeks ago.

Seat 5 bets the river. Seat 9 calls.

Seat 5 shows his hand. Seat 9 lifts his cards up in disgust, then mucks them (they don't touch the muck though)

Seat 10 tells seat 9 he had the best hand. Seat 9 quickly reaches forward and grabs his cards and tables the winner.

The floor is called. The floor eventually ships the pot to seat 5, specifically because seat 9 only grabbed his hand back based on something he was told by seat 10.

IMO the solution to a lot of these problems is that dealers should very quickly grab and muck hands that are thrown into the table face down. Then the cards are gone and the issues don't happen.

exactly carnivor,
its the dealers job to get the mucked(folded) hands dead.

in your case good ruling by the floorperson.

Explain the difference between folding and mucking please.

To me when a player releases his cards face down, he is folding.
The dealer then mucks them by sliding them into the muck pile.

This seems to be confusing two issues. First, are retrievable cards dead when the player indicates a willingness to forfeit his right to the hand (not going to get into the semantics of fold vs muck, but propelling the cards face down towards the center definitely indicates that you are conceding the hand)? if so, when are the cards dead? As soon as they hit the flet, as soon as they touch other cards (but are still identifiable), as soon as the dealer touches them, or as soon as they are not identifiable?

The second issue, which seems to be the logic used in your example, has come up before. It is the idea that another player violating OPTAH can kill anothe rplayers hand. Almost universally that is considered a bad idea.

The floor in your example seemed to be unable to take a hard stand on the primary issue, are the cards dead or not, and used faulty logic from the PTAH to bolster his decision. I don't mind the outcome, but I think his reasoning is flawed.

My interpretation:

Folding is something you (don't) do with your chips; you refuse to call a bet when the action is on you.

Mucking is something you do with your cards - you throw them away because you no longer need them.

I see it the same way. You can fold when facing a bet. Otherwise, you have the option to check or bet/raise. (Yes, I know that people also "check out" but that's not in the spirit of the game)

At showdown, you don't face any action. For example, in my opinion forward motion should not kill a hand when folding is not an option. That's at showdown or when not facing action on previous streets. OTOH, when folding is an option, forward motion might be considered a fold.

+1. One of the first procedures learned in dealer school.

Step 1. Muck the losers.
Steps 2-whatever: Everything else.

Yes things likely were different back when Lancey Howard and The Kid were playing poker! Today some places allow mucked retreivable cards to be made live at the descretion of the floor. I guess you just have to understand what the room rules are and deal with it. This pulling cards out of the muck in the OP seems unlikely to be common even in rooms that have such procedures. I , for one, have never seen this happen once.

We just had a thread less than 2 months ago where this was the 'wrong' ruling. Yes, we do have an OPTAH violation by Seat 10 but if the cards are retrievable in a room where 'cards are retrievable' then the pot should go to Seat 9 with the best hand. We all know what Seat 9's intention was ... to muck ... but the course of that action was changed. And whether a right or wrong caused the hand to be exposed it should be deemed live in the appropriate setting.

Technically we have a 'show one show all' spot here .. which makes the cards exposed and 'live' anyway.

We also had a thread where the Dealer (not Seat 10) saw the cards .. and winning hand .. and turned them over during an attempted muck. THAT should be a case where the pot goes to Seat 5 and not Seat 9 IMO.

We can always rule that Rule #1 applies, and it may apply here and I certainly don't want to take that option away from a Floor when considering a spot. But I don't want to lean on that option too often as then why have all the other rules to begin with ... so to speak. GL

First off, you can't 'fold' at showdown, so only a muck is applicable. There are players who say "I fold" at showdown before they release their hand, but it means nothing in reality until the cards are released and mucked ... in most rooms.

To me 'Folding' is a verbal declaration or physical (release of the cards) action when facing a bet. If you verbalize then your hand is dead regardless of it's possible retrieval after release. If you only release your cards, you technically haven't folded until the cards are in the muck pile unidentifiable.

So a (attempted) muck can be part of the folding process but it's more the releasing of your claim to the cards back to the deck which can be part of a fold or a 'surrender' at showdown. GL