Played a bit at a LA, the state not city, casino this weekend, and had a situation that was a first for me.

There was an all in on the turn, player 1 had a flush and player 2 called. I wasn't involved and didn't pay that close attention, but player 2 turned over pocket Jacks. after river, the dealer pulls the jacks into the muck and starts to slide the pot to player 1. Player 2 then starts protesting as the river was another heart, player 1's flush was in hearts, and he says he had the J of hearts, which would have been a higher flush. The dealer picks up the stub digs through the muck and throws out two jacks saying these are your cards and neither was a heart. One other guy at the table, guy sitting right next to him says he saw a heart. The dealer is adamant no heart, floor is called. The dealer didn't just pull two cards from the bottom he dug into the stub and found two non-heart Jacks.

When the floor came over they looked and found the J of hearts was in the stub as well. The dealer told him about one player saying he saw a heart, and the floor says if another player can confirm he can award him the pot. That seemed a bit arbitrary to me, thinking back I am not sure he said that but that was the impression I had, that if someone else could confirm a heart. No one else did,

So the floor goes and calls for them to go to the camera. We sat there a good 5 to 10 minutes waiting and the game was halted until he came back. That was a first for me, halting the game for that long and going to a camera. When the floor came back he said the camera was inconclusive. So player 1 got the pot.

I thought player 2 was going to get thrown out, He initially took it pretty well, obviously wasn't happy, Don't know if he had it but I felt like he thought he did, he seemed pretty confident when they came back from looking at camera he would get the pot. After the floor walks away the dealer says to him again, I am 100% sure those were your cards and this set the guy off. He told the dealer to stop F***ing lying and this got a response form the dealer about cursing, and guy came back again about Fing lying again and finally the dealer let it go. Guy didn't say another word about it after that.

[to mod] I meant to put this here and accidentally put it in general poker discussion, sorry. this is a copy of that post, the other can be removed.

Not sure if there's a question here or just a story, so I'll give mine.

Couple years ago in a tournament, a shorty goes all in, I have him KJs vs J9o. He hits a 9 on flop, but I go runner-runner flush.

Dealer starts pushing the pot to him, I stop him, "flush no good?" Dealer asks if any other player agreed. No one could be conclusive, so floor called.

Floor stops the tournament (I'd guess about 6 tables). He did go to the cameras. Fortunately for me, it was conclusive and I was awarded the pot.

What surprised me is the speed with which it was handled. I was thinking something like 15-20 minutes. Quick bathroom run, by the time I got back, it was resolved and the next hand was being dealt.

Sounds like the jacks were shown/tabled after the turn AI, so they were on the table between that time, until they were mucked by the dealer. Kind of wild that the camera would come back "inconclusive". Dealer super out of line on multiple occasions here: digging through the stub and/or muck without a supervisor present, and possibly not keeping them separated, also the comment to the player after the ruling.

Dealer made a bad situation worse. If I was at the table I would have been like “bro what are you doing…” lmao

Yeah the cameras are pointed at every table but the video quality isn’t amazing. If they can’t determine something with 100% confidence they will default to saying it was inconclusive.

All places at this point should have tablets for the floors to quickly check video on demand right at the table and even show players as needed in situations like this. Technology is easy and readily available. No reason to do he said vs he said about what happened.

Maybe "should" but definitely not "do". The fact that video is "inconclusive" even though the cards were tabled for a decent amount of time probably means that the camera setup is pretty old or there wasn't even a camera in use.

It's not like the casino has a financial interest in rulings between players. There's not really an incentive to modernize that part of the infrastructure.

Yeah, why have cameras if they don't help here?

The cameras aren’t there for stuff like this. It’s there for security to keep an eye on things.

I'd be pretty upset about the cameras, especially in a casino, not being able to provide conclusive evidence. Atrocious.

1. Since I live in LA and play in most of the "significant" rooms. Will you share specific room?

2. The dealer not pulling the two cards off the bottom (or top) is actually a very good thing because a properly mucked hand won't be the top or bottom cards, but (of course this isn't really a mucked hand it is a killed "losing" hand

2.a. Dealer should NEVER be digging through the muck. It that must be done should always be the floor. and..

2.b. If correctly mucked such that the the two cards are not clearly identifiable, then how could the dealer actually identify and retrieve

2.c. So dealer gets a pat on the back for good mucking procedure followed by a soft KITN for digging in the muck and claiming he could identify the specifc 2 J's with a 3rd also in the muck

3. Floor should not have asked or based ruling on what any of the players say. Just because a player in not in the hand doesn't mean he is neutral. I am not saying any player lied, but we do know that some % of players might lie if they hated a player or wanted the chips to go to a particular player. We don't vote to see who wins.

4. The game should also not have been held up. The pot should have been "sequestered" while the game proceeds. Not perfect because that money is not in play for now and one of the players either must rebuy (and maybe be over the max buyin later, though since most/all LA rooms use match stack not really an issue in this case) or sit out hands waiting on ruling. I have seen camera checks take much longer than 5 or 10 minuets

5. Another reason to not hold up the game for the ruling is simply there is no reason to put that time pressue on the ruling. While it should be quite easy to ID the two car suits, there could be other situations that take time.

6. I am surprised the camera could not identify the suits of the tabled jacks. I certainly hope both the jD and jH were among the 3 in the muck. I know the cameras are not perfect but in this day they should be good enough to identify the suit of cards laying on the table for multiple seconds.

With all of the above, assuming the two jacks the dealer pulled from muck were adjacent and the jH was found all alone it is likely P2 was in error (or lying but I will not assume that, just as I don't assume a player is telling the truth I don't assume they are lying usually).

It is also possible the floor (or security) actually did ID the suits but the floor was trying to let P2 save some face and say it was inconclusive. Had the floor said it was conclusive and P2 was in error (or worse implied P2 was lying) I suspect P2 reaction would have been even worse.

WOW not THAT is NOT going to happen. The casino absolutely does not want it to be "easy" to check video. One obvious reason is now every hand would be up for instant replay review. But more importantly the casino treats the videos as very sensitive. Almost never (I have never heard of none) does a patron get to see any camera video. Seeing it could allow patron to identify system weakness. The exception to this would be when the video is used as evidence in a court proceding and it was allowed out.

Maybe VERY VERY RARELY could a patron see a (probably cropped) still shot pulled from the video but even this is rare.

With a pad table side, control of the images is truly lost. But also I could see a player demanding to see video and then actually or attempting to yank the pad from the floor. Or worse somehow assault the floor to get ahold of it.

tldr: a pad with security video access table side is a VERY VERY bad idea

Honestly a camera that can't id the suits of cards laid on the table (assuming the suits were actually identifiable and not blocked by the other card) is going to be able to keep an eye on the things the casino cares about?

As I said above, the camera may have been very conclusive but the floor was trying to give P2 a way to save face or avoid confronting him with floor having to say P2 was wrong. Given how P2 reacted imaging is floor flat out said he was wrong or worse implied P2 was lying.

That makes sense but I find it hard to believe this is how they would handle it. This leaves the door open for the dealer having been wrong and inattentive. Usually a good floor will back up their dealer if they are right, so I would hope the floor wouldn’t lie to save face while putting his dealer in a bad spot.

Kind of what I thought as well. I remember looking over, player 2 was in seat 5 and I was two seats over. I remember seeing the two jacks laid out, the top of both cards were spread out, but from my vantage point I didn't notice the suits but I really didn't do more than glance over. I felt sure that the camera would be able to see the suit, if it couldn't then they are pretty useless for that type of thing.

I guess it doesn't matter it was NOLA, and I don't know if the two cards were adjacent or not. As you mentioned the dealer did not just pull them under he pushed them into the other cards, so they probably were not adjacent. I distinctly remember him picking up the cards and looking through them , but whether they were adjacent I don't know. Also at this point, the only cards that were not in the muck were player 1s and the board, so not surprising all jacks were in the muck.

1) Only one Player was willing to confirm the Jh in the JJ hand. AND NO ONE saw whether or not the Jh was in the flush hand? Really, double Really! Certainly the Dealer could've/should've been more addiment about the Jh being in the other holding, eh?

2) OP describes that play was stopped when the pot was being pushed. So the Board AND other Player's holding were also turned over and in the muck? I'm just asking what was what in that spot .. There are about 20 different ways that a Dealer handles showdown as far as mucking losers and 'killing' the winner and Board .. and it can change based on which seats were involved at the end.

Looks like the spot was handled and just didn't go JJ's way. We could go thru all the 'protect your hand' yata-yata stuff, but it's just unfortunate.

Am I surprised at the camera issue? Not really, but also in today world and with the technology that's available at very reasonable cost you'd think it would be better.

Thanks for the post .. but we could use even more detail if it's available. You've already stated that you weren't giving it your full attention. Doesn't change anything now, but would just make more sense at the flow. GL

"Inconclusive" may not mean what it sounds like in plain language. It could be policy that the ruling on the floor stands unless the camera has conclusive evidence to overturn. So if it were plain as day that there was no Jh in the hand, they're going to say that the result is inconclusive.

All of this is why I never ever give up my cards until the pot is pushed to me. I flip my cards over, keeping them protected with my hand until the pot is pushed. Such an easy thing to do, and avoids so many situations.

1) No one else was willing to speak up and I honestly did not notice.

2) From my recollection, he pulled in player 2's cards, as he was directly in front of the dealer, player 2 was in the 9 seat right next to him. From what I remember player 1's card were still in front of him. He was pushing the pot in that direction and reaching for his cards, but player 2 stopped him.

I have never been super impressed with NOLA but I will say I have also never had a significant ruling issue there. The staff are not "bad" and generally the dealers follow pretty good procedures. There are some small issues I have seen wrt regs and the room. But nothing horrible.

But your last comment again confuses me. If P1 had cards, the muck and the stub should not have been mixed yet.

Used to be 100% standard to mix the stub and muck as soon as the river was dealt.

I can't really remember if he had mixed them together at that point or not. It seems like there was just one pile of cards, but not sure to be honest.

This is a bit of a curveball .. If P1's cards were still in front of him while the pot was being pushed .. AND that's when P2 tried to claim the pot, then this gets a lot more confusing as to why there's confusion!!

We've been concentrating on what cards were in the muck already .. maybe, maybe not mixed with stub/Board .. and this would suggest a much more straight forward solution.

Not to put more pressure on OP since he was late to the part as far as observations, but we also could've had the Dealer continue to mix cards together during the discussion.

Regardless of what actually happened, this is a good spot to talk through as there's plenty of scenarios that are all slightly different from one another that could affect potential rulings. GL

I don't see why that would make it more confusing. It was clear P1 still had two hearts in his hand for a flush, nobody questioned that. The question was if Player 2 had the J., as there were 4 hearts on the board. P2's cards were now in the muck.

[edit] I see the confusion, the post you quoted said P2 was in the 9 seat that should have read P1.

Sorry .. in the original OP I got messed up with the dialog 'he said he had the Jack of Hearts' being P1, not just what P2 was spewing to get the pot stopped and pushed his way.

I guess in review P1 really didn't have much to say in the whole matter? GL