5/T NL

Heads up pot on the river, the board is T97 9 6. A flush draw missed. There's about $700 in the pot and the river goes check, check.

Player 1, who is first to show by rule, tables T6. Player 2 lifts his cards off the table and shows them to his neighbor and tosses them forward face down to muck his hand. They are out of his reach, but clearly distinguishable and I'm not 100% sure if they are touching the muck at all.

Player 1 says, "What did he show?"

Player 2 says, "Combo draw."

The dealer pushes the pot to Player 1, picks the cards up, and flips them over. Q8 suited. He then flips them back over and tosses them in the muck - this process takes about 2-3 seconds tops.

The pot is now in front of Player 1, the entire board and Player 1's hand are flipped face down and everyone realizes it was a straight.

Player 2 says it should be his pot because the hand was tabled, and Player 1 is the one who asked to see. Player 1 says it should be his pot because Player 2 mucked his hand. The floor is called.

Who gets the pot?

IDK what's going to happen but this is one of those rare opportunities to start laughing my ass off.

Player 2


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Player 1. The hand is not live if it is displayed because of a SOSA request, even if the request comes from the player who won the hand.

But this specific nuance is not explicitly covered in RROP, so I can imagine 10 floors ruling 10 different ways

Or it is live because it was a IWTSTH and not a SOSA request.

It’s at showdown, right? If player two reached forward and grabbed his hand and tabled it himself we would definitely be giving the pot to player 2. While I know he did not table his hand himself, why does that change that the best hand should win?


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So...
River, you bet, opponent calls.

You show down.
Opponent looks at his hand and tosses it forward, face down.

His neighbor reaches over and turns it, the winning hand, face up.

You lose the pot.

You okay with that?

What if it were the dealer, who did it without anybody asking?

It was SOSA, at least in this case. If dealer doesn't agree it is SOSA, he shouldn't show the hand. Call the floor if necessary. Then the floor can tell him it's not SOSA, and (if room rules permit) tell him he can IWTSTH but it will be live in that case, then go from there.
Because we have rules, and the rules say there are exceptions to "best hand wins". SOSA is one. Another is if literally any other player says IWTSTH and dealer shows for that reason. The hand is not live in both these cases. It is live in just about every other case (that I can think of now).

I'm not sure what "OK with it" means, but that is what the rules say. If the hand is tabled, and it's not one of a few limited exceptions, the hand is live.

Now, the neighbor might have some explaining to do, and may or may not be sanctioned as a result of what he did, but that won't affect awarding this pot.

I’ve never heard of SOSA excepting the best hand winning at showdown. Not saying it’s not a thing, but it hasn’t been at the three places I’ve been a floor.


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Yes in both cases. Best hand wins AT SHOWDOWN.



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What if someone else requests SOSA? Is it live then? If so, it's live if it's SOSA, but not live if it's IWTSTH? That makes no sense.

As said in the rule, "players are entitled to receive equal access to information about the contents of another player's hand." If the only way the winning player can get access to that information is to lose the pot, that is not really a fair interpretation of the rules IMO.

As I said in my first post above, though, RRoP is not exactly clear about this nuance, so I would expect to see many different interpretations when making a ruling. As the winning player, I would avoid making a SOSA request for exactly this reason (among others). Of course, as you're suggesting the rules be interpreted, he cannot protect himself from anyone else making a SOSA request and making his opponent's hand live.

Seems to me that player 2's hand was not tabled at showdown. The pot had already been awarded, so it was clearly after showdown.

That's crazy talk. Neither case should be a live hand. Neither should the hand in the OP.

Why? I haven’t had anyone explain to me why.


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I just pointed out that the hand wasn't tabled until after showdown was over.

And I pointed out that it makes no sense for a SOSA hand to be live and an IWTSTH request to not be live, since SOSA is a strict subset of, and could instead be made as, an IWTSTH request, but the reverse is not true.

Player 2 wins in my cardroom. If the winning player requests to see a hand at showdown, the hand remains live. A losing player can ask to see the hand too (provided they have live cards) but then the hand is mucked first before being tabled.

Dealer shouldn't be pushing the pot until the cards were mucked/dealt with anyway.

This is what it comes down to anyways. Dealer made a procedural error.

Made a mistake on the first reading of this. The winner of the hand didn't request the dealer to show the cards. He didn't even request SOSA, let alone IWTSTH. Pot goes to the original winner. Dealer gets training on not showing cards except when specifically asked.

but it wasn't the dealer or neighbor.
you demand to see someone's cards when you're already winning the hand and you run the risk of being beat.

If this was asked of the dealer, he should turn up the hand and push to pot to the best hand.

If the question was directed to the neighbor who got the free peek, dealer should muck the hand.

From RROP:

THE SHOWDOWN
1. To win any part of a pot, a player must show all of his cards faceup on the table, whether they were used in the final hand played or not.

It specifically states that the player must table HIS cards. A third party can't undo a muck by a player who mucked his hand by turning another players cards over. The rule states it as an active action by the player...A player must show his cards. Not a passive action that can be done by anyone, ie the cards must be shown...

So someone else grabbing a guy’s hand and tabling it makes it dead? I don’t think we want to go there.


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I'd like to suggest a different take on the relationship between IWTSTH and SOSA. Under Showdown, RROP states that any player dealt into the hand can request to see any called hand. And it states that if the winning player is the one who asks, then the cards are live. IMO, the SOSA rule no longer is in effect when dealing with called hands at showdown, because any player has the right to see the hand whether it was shown to anyone or not. The SOSA rule is not adding any right to see a called hand that doesn't already exist.

So SOSA is designed for those cases prior to showdown, where if cards are shown to one player, everyone (who normally is NOT entitled to see them) has the right to see them. But once a hand is a called hand, everyone has a right to see them anyway, under IWTSTH, and the rule is clear that if the winning player asks, then it is a live hand.

No. Just like if someone rips your cards out of your hands and throws them on the floor, it doesn't kill your hand. But since a player has to table his own hand, another player can't do it for him. And certainly he can't undo a muck against a players wishes. So if a player decides to kill his hand by mucking it, another player doesn't have the ability to bring it back to life unilaterally by reaching over and turning the cards up.