I suppose that interpretation may be part of this. Player 1 is in Seat 2, Player 2 is in Seat 7, and he showed his hand to seat 8... I don't know for sure who his request was directed at, or if it was even specifically directed at someone as opposed to anyone who would answer.

So, the ruling was that it was a SOSA request and that does not make it a live hand. That if it was an IWTSTH request, it would be a live hand.

My question the next day to the floor was, since that means it's a different ruling if Player 1 says...

"Show one show all, what'd he show?"

and

"I want to see that hand!"

Then what about when he says...

"What'd you show?"

"What'd he show?"

"Joe, what'd you show?"

"John, what'd he show you?"

"Dealer, what'd he show?"

"I want to see!"

"He showed him, I want to see that hand!"

And so forth and so on... There's a lot of gray area there in terms of the wording of the request. This is one of a few reasons why I think any request from the winning player should keep the losing hand live. Another reason is that we got the best hand turned up with no undue outside assistance for the losing player, so we have an opportunity to give the pot to the best hand at showdown and we should do it. It's not like his neighbor or the dealer helped him read his hand, or someone not in the hand invoked SOSA.

Finally, the winning player asking to see the losing hand is extremely bad etiquette, and I think there should be some risk of losing the pot for that to discourage it.

FWIW in the room in which it happened, it seems like most of the "old school" (pre poker boom) employees would have ruled it a live hand, whereas most of the new school employees would have ruled it dead. Also, every single old school player thinks asking to see the hand is very bad etiquette, while some of the new school players are mixed or don't care.

I was shocked by the amount of disagreement between floors I consider to be very good, which is why I posted. I think this is probably a rule that needs some additional clarification.

The goal of Player 2 in mucking certainly wasn't to forfeit the pot. It's not like his wishes were to give Player 1 $700. The goal was to avoid having to show his hand, THUS not contesting the showdown. So by flipping his cards over, we already undid his wishes.

I don't think Player 2's wishes matter in this case at all. IMO Player 1 has the legal right to get those cards turned over, at the risk of losing the pot. Neither player's wishes/intent should matter.

This is what you originally wrote:

It seems pretty clear from this that Player 1 was speaking to Player 2. It can't be the dealer because the dealer would have no clue at that moment what was shown.

That is different from:

It may explain why you got two different answers on two different days.

The dealer is still to blame because he should have clarified Player 1's request by saying, "Are you asking to see Player 2's hand?"

I don't think it's clear who he was speaking to, but if *anything* is clear, it's that he was NOT speaking directly to player 2. Player 2 is the one who showed his hand. If player 1 were asking player 2 the question, he would say "what did you show", not "what did he show".

It also does not follow that he couldn't have been speaking to the dealer because the dealer doesn't know the answer. The dealer is the one who exposes the hand in a SOSA request (oftentimes, anyway), so he is a perfectly logical person to ask the question of, even if he doesn't know the answer at that moment in time.

IMO, it doesn't actually matter who he asked, because SOSA does not make a hand live, regardless of who asks. All players are entitled to that info once he shows another player, and (absent any language in the rule which outlines a difference in the request coming from the winning player as opposed to any other player, as exists for IWTSTH) SOSA shouldn't affect the outcome of the hand when it is enforced. IMO.

Player said "what did he show."

If that dealer mucks those cards without showing there is a good chance the player is going to scream about it because "What did he show?" is a request to see the cards. Now I know that some players are content to hear "combo draw" but that does not mean that "what did he show?" should not be considered a request to see the hand.

I think that just makes it clear who answered, not who he was speaking to. IMO he was just speaking to anyone who could reveal that information - which could be Player 2, his neighbor, or the dealer (by flipping the hand).

Ehhh, I think the dealer's main mistake here was not getting Player 2's hand into the muck immediately. Most experienced, good dealers get a mucked hand into the muck almost instantly, which may not have allowed time for the question to have been asked before the cards were indistinguishable.

I don't know if I've ever seen a dealer ask, "Are you asking to see his hand?" in my life. If a valid IWTSTH/SOSA request is made, and they know it's valid, they expose the hand. If they aren't sure if SOSA applies and that's what was asked for, they ask the player/neighbor if they showed the hand.

I agree. I've seen dealers pretend not to hear and scoop the cards into the muck in these spots before asking "What'd you say?" which I think is kind of old school and I like it even though it's against the letter of the law.

To me that falls into a category of allowing a whale to go north, allowing a whale to buy in for less than the minimum, waiting to see if anyone objects to a less than minimum buyin in a short handed game without a list, giving a whale longer on a seat lockup when he goes to the ATM or to play in the pits, not calling a misdeal when they deal in a player who's away and just mucking it really quickly and continuing as long as nobody objects, etc...

All of those things are technically against the rules, generally good for the game, and a lot of good and old school dealers will let some of them slide. But I get why a lot of people may hate it - it comes down to a dealer judging when to deviate from the rules, and that's potentially a very slippery slope.

"I had no intention of asking to see that hand... until he showed his neighbor, now I'm curious."

I think SOSA should be allowed here.

Personally I wouldn't risk it if a pot were headed my way.

If he looks me in the eye and says "What did he show?" I'm turning the hand up.

If I'm not sure who he's talking to, I'll sort it out before showing or mucking the cards.

I've ignored this thread for a few days. The title seemed like a basic IWTSTH question, and that did not interest me. But when it wasn't settled in 5-6 posts, i came in to find the most interesting ruling question I've seen on this board in years!

If I were the floor, I would have initially ruled IWTSTH, pot goes to best hand. BUT, if a Dinesh were at the table claiming his SOSA/Equal Info exemption...I would have been swayed to reverse myself, and let P1 keep the pot.

I would expect most floors to initially mistake this for IWTSTH, because we tend to see what we EXPECT to see. Sadly, I would expect very few floors to allow themselves to be talked out of that position.

Other thoughts:

--Dealers, don't push the pot before you've mucked all other hands! This needed to be said, imo. It really compounded an already-big mess.

--If you wrote, "I don't know if I've ever seen a dealer ask, 'Are you asking to see his hand?' in my life," then you haven't seen me deal. When the winner asks, "What did he show?", my reply is, "are you asking ME? Or THEM?" My tone makes it clear that this is a very important distinction...and almost every time, the winner will wave me off. Maybe he finds IWTSTH impolite, or knows he risks losing the pot; either way, he's happy to let it go.

I Slow Ponied that one!

I agree that his curiosity probably took hold when the cards were shown to another player. My take though is that it doesn't matter what motivated the player to ask to see a called hand. He has the right to see it whether it was shown or not under the IWTSTH rule. So SOSA doesn't apply, as the fact that the cards were shown isn't a required or necessary factor that gives the player the right to see the cards in this situation

The act of mucking is precisely how a player indicates he is forfeiting his claim to the pot. Player 2 had a choice between tabling his hand and competing for the pot, or mucking his hand and forfeiting his claim to the pot. He chose to forfeit his claim. Another player has no standing to override that outcome, IMO by taking an action counter to what the player playing the hand did. A third party player should no more be able to reach over and alter the course of a hand by tabling someone else's mucked hand than he could by reaching over and tossing in calling chips because everyone knows player 2 should call instead of fold.

Just to be clear, this response grew from another poster suggesting that if a neighbor player (not the winning player) just randomly reached over and tabled a hand that was mucked by a player, before the dealer took it, without anybody saying anything, that it should be live. Not the initial OP discussion about SOSA/IWTSTH.

It says the player has to “show” his hand faceup on the table. Nothing in there says that a player has to physically table the cards himself.

It says the player must show his cards. The subject of the sentence is the player. Not any player, but the player whose cards they are. And he must take an action...show is the verb. But it need not get that nitty. A player decides to muck his cards. He tosses them forward, face down. There is nothing in that rule statement that would indicate that a third party player can simply reach over and table those cards, on his own volition, thereby countering the action taken by the player whose hand it is and changing who wins the pot.

And I think this is consistent with the general principle of the IWTSTH rule, where only when the request is by the player still with a stake in the hand (the winning player) does the hand become live. If a third party player asks, the hand remains dead. This prevents a player with no stake in the outcome to alter the outcome that results from the actions of the players in the hand.

To allow a third party player to overturn the result of a hand by physically intervening in a hand makes no sense at all, and is counter to the principle involved. Plus, it would create this crazy loophole:

River goes check..check.
Player 1 shows three of a kind. Player 2 tosses his cards face down towards dealer.
Player 3 (no longer in hand) says to dealer "IWTSTH"
Dealer tables hand, and it is a straight.
Dealer says hand is dead, so player 1 still gets pot.

But imagine now that instead of asking the dealer to turn over the hand, Player 3 just reaches over and turns it over himself. He knows that he has the right to see the hand, but doesn't wait for the dealer to do it. Does it make sense that in that case, the hand would be live? And that the rules of poker were written to make that distinction? I don't think so. I believe the principle is clear. If you are in the hand, the hand is live. If not, it is dead. It doesn't matter if the dealer turns the cards over or a random player does.

All JMHO of course.

But he didn't ask "what did he have?", he asked "what did he show?".

There is a big difference to me, at least in etiquette. Personally I never invoke IWTSTH. But I do sometimes invoke SOSA.

I do agree I wouldn't risk SOSA when I was the apparent winner of the pot, but I also don't think this guy should be penalized for it.

I agree with you that from an etiquette perspective the difference is huge. I am suggesting though that from a "legal" perspective irt whether the hand should be live or not, that it doesn't matter because every player has the right to see the hand regardless of whether it was shown to another player or not.

I think that also prevents trying to rule live or dead based upon how the request is worded. For example, a player may only say "IWTSTH" aloud, while the rest of his thought ..."because he showed it to player X" goes unsaid.

If your cards are face-up on the table in front of you, you are showing them. No matter if you flipped them up or somebody else helped you with that.

If somebody punched you in the face, you are showing a black eye. Didn’t take any involvement from you other than allowing for the other guy to hit you.

That analogy doesn't hold at all. And you changed the meaning of the action by saying that another person "helped" him. We are not talking about a case where a player wants to table his hand but can't because his hands shake, so someone helps him. We are talking about a player who chose to muck his cards, face down, and another player, without permission or standing in the hand, overriding that decision by tabling the cards anyway. And you think that that override should take precedence over the active players action. I disagree.

Here is RROP about betting or calling:

"A player who bets or calls by releasing chips into the pot is bound by that action and must make the amount of the wager correct."

Now, you aren't suggesting that if another player reaches over and grabs a bunch of your chips and releases them into the pot that you are bound to that bet because your chips were released into the pot, are you? Of course it matters who did the releasing, just as it matters who did the tabling.

I'll bite. At showdown, using your definition, how would a player who intended to show his hand do so if another player already tabled it somehow? How does he fulfill the requirement that he must show all cards face-up? Does he untable and then retable his hand? Does he point at the tabled cards?

You were the first to conflate the verb "to show" (which can reasonably be read to mean "to demonstrate") with "to table" (which RRoP has no concept of):

It does not, in fact, specifically state that.

Yes, I shortened the term show cards face up on the felt in my discussion, as that is in fact the definition of tabled. So while RROP doesn't just say show, it says show face up on the felt (tabled in poker terms). But it specifically says the player must do it. Are you making the case that a third party player can table a hand that the player mucked and have that be live to alter the result of the hand? My position is that one player can no more officially table the hand of another player than he can bet the chips of another player. My main point is that the rule states that the player whose hand it is must take the action. It's my opinion that nowhere in RROP does it suggest that third party players can actually physically play another players cards without their permission and have any bearing on the outcome of the hand.

Going back to my example about IWTSTH and a third party player turning the cards over himself, rather than the dealer, do you believe one case is live and the other case dead? Throughout RROP is the underlying principle that a player plays his own hand. So it doesn't have to say specifically that if another player tosses your chips in the pot, that it doesnt override your check. And we are talking about a case when the player in the hand took a specific action, and a third party player overrode that action. I think that is crazy at face value. And In for don't believe RROP in any way authorizes that to happen.

So strip away all the smaller points, the question really is:
Can a players actions on his own hand be overridden or superseded by a different action by a third party player, and that third party action have standing?

I believe the answer is no. Apparently some believe the answer is yes.

I am not by any means. That is a very strange reading of my post. I am making the argument that using your unsubstantiated and perhaps dissenting interpretation of word as an argument against its other interpretations and as the entire basis for the rest of your arguments is not meaningful.

I don't see an answer to my question.

Sorry, In for didn't think it was a question that you were really seeking an answer to, as it did not seem like there was any real doubt as to what had to happen. The key point about whether a player has tabled his cards is the issue of whether THE PLAYER has tabled his cards. So obviously, if player X (not in the hand) reaches over and exposes Player Ys cards, then player Y has not, himself, tabled his cards. So if he chooses to, he can simply leave them exposed on the felt. But if he wanted too, IMO, he could also quickly turn them back over and muck them. Player X cannot take away Player Ys options to act. A dealer should no more read and announce a hand from cards exposed by another player than he would announce a bet tossed in by another player.

An example. Player Y doesn't realize he has a straight, and doesn't want Players at the table to see what he called with (thinking it was a weaker hand). Before Player Y can do anything, Player X reaches over and exposes Player Ys cards. Before anyone says anything about the content of his hand, Player Y says "WTF" to Player.X, immediately turns his cards face down again and tosses them in the muck. Another player then says "hey, he had a straight".

IMO, Player Y never tabled his hand as required for him to make a claim on the pot. In fact, he made it clear by his actions that he was NOT competing for the pot, and instead actively forfeited his claim. Therefore his hand is dead, and he loses the pot. Others believe that the actual player who owns the hand is not required to take an affirmative action to claim the pot, that any random player can reach over and make a claim for the pot on behalf of player Y, whether Player Y wants him to or not. And specifically in the example earlier where one player mucked first and another player then exposed the hand, they believe that a random player can actually undo a decision by a player to forfeit the pot. IMO that's crazy.

So grammatically speaking, yes, there is a difference between the idea that "a player must expose HIS cards on the felt" (ie HE must do it) and "a players cards must be exposed face up on the felt (no requirement that the player makes the action). But the larger principle is that when players not still involved in the hand ask to see a hand, that hand is dead. If they are still involved, they are live. So why would they be considered live if instead of asking the dealer to expose them, they just reach over and expose them themselves?

My lord, let's try this again.

RRoP suggests a showdown requirement that: "A player must show all cards in the hand face-up on the table to win any part of the pot."

Your argument to madlex is that the verb "to show" in that passage means exactly "to table" by the player himself, not "to have on display" and not "to table" by any other player.

Given the above, if a player does want to show (table) his hand but is preempted by another player somehow showing (tabling) the hand, how would he go about fulfilling the above showdown requirement by your definition?

Forget about the scenario where the player intends to muck. That is not the question.

I would say by holing onto the cards, face up on the table, before the pot has been awarded.

And that's exactly what happened, with 100% of the floors I asked tonight.