What would you do?

You have JJ. You get it in on a flop of JT5dd. Turn Q. River 8. Not so confidently, you flip your hand over. Villain looks at it, nods and mucks. Finally! After being card dead all night and having your aces cracked by top set in a 3 bet pot, something goes your way. The dealer then counts your stack, announces the total to villain who proceeds to count out chips.

Suddenly villain stops, says "wait a minute", flips over her mucked hand and shows A9dd.

The best hands win the pot here. It sounds like the dealer didn't properly muck the hand if villain was able to retrieve it. They're not dead as long as they're identifiable and retrievable, depending on room rules.

I'm totally okay with giving villain the pot as well, since he did have the best hand after all. Taking pots from winning hands is not in the best interest of the game of poker in the long run.

This is all assuming that there is no question that the cards villain retrieved were truly his.

First reply post hits pretty much the whole answer.

Did the villain's cards ever hit the muck? Or did he just shake his head and toss his cards forward, face down?

Because when you say he "mucked his cards" it has a very specific meaning - that his cards were actually in the muck. If they weren't then plenty of rooms will rule that his hand is still live. Which is what it sounds like happened in your example.

All the same, bad job by the dealer not putting the cards in the muck right away.

Best answer and nothing more really to say.

This needs to be said also.

This must happen a lot, because there is a new thread posted on some variation of this situation quite often. However I have never seen it happen even once cause most dealers insta muck tossed face down cards very quickly. IDK why the V could still turn over her hand if it had really been "mucked" totally. A little more info from the OP could help. In the end best hand wins, cards speak and so on.

What does that mean? What physically happened here?

If it means she just tossed her cards 5 inches forward face down being a million miles away from the muck, by all means she has the pot. If the cards were somewhat in the muck (not just touching at the corner) to the point that I can't say for sure those were actually her cards I wouldn't concede this pot.

She pushed her cards face down across the line. It must have been at least 30 seconds before she flipped them over. I'm not trying to angle, but what's fair is fair. I mucked my hand before and had to surrender a pot. Sure, my cards were actually in the middle of the table and not just over the line, but there are some rooms where it doesn't matter. Sure, I could've called the floor over to try to retrieve my hand but I just took the L, said good night and went home. A mucked hand is a dead hand. The way I see it that rule should be consistent and universal. The fact that it isn't allows bs like this to happen. Is it really fair that I need to feel like I lost 2x what I lost and get unintentionally slow-rolled by a 50 year old nit who doesn't give action, doesn't smile, doesn't talk for hours and mucked her hand just for the good of the game? And yes WHO it is matters if we're going to talk about right and wrong and who "deserves" to win the pot.

I remember this old clip. Sure it was a tournament and not cash but shouldn't change things.

Lose the entitlement, seriously.

First of all when you mucked and you didn't call floor, why didn't you? Second, even though the dealer should have done it already, ask a hand that is still in front of the player to be mucked. I expect anything to be possible when I am not the only player to have live cards in front of him.

I believe everything you say, but the reality is that:
(1) there is no universal set of rules
(2) if there were, they would probably back up the ruling made in the majority of rooms, which is that the hand is live until it is unidentifiable and irretrievably in the muck

The dealer should have mucked his hand as soon as it was thrown away, and before pushing you the pot. That is how the procedure is written, and it is written that way for a good reason. Nonetheless, the hand was still identifiable, and it was tabled, so it is the winner.

In your example, you may well have been able to grab your cards and table them. If you had, a floor might have been summoned to make a ruling, and you might have won. You didn't, so that is that.

In the video, same thing. She grabs her cards back (notice that the dealer gives them to her), she looks at them again, but she doesn't table them and puts them back face down, and the dealer then mucks them. If she had tabled them, likely a floor would have had to make a ruling, which may well have gone her way. (Note that televised poker sometimes has some strange rulesets, so who knows what might have been done.)

I get that you feel cheated, and the dealer's poor procedure definitely cost you the pot, but the ruling is the correct one in IMO the majority of rooms. The rule you seem to want to exist usually doesn't, and is certainly not universal.

When I'm dealing I'm trying to do everything possible (within reason) to be as efficient as possible and to deal as many hands as possible in my down. The house wants it that way because more hands means more rake. I want it that way because more hands equals more chances to get a tip. And the players want it that way because they like speedy play and more hands. Everybody wins.

However, there are times when you need to stop what you're doing and take care of what's most important, even if it costs you a few seconds.

Example 1: 1-2 NL and there's a raise to $7 preflop. 5 callers, and 3 of them call with 2 red birds. I go around making change and realize I don't have enough whites for the players who called in seats 3 & 4. I'm likely to put out a flop and tell the two players, "You each have $3 change coming." They know I didn't forget about them and I put the flop out a few seconds faster. Now I can make change while the players are working out their bets on the flop. Everybody wins.

Example 2: I deal out the river, 2 players are left in the hand after the betting, and I'm counting out the stub to make sure there are 52 cards in the deck. I'm up to "39" in my head when the first player tables 2 pair and the second player throws his cards forward, face down. If I leave the cards where they are and just keep counting to 52, I'll probably save a few seconds and deal the next hand sooner. If I go to grab the face down cards and muck them, I might lose my count and have to start over, counting from 1 to 52, which will delay the next hand by an extra 20 or 30 seconds.

I'm an experienced dealer and I realize that the priority is to muck those cards. If the next hand is delayed, so be it. But there are a hundred different things that the dealer might have been doing or thinking about that would prevent them from putting their priorities in order.

There's no doubt about it - the dealer screwed up. But it's your money, and there's nothing at all wrong with getting the dealer's attention and asking them to "please put that hand in the muck."

Watch this video again ....

notice something .... SHE NEVER TABLED HER CARDS. She picked them back up looked at them and then throws them back down facedown......

not the same situation as yours.....

In 2018 .. In most rooms .. A holding is not 'mucked' until it's 'safely' un-retrievable in the muck pile. So when 'another' OP starts off by saying that the hand was mucked we know that he was on the short end. Most casino Dealers, almost to a fault, will muck a released face down or 'losing' holding quickly to avoid/eliminate these spots but they do creep up ... mostly in smaller rooms/clubs/home games.

As far as the video .. the girl could've tabled her cards and called in the Floor and/or tried to claim the pot as hers. But again, she releases her cards face down to the Dealer. I think Tony knew she screwed up twice in a matter of seconds and really didn't know how to comment. GL

Understand this is true when we are talking about showdown. Had the player been facing a bet and threw the cards in that should be ruled a dead hand even if the cards are identifiable.

I think you'd struggle to find a Floor to rule differently in those two spots (in the Midwest) .. and I don't think that the rules really address it as separate spots. I don't disagree with you that it 'should' be a dead/folded hand, but it's not mucked yet! The opportunity for angling, OOT action and pre-exposed cards certainly comes into play if we aren't at showdown as of yet. GL

Why don’t you want for the best hand to win? Is it just because you don’t like losing?

Bolt, in example 2 why not drop the stub and count it the next hand?

You really should make change for all the players first and make the pot right.

Also, how do you get 39 cards in the stub if you're dealing in more than 2 players?

Because I've mucked the winning hand before and had to forfeit the pot. To automatically concede cause it's the "right thing to do" every time a situation like this arises, which it will, is unfair to me.

If you're dealing without a shuffler the procedure is to count the stub on your first hand.

I agree that this is the proper procedure by the book. Players generally don't complain if they believe you're not going to forget about them.


If it's a 9 handed game that goes to showdown I'll start my count at "27" and make my way to 52.

You didn't have to do anything, you decided for some reason that your winning hand should not get the pot. That is your choice, but you can't expect someone else for forfeit his pot just because you did. You might have won that pot.

The hand is dead when the house rules say it's dead, not before. (Usually when it's mixed into the muck pile.)
This has nothing to do with doing "the right thing" . If you have failed to table your own winning hand before it was killed, that's your error; and doesn't make following the rules on this occasion unfair to you.

[QUOTE=LordRiverRat;53572659]She pushed her cards face down across the line. It must have been at least 30 seconds before she flipped them over. I'm not trying to angle, but what's fair is fair. I mucked my hand before and had to surrender a pot. Sure, my cards were actually in the middle of the table and not just over the line, but there are some rooms where it doesn't matter. Sure, I could've called the floor over to try to retrieve my hand but I just took the L, said good night and went home. A mucked hand is a dead hand. The way I see it that rule should be consistent and universal. The fact that it isn't allows bs like this to happen. Is it really fair that I need to feel like I lost 2x what I lost and get unintentionally slow-rolled by a 50 year old nit who doesn't give action, doesn't smile, doesn't talk for hours and mucked her hand just for the good of the game? And yes WHO it is matters if we're going to talk about right and wrong and who "deserves" to win the pot.

I agree a mucked hand is a mucked hand... cept the hand was never mucked in the op... Only the dealer can muck a hand.