I have never dealt or knowingly played at a casino that had a magical muck rule (cards that touch the muck are completely and irretrievably dead even if they can be identified).

My odd question is, when does the first discarded hand become magically mucked (since there is no muck yet)?

If the first player to act tosses his hand forward and then changes his mind, can he pull them back and call/raise before there is any other action?

This feels like a rhetorical question, but no. Just because a room has a terrible magic muck rule doesn't mean that all other rules cease to exist. If you toss your hand forward facing a bet, then it is dead, regardless of whether there is a muck or whether it touches the muck.

Magic muck usually comes into play at showdown anyway, for precisely this reason. Though there are obviously times it may come into play before that too.

No, he can't. You're confusing two different things. A fold, and a muck.

There are a few other Threads you could search for on this site about this subject as well. You've touched on a couple of technical parts of the game where both 'fold' and 'muck/mucked' are sometimes used in the same context when they are not exactly the same thing.

1) Prior to Showdown Players 'fold' their hands. This action signals a surrender of any rites to the pot. Dealers then creates a Muck Pile where all the folded cards are stored. In most rooms (should be all rooms) once a Player releases their holding to the Dealer then the Player can not get them back if the hand is not complete.

2) Once the cards are in the Muck Pile they are considered 'Mucked'. Dealers are usually instructed to mix the cards together in a fashion so they are no longer identifiable as being any specific Player's holding .. thus they are 'Fully Mucked'

3) Lots of poker circles call the 'act' of folding as a 'Muck', but IMO only a Player at Showdown can 'Muck' their hand.

So Folds and Mucks are basically the same action, it's just a matter of when they occur in the context of the game.

4) In years gone by there were some policies in place that would kill any card that made contact with the Muck Pile. This eliminated any opportunity for a Player to get their cards back even if they were identifiable. It also was a 'signal' to the camera that these cards had no right to the pot. This was a byproduct of the IWTSTH (I want to see that hand) rule where any Player at the table could request to see a holding that made it to Showdown even if a Player tried to Muck it. That rules has since been greatly reduced to only allowing Players with live hands to make such a request and the holding can still make claim to the pot if tabled.

Your questions ..

A) There is no 'magic' related to the first cards that create the Muck Pile. The holding is considered dead as soon as the Player released the cards to the Dealer. If by some miracle all the Players are still in the hand at Showdown then released cards may be retrieved by a Player as long as they are still identifiable.

B) No, the first (or any) Player who tosses their cards to the Dealer prior to Showdown shouldn't be able to get them back. GL

Wait, what do you expect to happen in this scenario if there were not a magic muck rule? (i.e. How would your question be different if the hypothetical casino were to not have the rule?)

It seems you have taken the rule:

and erroneously inverted it:

The magic muck rule makes more hands dead, it does not keep more hands alive.

This is the answer. Anything else would just introduce angle shooting.

This is correct. The magic muck rule can be expressed as a conditional statement - if cards touch the muck the hand is dead. In general the converse of a conditional statement, in this case if cards are dead then they have touched the muck, is NOT equivalent to the original statement. Cards that do not touch the muck can be dead for other reasons, such as a hand folded while facing action.

Once the dealer makes a backward motion of the cards away from the player.

Sorry guys, but I play in a room with a Magic Muck and if the first player folds and there is no further action and his hand is not touching any cards, because no one else has folded yet, then yes, the hand is recoverable.

In short, different rooms, different rules. Personally, I believe in the usually unwritten rule that a player should protect their own hand.

When a player is facing action, they can toss their cards into the middle, then while the next player is thinking, grab his cards back and raise? If so, that is a terrible rule, but it really has nothing to do with magic muck,

Just as an example of how any rule, no matter how seemingly standard it is considered, may be altered by the powers that be at a particular rule. I dealt at one of the largest rooms in the country for around 5 years. For 4 of those years, our rule was that if someone released their hand with a forward motion, face down, when not at showdown, it was considered a folded hand. A folded hand, whether folded in or out of turn, was considered dead upon release. It didnt matter if the dealer had swept the cards into the muck pile or not. The player could not retrieve a folded hand. It was dead. Pretty standard rule.

Then, in my last year, it was announced that our rule had changed, and now if someone had folded their hand (forward release face down) but retrieved it prior to the cards getting put into the muck, and prior to any action by the next player to act, that the hand was live. So you could undo a fold if you did it before any acted after you.

Needless to say, we were pretty stunned by this new rule. And despite our repeatedly asking, no reason was ever given for the change, other than "that's the new rule. STFU. As I said, this wasnt some small room that kind of does their own thing. This was a major room that took rules seriously.

I think of this rule change whenever I read a post where people say that any rule is 100% applied a certain way in every room and anyone who says otherwise is either confused or lying.

No one argues that he hand isn't clearly identifiable or recoverable. It certainly is.

What people are saying is that in most rooms it doesn't matter if the hand is recoverable or not because it's dead anyway after being released forward while facing action. Same with verbally announcing "fold" while holding on to your cards. Maybe there are rooms where that hand is live because it's still in your possession but in most rooms it would be dead because verbal statements in turn are binding.

Like most other rules this one isn't universally accepted though. browser2920 just gave an example of a room that uses a different rule.

In principle, I agree with you. Any hand released, in turn, with a forward motion should be dead. However, I have minimal input into house rules. Also, I developed personal procedures from the days I played in many different poker rooms ... protect your own damn hand and verify what you think the action is.

Hmmm. Not satisfactory.

$1/$3 game. Small blind posts $1. Big blind throws out 2 red chips ($10) thinking he is straddling. UTG looks at his cards, looks up at the action and tosses them forward, thinking the previous player raised to $10. Then sees previous player was big blind and couldn't yet raise and grabs their cards back saying they want to call.

There is a difference between limping UTG and calling a raise from a player you (mistakenly) thought was UTG.

The UTG player is punished because the BB posted the wrong amount?

The "magic muck" rule might make a difference in this situation.

I would have made a different thread about this situation. As for this situation, there is action after the chips were put in. The bet stands as a blind raise and the UTG has folded. In a small stakes game, the dealer will often remind the BB that he can't straddle from the BB before dealing cards, but the ultimately responsibility is the BB's.

Technically the BB didn't post the wrong amount but raised out of turn.

Might look differently but its the same as BU putting in two red chips because he thinks the game allows for Mississippi straddles. Most of the time the dealer will tell him immediately that only UTG straddles are allowed and he takes his chips back. As soon as someone acted on his raise we have a different situation though.

The situation doesn't change anything. Yes, if you have a magic muck rule, then you will be forced to answer questions such as Does the first folded hand become its own muck? and Can it then be said to be touching itself?. That is why we recommend against silly rules.

Go ask whoever thought it was a good idea!

Poker is a game of observation and understanding .. sometimes if you don't observe you end up in spots you would have changed otherwise. See the post today about the 16k v 60k tournament bet spot.

I get reminded of this every PLO session as undoubtedly someone mis-declares their best hand at Showdown or has no clue they won but finds out the result when they table their holding anyway.


Please make sure there's water in the pool before you just jump in .. GL

While I agree with this for anyone who takes the game seriously, or for that matter plays on so much as a semi-regular basis, many don't fit those criteria ... and make the game so much more beatable. It seems that many rules are there to protect these people and, frankly, to keep them from being or feeling cheated.

The Magic Muck seems like a perfect example. Long before it had a name people could make fun of, the game was player-dealt and self-regulating. If the floor had to be called, more had happened than would have been possible in a dealer game. Thus the origin of the rule that any card touching the discards was in the discards. With the spread of jackpot games in the 1980s, dealers were required and new players were being attracted to the games - you know, the ones there to pull the slot machine handle.

These players were (and still are) a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they disrupt the game and are a pain to deal with. On the other hand, they bring a lot of fresh money into the poker economy - which is, by far, the more important thing. Hence there are many rules that have been developed to protect them - including the no Magic Muck rule.

So last year you did not even know what magic muck meant and adamantly insisted that it was the rule everywhere and always. Now you are going to not only tell us you know why it changed but that this change you never knew of last year started in the 80’s.

Didn’t know it happened so now you are going to tell when and why.

Because I paid attention to what was said here by knowledgeable people and also spoke to some floormen who understood the rule and the history. In short, I learned something new and altered my view. Can you?