opinions on this scenario.


heads up on flop

8d9dTc bet by BB call by utg
turn is Jc , pot sized bet by BB , UTG calls .

river is As so the board reads

8d, 9d, Tc,Jc, As

BB bets pot again , utg tanks and calls .

BB shows kd6d for king high.
and says good call , UTG ask the dealer "Do I have to show "? dealer says "no you don't" , UTG mucks and dealer gives pot to king high .

UTG plays mostly house and underground games and thought he won because K high is never good there with that action , dealer says nothing.

UTG goes on tilt very next hand and gets stacked with q2 off .

should the dealer have said anything different? i understand dealer cant influence action but just sucks for someone not used to or not knowing about casino rules.

thoughts?

I don't understand why the dealer just said "no". I would have said, "Only if you want to win the pot. Otherwise, no." Especially considering, as mentioned, this is someone relatively new to poker in a casino. Good luck ever seeing that customer again.

I probably would have said only if you want to win the pot, but saying "no" seems perfectly fine. It might even be better here, as to not influence the player.

I would guess the dealer was pretty confused and defaulted to answering only the question put before them.

We can't always save players from themselves.

"only if you are making a claim for the pot" seems like the correct answer and no more undue influence than if instead he had just turned over a 7 and left the other card face down and the dealer said "can only claim the pot by showing both" or similar.

I'm not furious with the dealer, but definitely think "only if you are making a claim for the pot" is much better than "no" in this situation. He literally either beats the guy or is playing the board. It feels legit impossible that he called a pot-size bet on turn and river to play the board on a board like this. So a bit of context clues could go a long way.

thanks for the response guys. The dealer obviously did not mean what the utg player thought. coming from home/club games myself I understand why utg did not think he had to show his hand with that board.

Was just weird to everyone and the guy did tilt next hand and said he was never coming back.

I don't blame the dealer , just dont know if dealer answering that question with "if you want to claim the pot you need to show" would get the BB upset or if that is against the rules at most casinos.


I think a sign with all the rules should be standard at all casinos. this one was at mandalay bay and the poker room got moved because of the super bowl.

I know better to chime in from a player’s perspective in this thread but that dude got totally hosed and should have been upset. Example number 1 million of poker rooms and poker recs chasing off someone new to the environment.

“Two face up cards are required to win a contested pot, sir” would have been a totally reasonable response.

We see players about to make huge mistakes all the time. Figuring out in the moment whether we should say something and what exactly to say is actually one of the tougher parts of the job.

I try to think through as many situations as I can but they keep surprising me with new ones like this.

I mean I get that but the guy asked a simple yes or no question and the dealer’s answer was appropriate. There’s a fine line there where the dealer doesn’t want to influence action by providing more info than what was asked. All of the private games I’ve played in he’d at least be required to show enough of a hand to beat the tabled hand. Some lessons you gotta learn the hard way. Most players have made a mistake that cost them money early in their playing days.

I've definitely seen rooms where this is the case, but poker has a ton of rules. It tends to be a large sign with small print that very few people actually read.

Some of the onus is on the player to have the slightest clue what they're doing when they sit down to play a game against strangers for money. I've played a ton of home/underground games and I've never been to one where you can just muck at showdown and win the pot vs a tabled hand just because the tabled hand is "obviously" not good based on the action. I'm not buying that excuse for a second.

Like Reducto said, there are so many tricky scenarios for a dealer where is feels like no matter what they do, it's going to be their fault. If the dealer had responded with something like "You have to show to make a claim for the pot", it would not shock me to see people say that's a violation of OPTAH and they should have just responded with a yes or no.

The idea would be that the bettor "conceded" by saying "good call." That often happens where the bettor says it and just mucks, and then the other player does in fact get the pot without showing. I'm obviously not saying "good call" is auto-loss of pot, I'm just saying the other player may have only experienced the spot where the bettor just mucks. Most places you don't have to show there, but some will actually require it.

As far as OPTAH, what do you think a dealer should do if the player just showed one card here and it's enough to win?

mod: moved from the breakroom thread. Please don't use that thread to ask random questions of dealers, just post in a new thread or a relevant thread or the low content thread.

i have played in home games where if its a rec calling , he isnt required to show. not even one card so i get utg , just my question was is the dealer could have said more when asked "Do i have to show"?

thanks for the replies guys

Depending on the rules of the room, the dealer may have been allowed to say more, we don’t know.

The hard part is that the question is bad, so the dealer may have thought they were giving the right answer.

Bingo. The technically correct answer is “No” if the question was worded that way.

Very tricky spot for the Dealer.

There are two possible answers that I think the Dealer could make that would be appropriate

My first choice is: "If you have a winning hand then you need to table it face up in order to win the pot. If you have a losing hand you are not obligated to show it on the river at showdown".

The other choice is: " I'm not sure I understand your question. Why are you asking if you need to show your hand?"

It is possible, though extremely unlikely, that the player made a bluff call with Qx and no pair and thinks that because online all hands are shown at showdown that maybe he has to show his losing hand in this casino/card room. Though if the dealer has already dealt hands that have gone to showdown and players have mucked their losing hands then I would go with the first choice.

Agree, this is a more complicated situation than most. I don't fault the dealer for the response, as told. Though a lot would also depend on delivery. I once witnessed a dealer I previously respected contort his response to a simple question in a way that definitely screwed a new player in favor of a reg, and I have never forgiven that dealer for it.

I would probably start by making a rapid assessment that this players is a noobie and needs some special but fair protection.

Start with a quizzical look, then say you didn't understand the question and ask him to ask again. Maybe you'll get lucky and he'll make more sense this time.

If you get the same response, I would say "If you mean are you allowed to give up and let the other player win without showing your hand, then yes, you can discard your hand at showdown. But if you want to try to win the pot, then you have to show both cards at showdown."

Tricky spot. Probably the best thing to do would be to say “I’m not sure what you’re asking. Can you clarify?” Not sure if I would actually think to say that in real time though.

I don’t like the dealer’s answer even though I don’t think it was malicious. The problem is there is a clause that is missing there. He asks “do I have to show?” Well we don’t know the “in order to do what?” Do I have to show a loser? Do I have to show to contest a pot? Do I have to show since he said “good call”? There’s really not enough info there to say yes or no.

We should tread carefully with new players but that doesn’t mean violating optah. So in general if they ask a question that doesn’t make sense we need to be thoughtful about our answer taking both things into consideration.

I'm not even sure that the dealer didn't genuinely think that he was answering the spirit of the question.

Yes, BB said "good call", but there is only one tabled hand here. There is no hand evaluation to be done yet. The dealer might have assumed that UTG was wanting to muck a losing hand, and so he let UTG know that he could.

Tell!

That's just insane.

And that's really violating OPTAH.

That's what I would be thinking.

Not a great story. At showdown reg tables a middle pair hand. Newbie turns over one card that makes top pair. Everything stops. Newbie asks dealer if he has to show both. Dealer pauses a beat, then says no. Newbie pushes his cards forward a bit. Dealer kills his hand and pushes the pot to the reg. Newbie is dumbstruck and doesn't have the confidence to object right away, then asks what just happened. Dealer explains and says it's too late to fix.

I probably should have immediately called for the floor. Even if they didn't do anything about it (which was likely imo given how insular this room was at the time) I would have felt better about myself, and made sure the dealer knew not everyone was cool with that move.

Sadly, it was a room I'm an infrequent visitor to, and even worse the guy was a good friend of a family members, so I kept quiet about it. I did my best to avoid that guy after that though, and definitely undertipped him. And now the room is closed anyway so not a problem I have any more.

Obviously, I disagree. The player knew what he wanted to do, and knew what he wanted the outcome to be, he just didn't know if those two things aligned with the casino rules. I am definitely not telling him anything about how to play his hand in this circumstance by telling him the two pathways the casino allows.

Even if he really didn't know what his options were, though, telling him those two isn't OPTAH violation imo either.

Agree to disagree I guess.

I don't blame the dealer for how it played out. Only thing I can think of that would still straddle the line would be to ask the player, "to do what?"

TDA ... Obv that is not the case of the OP, but we did evolve into this spot via 'the story'.

15: Showdown and Discarding Irregularities
A: If a player tables one card that would make a winning hand, the dealer should advise the player to table all cards. If the player refuses, the floor should be called.


For the OP, I think the Dealer needs to do more in some fashion. I think in both cases 'OF COURSE" the Player doesn't need/have to table their holding but we all know there's more to it than that once we reach Showdown.

Without the "You're good" comment perhaps we could play dumb and say "No" to the exact question, but I don't even think that's the way to go at any time.

"No you don't have to show, but I currently have a claim to the pot with King High right now."

As we've found in previous 'Dealer' spots .. when should AND HOW should a Dealer announce a tabled holding? How detailed?

"In this room you must table your holding to claim a pot" GL

Sometimes common sense needs to prevail.

This is a really poor outcome for a newbie player. There’s a whole number of ways that the dealer could’ve answered the question. Instead, he chose to answer it in the most deceptive way possible (while still being technically accurate).

Qx makes a winning hand IMHO

Player: "do I have to show"

Dealer: "Actions on you, are you calling?"