Couldn’t really think of the right spot to post this... Mods feel free to move!

Other night 1-2 cash game and saw something I’ve never seen happen.

UTG Limps, Button Limps, S.B. raises to 12, B.B calls, UTG Calls, Button thinks for a second...

At this point dealer starts to pull in chips, burns a card, counts out 2/3 of what’s supposed to be the flop card. The Button and the table stops him before he counted out the 3rd flop card, and told him Button hasn’t acted. At this point Button calls.

Now this is where it gets strange. Dealer takes the first two cards that are supposed to be the flop cards that are in front of him and pushes them into the muck, thinking it was another folded hand. I stop him when he lays one card down, which would have been the 3rd card on the flop. I stop him and tell him what he did.

He counts the muck and realizes there’s two more cards than there should be. He inexplicably turns over that one card... it’s obviously the As. He calls the floor!

My question has anyone seen something like this happen? What should the floor rule?

I don't have the formal rules handy but most of these situations are actually pretty obvious. Least disturbance of play in a way that can't be exploited.

It isn't really a situation that can be exploited and it won't mess up play much so I don't think it matters much as long as the floor didn't mess the game up further.

If the cards had not been turned over they should be left in the muck and a new flop draw. As long as nobody has seen those cards nothing changes.

Once the As is flipped it matters a little if it was clear which two cards are the ones dealt for the flop. If it is clear then go ahead and use those two cards. If it isn't clear then declare the As dead and deal 3 new cards.

I wouldn't mind if the floor just declared the hand dead and everybody took their money back also. Least preferable option but not deep enough in the hand for it to really matter.

I´d prefer that too although it isn´t the best solution, but everything else only leads to idiotic argumentation from players who feel they are entitled to win something in this particular hand (90+% of population imo)

whatever the floor does, it should just make a strong ruling and not allow too much discussion about it. obviously there isn´t cheating going on, so it´s just an unfortunate situation, that´s it.

personall, I think the dealer should take all remaining cards including the player´s much, shuffle it and deal a new flop, but I´m pretty sure people would not stop arguing about that, especially if it leads to a big pot aka a big loss for someone.

Declaring the hand dead preflop and just give everyone their money back nobody would be too tilted imo.

Interesting. Though the flop dealing was a mess, the As shouldn't be treated as a premature card. I'm leaning towards keeping the As on the board and dealing the next two cards off the top of the deck for the rest of flop. That way, you still have one card of the "natural" flop, and the "natural turn" being dealt on the flop too. After flop betting, burn & turn will give the natural river, then after the turn, burn & turn for the river I guess. This gives 3 of the 5 "original" community cards on the board.

This is assuming the other 2 flop cards can't be properly identified from the muck. I wouldn't mind the hand just being killed, either.

I assume the 2 mucked flop cards are lost? If not, they should be retrieved. I think the As should be kept since button called before any flop was reveal in any event.

Yes. They could not be identified.

Dealer should call floor before flipping over the As because by this point we're headed toward Cluster**** and the less people know about what cards would have come up, the better.

Either way, the floor should probably rule that the flop will be the lone flop card--exposed or unexposed--plus two random cards from the muck shuffled in with the stub. (I think that's preferable to just the original stub because someone will think that their card was one of the improperly mucked ones, even though it has a tiny effect on card elimination.) So the As gets flipped anyway.

The difference is now the floor has to deal with whoever hates the As here, instead of having the chance to set expectations beforehand. But really, how much can they complain?

Annulling the hand is reasonable here but still the worst reasonable option. Someone might have AA or AK and want the hand to continue. It gives the impression that their opponents have received a favor.

I would hate to see the muck shuffled in with the stub. I really wouldn't care what happens as long as only the stub is used to deal the rest of the hand. Don't mess with the distribution of the stub. There's no reason to do this and it is totally unnecessary.

To partially appease the superstitious old guys who are worried about the "flow of the cards," you could burn, deal the second flop card, burn again and deal the river flop card so you have the natural turn/river on the flop. Deal normally from there. Or just deal the two cards off the top and deal normally from there. All the cards are equal and no one can gain an advantage either way so it doesn't matter.

I would rule this a dead hand and would re-deal. Pretty simple ruling in my opinion.

If you want to have a table full of people screaming at you.

The As and stub are proper so I would not touch those. I would have the dealer use their off hand to scramble the muck while the floor has their back turned, then the floor can turn around and pick 2 cards to make up the rest of the flop. Hand proceeds as normal.

The only other solution that seems reasonable to me is to pull 2 new cards off the top of the stub. That puts what would have been the next burn and turn card out on the flop. The turn will be what would have been the river, and the river is something that would have otherwise been unused.

Mixing anything in with the stub seems awful to me, as does pulling back the As.

Scrambling the muck is a very bad solution to me since it has a huge chance of putting players' folded cards onto the board, which will just cause dumb problems. I would just call this hand a cluster**** and deal the next two cards off the stub to be the flop along with the A, then proceed as normal.

I suppose it makes it slightly less likely they would be high cards, but otherwise they're still random cards that could not have been predicted before people acted preflop. Is it just the inevitable complaining that will ensue?

It is both things you mention. Random is random, but the better random is one where no player can say "hey I mucked that card!" reminding everyone how screwed up the hand was and calling into question its veracity and fairness. I would much rather change the random cards to come than put player mucked cards into the board.

Even in stud when we run out of cards we will only shuffle the burns not the discards, and if that isn't enough we switch to a community card, all to avoid getting mucked cards back into play and the dumb chaos that would ensue as a result.

True, but in stud many of those cards were exposed and a player can predict that cards will run out before acting. In this situation nobody could have predicted that anything would come back and few if any of the burn cards were exposed.

Not that much action pre flop before the mistake by dealer was made. Would be easy to kill this hand refund the chips and re deal another hand. Also dinesh's solution is even easier. The more action there is and mistakes happening later in the hand would complicate any easy solution certainly. And sure some folks will ***** and moan some , but that will happen whatever you do here.

I can't agree that "not that much action" occured. We're at the flop! "Not that much action" is 1-2 players acting PF, or maybe 3-4 if you wanted to say "more than what is plainly stated in the rules for a misdeal, but still small enough that I'd do it anyway."

Moreover, that is for a misdeal. Voiding a hand and returning all money contributed is something that should happen far, far less frequently, and only for a very small number of very huge problems, such as: player cheating or wrong colored cards or duplicate cards found (dealt out, not even in the stub). I wouldn't call this issue in the same category that would require voiding a hand. IMHO anyway.

No argument, actully just dealing two more random cards for a flop , like you said , is the easiest thing and LESS DELAY for everybody. Mainly I was just talking about not pleasing a lot of folks whatever you do!

a. Make a reasonable decision, whatever it may be. Be firm
b. Get on with the Game

I can't imagine just doing a void hand when we have a raise and 2 calls, there are 19 BB in the pot already. Really unfair to SB if they have a big hand to just kill the whole thing because the board won't be the "right" random cards.

Since the 2 other flop cards aren't identifiable, next 2 off the stub, which as has been pointed out will result in the natural turn and river both hitting the board.

I would take the top four cards off the stub and retain them for the turn and river and take two random cards from the rest of the stub to complete the flop. I would not have the Dealer deal the replacement cards. The A stays.

I don't hate the hand is dead ruling because the reason for procedures is to stop collusive cheating and the dealer did just discard two visible cards that would have been on the flop. I think that the likelihood that there were marked cards and the dealer is actively colluding to be close to zero though...

Honest Q for people who have played live 10+ years or so: Was there this much rules nittery back then? Cuz my thought is, random cards are random cards, just shuffle the stub and more on. Or even refund the money and move on, which I don't like as much but w/e. Basically I want to play some cards, not freak out about the Natural Order of The Deck. I dgaf which 5 cards make it onto the board, just so long as no one was given an advantage.

Maybe I'm just reading too much 2+2 lately. Between this and some people freaking out that dealers are doing their job by announcing, "One pair," no wonder poker is drying up.

I was in this hand with 99. (The B.B.) and I was really fine with whatever the floor ruled. I just thought it was very intersting because I’ve played live for almost 15 years and have seen a lot of weird crap l, but I’ve never seen part of the flop get mucked. I was wondering if there was a specific ruling or precedent for something like this.

What the floor ultimately ruled was, since the As was supposed to be the 3rd flop card, that would stay. Then they said the top two cards on the stub would be the rest of the flop. Then we’d burn and turn 4th and 5th street as usual.

As anyone would expect this hand played out hilariously...

Flop was AT2r Checks around.
Turn 6r SB (PFR) Bets $25. Only UTG Calls.
River 7 SB bets $40, UTG shoves for like $140 total, SB Calls.

SB has AA / UTG has 98

Sometimes, the nittery is necessary. The goal of preserving the cards that "would have" come, instead of "just give me any random card, I don't care," is an actual anti-cheating procedure. A cheating dealer might sabotage the cards that "would have come" if he knows what they are in advance (marks?), and doesn't want them to roll out (partner gave the "I have KK" signal, dealer scuttles any Ace?).

To be clear, we're not doing all this because we think he might be cheating--we're doing all this because whoever loses this pot is going to imagine that he may have been swindled by an elaborate scheme, and we have to keep HIM happy.

Not that I know of, but I would have done exactly this:

The only other option to me would be to shuffle the stub, the A, and the original burn card and start all over with a brand new flop.