If it's Las Vegas, then I assume the Wynn who had a $1M guarantee, $1,100 buyin. The only other tournament is at Venetian but their guarantee was $1.5M.

Judging by OP's username, it was at a cardroom in Houston. As poker in Texas explodes, there will definitely be growing pains like this, unfortunately.

Years ago I learned an expensive lesson in PLO that will stick with me forever. I'm holding AAxx and get it in for ~$500 4 ways with the board running out 76533. Seat 2($70) flips over 9877 or whatever nutted thing, Seat 4($500) and Seat 8($500) are just sitting there and I'm in Seat 5 holding my cards between my knuckles just above the betting line as if to muck. The dealer is staring at me and after a few moments, I release my hand - I just drop it - no forward motion or anywhere close to the muck. Seat 4 immediately flips up KKxx and as I immediately realize what's going on and reach for my hand the dealer goes "NOOOOPE" and swipes it towards him. Floor is called, dealer makes it sound like I mixed it with other cards and it's not identifiable - I plead my case of none of my 4 cards have even touched any other card(his hand is over them!) - they're clearly those 4 and why is the dealer staring at me anyway when showdown action is on Seat 4?

Did not get resolved in my favor. I mucked a $1300 sidepot winner before promptly going home and throwing a chair. As long as I play poker, I will never again have sympathy for a mucked hand. If it isn't returned in my scenario, there is no scenario where it should be returned.

The ruling that happened here is absolutely 100% terrible. Perhaps it's at the tournament director's discretion and gaming policy does not strictly prohibit retrieving mucked hands, but I don't know why you would go against established precedent here. But for whatever reason an unusual decision is made, after which another unusual decision of binding Hero to continue is made. Villain made the mistake, his hand should be dead.

Well thats bad logic. Just because the floor in your situation screwed up (sounds like that dealer really didnt like you to kill a hand so fast, thats the last thing they want to do generally) doesn't mean that is the precedent for the future. Your hand should have still been live, but this isnt a Federal Court where a floor ruling becomes precedent for future rulings.

I had a hand where we checked down a 4 straight board, I showed my hand and villain mucked. Dealer had the cards and were moving them to the muck when the guy says wait I have a straight. Cards are touching the muck but dealer still clearly has them in hand still. I object that the hand is in the muck and dead, floor comes, dealer confirmed that the cards in her hand belong to the villain (no objection from me there, I was just under the impression that cards touching the muck are dead, period), floor says they are still live, dealer flips them over, villain had straight and took the pot.

The reason this ruling is so terrible is that they flipped over several cards before finding what villain claimed he had. That by definition means they are not identifiable. It took a fishing expedition to find them.

I think what everyone is not looking at here is that in a tournament an all-in hand cannot be "mucked".

It is true that the player screwed up and didn't protect his hand. But what he did is patently illegal and the dealer can't allow it.

The whole point is that he is all-in. And if called his hand must be shown.

These situations come up from time to time. In the WSOP a woman (I forget her name - I think she was French) raised EP with KK it folds around to SB who doesn't realize there was a raise and shoves. The BB folds and the SB dumps his hand into the muck. Not sure if the dealer was aware. I believe at this time there was no rule that all all-in hands must be turned over. The floor comes over and rules that even though the woman with KK would clearly call the SB all-in, because his hand is unplayable he is only liable for her original raise. Would have been interesting if he had shown his hand to the BB (and the crushing news here is that the same guy eliminated the woman in 10th place. I was thinking he should have folded as a favor but no).

I think that the floor here was trying to uphold the all-in rule. Because the hand had been seen by another player the floor was willing to allow it to be virtually "tabled". Technically the hand should be dead. But this was a tournament and the Floor made the decision to retrieve it.

I also think that the fact that the player who still had cards did not try to stop the muck plays into this as well. It is entirely possible that the ruling could have gone that he forfeited his right to remain in the hand. The floor reached a Solomonic decision.

When people (and rulesets) talk about "all-in" they are talking about the specific situation of an all-in and a call. That's not the case here, the all-in wasn't called.

And even if it was an all-in and a call, the all-in player should be out of luck if his hand gets mucked and is not identifiable. There are plenty of examples of that specific situation, including at the WSOP.

The only real decision for any competent floor should be if the all-in player has to forfeit his all-in or not. I'm in the camp of people who think he should be allowed to keep those chips.

I agree if I had a bad ruling that doesn't necessarily mean that should be the ruling for the future. Technically speaking I mucked out of turn so it's the "correct" ruling. It's the same in your case and in the hand OP posted - villain mucked out of turn, its villain's mistake - villain's hand should be dead. Everywhere I have played retrieving the cards is taboo and I don't think it's fair to start retrieving them for some people while killing others' hands.

His hand was identifiable. It was seen by another player. Just because it wasn't pulled out immediately and clearly identifiable by the standard definition doesn't mean that it wasn't his hand that ultimately got pulled out of the muck.

In this situation it is not acceptable for the player's hand to be "mucked". It isn't just that he made a mistake and should have to pay for it.

The entire rule of having to show your hand at showdown when one player is all in was established to prevent chip dumping. The Dealer and the House are responsible for not allowing that to happen.

This certainly wasn't a standard response. And technically Villain's hand could have been declared dead. But the Floor chose another path to maintain the integrity of the rules for all of the players in the tourney.

The lesson for me out of this is to not try to take advantage when the last player who still has cards (other than me) and the dealer don't realize that I still have cards. Now I hate that it is on me to protect the game when the dealer has failed so spectacularly. But I do it anyway because the alternative can be very ugly.

Its in the TDA ruleset. Cards can be retrieved from the muck if they are easily identifiable aka the dealer hasnt shuffled them into the muck pile yet. That gives you a sec or two to realize you mucked before its dead.

Cash games are different and rules vary from room to room. Maybe this tourney wasn't following TDA and had its own rules about what a mucked hand is tho, I didnt think of that before.

That’s just silly. I want to see your reaction if somebody tries to retrieve his mucked AA that he claimed to have shown to his friend in the next seat.

None of us wants to live in a world where the standard of “identifiable” is basically hearsay.

Yes, maybe K6ss was his hand. Or maybe his hand was KsJh and seat 3 folded 6h6s after showing their cards to each other and now seat 2 tries to get the best of both worlds and claims to have mucked K6ss.

My reaction would be to demand that he name the suits. And also make sure that the Floor will permanently ban him if his hand doesn't show up in the muck pile.

But really what you are saying is why this won't come up again. If people could do this at will then they would start making up hands that have extreme value. The K6ss hand was not one of those. Villain was likely to win about half the time with that hand against most calling hands, if the flop was actually 875ss and not 873ss.

The other thing that hasn't been discussed much is that the hand that was mucked and retrieved was either fairly close to the top of the muck pile or seen as to where it had been inserted. I don't think a Floor would allow an entire muck pile to be searched.

So in order for your scenario to work, Villain has to be a cheat, the guy sitting next to him has to be a cheat, they have to simultaneously decide to cheat together with the other guy getting what out of it? And Villain has to have bluff shoved all in with K high no draws.

I would say the chances of Villain actually having K6ss are about 100x more likely than your story.