Yesterday I played while on vacation, two tables, mostly locals, few tourists.

I open with JJ in MP with 350bbs behind, get a call from BTN who has 160bb and a call from SB that plays 60bb stack.

Flop J92 rainbow, all standard check - bet - call - call. Turn is offsuit Q, check, check, check. River is Q again. SB checks, I bet, BTN goes all in. SB calls and I call.

Now BTN is going to show his hand and realizes he has just one card. While floor person is at table and they count the cards on the table (all 52),BTN claims he had Q9. Later the floor person shows that one card and it was a deuce.

They check it on the camera and find out that BTN was dealt just once card preflop. So effectively a misdeal and if he had 2 cards there would be a completely different run out.

The ruling was that the hands was canceled and chips were returned to all 3 players (shortstack had KQ BTW).

Any floor manager that could give an opinion?

Should his hand be dead no matter what is on camera? Was this a correct decision?

Is that possible? getting only one card dealt, not realizing and playing the hand, or realizing and still playing the hand? wtf?

If that indeed happened, pot should be yours imo, I would just shrug it off though, rack up, leave and not play there anymore. pointless to argue.

From where the deuce is coming from as the 2nd card? .. wtf?
Who's the FoS floor dude that decides it was a deuce and the villain claims it was a 9 having Q9 instead of Q2 when the camera shows it was misdeal due to one card on BTN?

It's not an angle because an angle is so smooth and painless executed that no player ever detects it. This situation is an incident where you deal with incompetent and clueless floor personnel FoS

That one card was revealed and it was a deuce. So no guessing. 380bb pot. Guy convinced he had Q9. Not drunk.

If he knew that is the ruling of the poker room, you can put pressure risk free, if you get a fold, you much your one card and no one realizes it. If he gets a call, there you go, misdeal.

That why I think his hand should be dead no matter what happened preflop.

But where was this card revealed from?

Post this in Live Casino Poker.

When he was supposed to show his hand, he had one card out and when that card was shown few minutes later it was a deuce. No one was touching his card before it was shown.

The theory I guess is that the button tried to win the hand with a bluff, knowing he could get it ruled a misdeal if called, but win if everyone folded.

I would assume any floor would rule the hand a misdeal, but am somewhat surprised there would be no penalty for the guy clearly angle shooting and lying to the floor.

No way is that a misdeal after that action.

Ah sorry I thought it was the missing card not the one in his hand.

This is pretty outrageous. He's clearly hoping for a free roll. If he wins without showing he pushes his cards into the muck in a way you can't tell its one, and if he loses he pleads one card

Ask to have to pot held by the casino before the next hand starts and get a proper ruling from the floors boss

why didn´t he bet the turn then and checked behind? or raised the flop if he was freerolling anyway? 3bet preflop? why wait until his last chance?
something stinks

his hand should be killed and the money should stay for getting cute by playing with one card.

His hand is dead in any well-run poker run. Chopping up the pot is horrible. There are strict rules about a hand progressing past a certain point and still being able to call a misdeal, and this hand is miles and miles past that point.

This should be in LCP.

Please name this poorly run room whose staff does not understand angle shooting.

I do not have answers for your question. All I know is that there was an evidence he lied about his hand. So yes, something stinks.

Even if there is no malice in BTN action, the poker room should protect against this anyway.

I decided not to protest, keep calm and move on because I am on vacation and winning 48 bb/hour in this place (without this hand of course) as the local cash players are beyond horrible. I know I would burn down the place I regularly play if it would happen there.

This happened in Split, Croatia.

You got screwed really badly. You should talk to somebody higher up and see if you can get something back in the form of comps.

The one-card hand is dead with all of his money staying in the pot.

There are multiple ways to angle this way if the hand is ruled a misdeal. You can freeroll as other posters already described. You can also muck one card mid-hand and try to freeroll your share of the pot.

I once saw the opposite case where a player discovered he had THREE cards at showdown. The floor was somewhat aggressive asking how he didn't notice it earlier but the guy was at least convincing he didn't know. I forget the final ruling (probably chop) but three cards seems less suspicious than one card... I could see looking at 2 and not noticing a 3rd directly laid over one of them, especially if it's just a quick look until the end lf the hand. Obviously this *could* be abused if you did see all 3 and choose to play the hand anyway, but it *could* be legit ignorance of the extra care. If it was a case of a player keeping a card from an earlier hand the automatic shuffler would catch it (this was a casino poker room)

Having only one card that doesn't even match the hand the guy thought he had is a joke and I would watch that guy like a hawk if he's ever at my table.

The guy with one card should have been kicked out of the casino and you should have been awarded the pot. The integrity of the game was not compromised by button only having 1 card. He was clearly intentionally angle shooting/cheating.

I'm not sure if you can call it angle shooting, specifically because most casinos wouldn't have given him back his money. So expecting to get to freeroll the hand doesn't make much sense. Unless this guy has seen it happen before there but I doubt that

yeah, it's a bizarre, -EV angle. Guy gets dealt a single deuce, doesn't say anything, then tries to rep the nuts all the way to the river, then tells everyone he had Q9?

I remember there was an anecdote in a popular poker book about a player winning the pot with no cards by bluffing everyone out. Maybe he recently read that story and wanted to try it himself?

1 card or 3 cards or 4 cards or 2.5 cards, it doesn't matter. He needs to point out he is short a card before significant action or his hand is dead. No misdeal, no refunds.

The one exception is for the button, who can get the next card off the top as long as he brings it to dealers attention relatively quickly, but definitely before flop.

I wonder if the dealer could be in on this and getting a kickback from the guy with one card? Especially if they know this is how the floor is going to rule.

I sort of get my antennae up here for a tourist in a tiny unknown cardroom where most people are locals... although I can't see how the dealer is going to know in advance that a tourist is going to be in this hand. Unless he often deals this guy a single card and they wait to pull this until an unsuspecting tourist is in the hand?

Also, they have a camera with only 2 tables?!? Is that common? Just asking, I have no idea.

There is at least one plausible way that he was not angle-shooting and legitimately believed he had Q9. He may have been dealt Q9 on the previous hand and was recalling that hand. I have seen something like that happen before. I don't have an opinion on whether this was likely to be an angle shoot, but I am confident in saying it was not certainly an angle shoot.

The button getting only one card is never a misdeal unless the second card went to someone else and it's caught before significant action. If he speaks up early enough he gets a second card. I'm not 100% sure if he has to say something before there is significant action or before acting but I'm 100% the hand is dead after the turn comes out. Any money he puts in before saying anything stays in the pot. If there is reason to believe he was acting aggressively on purpose to try and freeroll he's getting kicked out.

I've had similar situations and let it go so I understand what you are going through. In the future, just stay calm and say there's no way that's the right ruling, please call your supervisor. Try to make sure the dealer keeps the pot intact in the middle so button doesn't walk off and there's no question about the size of the pot.