First of all, you're mischaracterizing what he said somewhat. He said it was possible to rule it dead, but most likely it would be backed up.

Second of all, protecting your physical cards is only part of your responsibility. You also have to protect your action. While I don't agree with killing the hand in general, I could construct an example where a player purposefully hid his hand to see what all his opponents would do, and only at the last possible moment (or even later) spoke up to claim action was on him, and in such a case I might be tempted to kill the hand instead. It would be a stretch though.

I guess I would argue that protecting your hand vs protecting your action are very different

You can lose action w/o losing your hand.

In any case, in THIS instance there is no ambiguity - dealer AND OP both stated where action was.

I mean, at this point we have to assume you are butchering that quote on purpose. I am not going to defend an opinion I do not hold.

No, not on purpose - but I did interepret your agreement ot be with the full quote:
It's agreeing with the first part that I find incomprehensible - but if you're saying that you only intended the latter then the error was indeed mine.

In my comment, I agreed with the whole post that (1) it is possible to rule it dead and (2) more commonly the action will be backed up. I added that (3) the action should be backed up (i.e. not ruled dead).

I did not read psujohn to mean "possible to justify by spirit or sensibility", but by the letter.

Then my question stands:

How is it possible to rule the hand dead?

Specifically, how is it LEGITIMATELY possible? What hand killing offense has occurred?

Purposefully hiding your hand and allowing action to proceed around you so that you can use that knowledge to decide what to do may legitimately lead to your hand being killed, as I stated above. It would be an exceptional case, though, and one I would likely only use for a repeat offender, and probably combine with an 86.

I can't find anything specifically about players acting OOT in robert's rules but in my mind it's kind of analogous to rules about significant action occurring preventing a ruling of a misdeal and therefor a fouled hand would be ruled dead.

My intention was that case that dinesh describes where the player knows that OOT action is occurring and does nothing to stop it. I've seen guys who just sit there watching player after player fold OOT saying nothing - partly out of "look at all these idiots acting oot" and probably partly out of "if they want to tell me what they're going to do then fine by me". In those kinds of cases I think a lot of the blame belongs on the player who is allowing or even encouraging OOT action and killing his hand is appropriate.

I actually don't see room for ruling that OP can only call because action occurred behind him. I think this should always be action on OP with all options. I can't remember ever seeing this happen when that wasn't the ruling.

The relevant rule in RRoP is:
What losing "the right to act" means is not defined, but could plausibly be construed to mean either killing the hand or restricting the option to bet or raise.

Having said that, restricting the right to bet or raise is only specifically mentioned in the section about OOT action (i.e. what happens if you check or bet OOT, not what happens to the player whose turn it actually is when the OOT action occurs).

Thanks dinesh that's what I was looking for. I'd have to think that when you're facing a bet and you "lose the right to act" it would have to be construed a fold.

The other big thing in OP's story is that neither OP or the dealer - who were both focusing on where the action should be - could say for certain if his raise came before or after the OOT call/checks.

Not only does the floor's ruling allow 3 people to get together and kill the hand of a player it allows them to just claim that they acted quickly enough to get his hand killed without corroboration from the dealer.

If I'm the dealer and explaining this to the floor I'm probably saying something like - "They say they called and checked while the guy here was raising".

For cash games, I suppose it is house dependent. I'd be more lenient and allow the player to call the BB and then proceed to the flop.


I have seen a hand killed in tournaments for this. A guy who probably deserved such a ruling [Never put his ante out in a timely manner, never paid attention when it was his turn, just generally slowed the game down] wasn't paying attention and 4 players in front of him ended up acting OOT. The floor was called and his hand was ruled dead due to significant action. I don't believe it was even necessarily the dealers fault since the guy was in seat 10 and it is tough for a dealer to keep their eyes on seat 10 while halting any action on the other side of the table.