I was out in Vegas last weekend and this happened to one of the guys in our group. Many of us were playing the Caeser's Mega-Stack tournament. He was sitting in the 1 seat and is dealt black kings. A player in EP raises, and he re-raises, with only the EP player calling. Flop comes K-high, and EP open shoves. My buddy doesn't have his cards capped, but rather is holding them in his hand. My buddy says, "I call. I have a set." He then sets his two cards down and pushes out a couple stacks of chips.

In the instant he sets his cards down, the dealer grabs them and pushes them into the muck. Although they have touched the muck, they are still identifiable. My buddy says, "what the hell are you doing? Those are my cards. They are the Ks and Kc," and points to the two cards sticking out of the muck.

Floor is called. Everyone at the table (including the dealer) heard him say call (yes ... the dealer even said he heard him say call, he [the dealer] just screwed up). Everyone at the table heard him announce his hand, and identify the two cards by rank and suit.

Floor rules that the cards are mucked and hand is dead, nothing they (the floor) can do once the cards are mucked.

Is this the right ruling? Couldn't the floor have ruled differently "in the best interest of the game" and since everyone heard my friend announce his hand, and he identified the cards? How would you have ruled if you were the floor?

Finally ... does a player have any other recourse once a ruling like this is made?

Thanks in advance for all replies,

Headhunter

Yes, this is an atrocious ruling especially considering it was a mistake by the Dealer.

If they turn over those two cards and they are not exactly what the player said they were then his hand can safely be declared dead. Now this may appear to be a free roll for the player but since the cards were clearly identifiable, in reality they will always be the cards he called.

TD made the right ruling, once the cards are in the muck the hand is dead no matter what. But how could a dealer muck the cards in that spot. I mean if you hear call what would posses you to just take the cards and muck them.

Horrid ruling. Comes up more often than it should. if it is clearly identifiable give him his cards back. Jack McClelland had something like this in one of his little Card Player videos some time back.

terrible ruling

if the cards are identifiable then it's fine

can they not check any cameras?

Not correct. See this from "Dead Hands" in Robert's Rules of Poker:

2. Cards thrown into the muck may be ruled dead. However, a hand that is clearly identifiable may be retrieved and ruled live at management’s discretion if doing so is in the best interest of the game. An extra effort should be made to rule a hand retrievable if it was folded as a result of incorrect information given to the player.

Clearly in OP's scenario, retrieving that hand if it is indeed the correct one and making it live is the most fair way of resolving that problem.

granted, the dealer was totally wrong, and I think TD could have made "best interest of the game" ruling.

But, your description leads me to believe your buddy was holding the cards off the felt? and why did he have to set his cards down to push chips out? Not that I haven't done similar things but of all the times one would be extra careful to protect his hand, I think this is one of them.

You're right that he should always protect his hand. However, I think he thought that since he said, "Call, I have a set" and then proceeded to push his chips out, that the dealer wouldn't muck the hand ...... after all, he had JUST ANNOUNCED HIS HAND!

As for why it took 2 hands to push out his chips? I don't know ... he had almost 17k in chips at this point and was near the top of the chip lead in the tournament. I'm assuming he used to hands to push out 2 stacks of chips (one stack in each hand). If he pushed two stacks out with one hand and knocked over one (or both) of the stacks, then I would be writing a thread "My buddy accidentally splashed the pot in a tournament ... how do you resolve how much he had?"

ty for the correction

As for protecting your hand, the best way to do that in this scenario is to say call and flip your cards over. It's infinitely harder to muck a shown down hand.

Tangent:

I played one of these tourneys at Caesars a couple weeks ago myself, and of the three dealers I had (yeah, I busted early) all of them were either inattentive and/or made some very amateurish mistakes. I haven't seen that level of shoddy dealing anywhere else in Vegas recently.

And yeah, terrible ruling.