The most important thing to do is protect your hand. But it looks like the dealer went completely out of his way to muck her cards.

-On a side note, say another player grabs your cards and throws them in the muck, is your hand dead?

Wow, your post is inane. Let me try to help:

Was it Tony Montana's fault when all those guys came and shot up his house, and then shot him and made him fall into the water and make it turn red because his blood all ran out of him and into the water? THINK ABOUT IT!!!

(See? I can utilize nonsequiturs too!)

Now THAT would be good television poker!

People need to take a breath and get some perspective ITT.

It's not like she was eliminated from the tournament in this hand. She was given back her raise, which was most of her stack.

What happened to her was unfortunate, unfair, and unpleasant. It's happened to most of us who have any live poker experience. But it was 100% preventable by her. She learned a valuable, and expensive lesson, and I'm sure it's one she'll never make again.

The world is a cruel and unjust place. Wouldn't it be nice if AA always held up, and if poker dealers never made mistakes, even inexperienced ones (as this guy appears to be)? I can only assume that the people calling for him to lose his job have never made mistakes in their jobs.

It was only a poker tournament, after all. He made a mistake that could have been prevented by the player who was harmed.

right on the lesson to be learned, not sure about the other part. Definitely think the dealer is at fault, nothing could be done except a heartfelt apology I guess. I feel really bad for her, I feel bad for the dealer too, that's a mistake he's going to remember and feel like **** about, especially after the airtime.

Now THAT would be good television poker!



^ Trying to take away the edge from the online players I see


@ to the guy above me: I doubt the dealer took as long to get over it as she did. [case in point.. her bad! ]

Maybe if Denis had jumped up and screamed "ONE TIME!" four or five times, the dealer wouldn't have mucked her hand.

Can't imagine ever leaving a hand that exposed. Tons of ways a hand can get dead.

The NSFW link for Denis is not working, anyone got it?

This is an excellent training video for anyone getting ready to play big buyin tournament poker. The lesson is obviously to always protect your hand, dealers make this mistake all the time (I had Queens mucked the first time I learned this lesson), and this particular dealer made a horrendous mistake.

The two most interesting parts of the video were

a) How unprotected her hand was.

She just LEFT it out there and didn't even pay attention to what the dealer was doing or she could have stopped him. It must have been very late in the day because she was either very tired or nonchalanting it to an immense degree. I can imagine leaving an unimportant hand unprotected when I'm tired, but not one where I"m all in with 200 left in the main event.

b) The lengths the floor went to recover her hand.

The floor did all they could to try to make it right. Unfortunately it looks like her cards got swept under. If anyone was paying attention and could identify the cards location for the floor, she could have gotten them back. But the floor can only do so much, he can't sweep the muck looking for any two aces, that's not fair to her opponent.

And the ruling to give her back everything but the call I thought was an excellent compromise.

But let's correct a few misconceptions repeated on this thread.

1) A chip or a card protector protects your hand.

No, it doesn't. Dealers are trained to move the game along and muck every hand without tediously querying if it's being folded or not. Sometimes they don't realize that chip isn't a loose chip from your stack, sometimes they don't notice that card protector.

The only way to protect your hand in the 1 or 9/10 seats is to physically keep your hands on your cards. And sometimes you need to do that in all of the seats, some dealers have very long arms.

When the floor shows up and tries to recover your hand, they aren't going to treat you special because you had a chip protector, a good floor will do exactly what the WSOP floor did in this case, try to recover it, and if they can't, they can't.


2) There is no rule requiring you to protect your hand

There is no rule requiring you to not leave $500 chips at your seat while you take a long break, or carry wads of cash in your hand while walking outside the Commerce at night, but live players painfully learn these "rules" over time.

3) Another player can't muck your hand

Never seen it happen but certainly the floor should try to recover your cards. As this video shows, there is no such thing as a "magic muck", if cards end up in the muck by accident or not by the players intention the floor can attempt to recover them if it's in the best interests of the game. And any player who pulls this stunt on you is probably out of the tournament and banned from the casino. And I would imagine if the hand can't be recovered the player who mucked the hand will forfeit the pot, and if it's mult-way, it might be considered a mis-deal.

Certainly in a cash game the hand would probably be ruled a mis-deal, but tournament/collusion considerations might change it (so players can't save a friend other by mucking their hands when way behind).