Player 1 bets on the river
Player 2 raises
P1 does not see this and turns over his hand and throws it towards the middle to show a set of rivered sixes.
P2 turns over his hand to show TPWK
Dealer mucks P1's hand and shoves the pot to P2

3 people at the table, including P1, go like "wtf the 66 wins?"
Dealer just says that P1 didn't pay and that he mucked his hand.
Floor is called, ruling stands.

I didn't really like how this was handled.
P1 obviously didn't muck his hand, he said he didn't see the raise and was showing what he thought to be the winning hand.
He did throw his hand face up towards the dealer.
It was in fact the dealer who then mucked the hand, no questions asked.

Should the dealer have handled this better?
What about the floor ruling?

Player 1 didn’t muck. Mucking is something you do at showdown and the hand didn’t make it to showdown.

What player 1 did was fold. He discarded his cards towards the muck while facing action. Dealer then proceeded to muck the hand. Player 2 wins the pot. Pretty standard ruling.

At the point where player 2 shows his hand, reacting to player 1’s fold, there’s not much dealer and floor can do differently. Ruling player 1’s hand live while seeing player 2’s hand would be grossly unfair.

I have always heard facing action tossing your cards forward face DOWN is a fold. Dealer should clarify P1 intent since his actions are ambiguous.

Since P1s cards are known I see no problem with the floor retrieving them and allowing the hand to progress. This includes allowing P1 to reraise. I am not concerned that P2 also exposed his hand as it is his responsibility to protect his hand. Especially since per op he exposed before the P1 hand was mucked.

I hate trying to determine players intent but P1 intent seems clear and just as important it is very hard for me to see that he intended to fold after betting a rivered set X/fold sure. Now if he flashed the set and tossed cards in face down there is no doubt because there is no ambiguity.

Also note he did not toss the cards toward the muck. They were tossed “toward the middle”. Not sure this is important or not. Now we are trying to figure out how good a players aim is.

It’s a fold, protect your action.

He did not cause action behind; exposing your hand is not action.

P1 either purposely or accidentally set up an angle shot where they can get the other player to show then declare whether they just called or folded. P2 immediately jumped into the trap. They both deserve a KITN as far as I'm concerned.

When I'm dealing in that spot my current strategy is to immediately cover P2's cards with my hand and get confirmation of P1's action. I figure this cuts down on successful angles and gives P1 time to realize they were unclear. I don't know if it's the right thing but it seems to cut down on table freakouts and floor calls.

Tossing your cards forward (i.e. towards the dealer) when facing action is considered to be a fold. It doesn't matter if the cards are facing up or down.

Standard ruling.

Never, ever, throw your cards forward when trying to claim a pot. The cards are your receipt - dealer pushes me the pot, I give him my cards.

@Bolt…can you point to yout “rule” in TDA or RRoP? It might be stand where you play but see Reducto’s reply as a counter point.

@Didace…completely agree yours is the best way to handle it but not what happened here.

I'm actually not sure how fast P2 showed his cards.

Seriously doubt P1 was attempting anything but claiming the pot.
He threw his cards past the bet line, towards the middle, in a way most people do when showing down their hand.

I already posted it. If you want to say that showing your hand on the river isn’t action changing, then how does anyone ever fold as last to act?

Protect your hand is towards the top of the player’s responsibility list.

If P1 throws out a bluff like 72o or something, do you still do the same process?

LMAO

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As for the OP, could be ruled either way. Protect your hand.

Sometimes players call raises with weak hands or fold very strong hands for various reasons. I've been wrong a few times when making assumptions and decided to just not even try. I put it on the player to make their intentions clear no matter how obvious it seems to them that they're calling with K high or folding the second nut flush.

In our room you cannot fold face up. Folding is defined as cards released in a forward motion face down. So if a player tosses his cards forward faceup, we must clarify his action prior to mucking.

And when the dealer grabbed them to muck them he should have spoke up.

Problem is too many dealers these days muck winning hands and still push pots to them.
Dealer grabbing your hand used to be a sign you aren't getting the pot and you better speak up in a hurry.

Dealers please,
muck all losing hands and push the pot to the last hand up and then muck it.

This seemed so obvious to me the first time I player poker.

So when a player tosses his cards in preflop and they flip over, you ask him about his intentions? What are you supposed to do when only one card flips over?

But then again, I have never played in a room where this is standard behavior:

Can a Dealer pull an angle?

It seems to me that as we are trying to get poker back up and running we've run into a couple different (but yet the same) Dealer mindsets that aren't exactly welcoming Players back with open arms .. so to speak.

Not just this thread, but I'm seeing lots of 'sharp' black and white mindsets coming through in the threads. I don't want to say Rules Nits because we do need to adhere to and administer the rules of the game, but bringing Players back to the game with a hard line approach seems a bit counterproductive.

With 'all these' new Dealers in the game I'm certainly not going to blame them for reacting to some spots 'as trained' and create a few spots like this one until they can slow their brain down and assess. And then we have the 'old guard' who likely have seen it all and perhaps are being a bit too professional .. or yes, just reacting to a couple of cards being tossed at them like many times before.

We've said many times before that a Dealer is not in the 'intent' business, but they are (whether they want to be or not) in the customer service business and it's spots like this where .. as Dealers probably have seen many times before .. something just doesn't make sense and a Player's action needs to be clarified.

Certainly a Dealer must also follow the tone/training of the room whether they agree to it or not. It could be that this is a 'talking point' of the Floors/Director .. we don't know.

IMO it's almost always in the Dealer's best interest to let the Floors be 'the ass' of the room and this is a perfect spot for it. Dealer (should) know that there's something not right here and let the Floor figure out the spot. I would want the cards collected but not mucked and the Floor called. Explain the spot and ask permission to muck or reassess the action.

HOWEVER .. as we say many times in the strat threads .. 'as played' this ruling should go 'for' Player 2 and 'against' Player 1 since there was action pending. We aren't at Showdown where 'cards speak' and Player 1 does need to protect their right to the pot.

We could try to get into the timing of the protests and all that, but in the end it comes down to Player 1 needs to make sure his hand remains live until the pot is pushed to the winner. IMO this spot includes some Dealer error, but as stated it could be protocol in some rooms.

We've all seen plenty of Players 'fold' their hands face up .. bemoaning the result of the action or Board runout. But I would also suggest that there's usually a little different 'tone' of the release associated with the fold and/or a Showdown presentation of the cards that an experienced Dealer should/would/could recognize and take a moment to verify intent (not decide intent, verify intent). GL

Ah yes, as most of us do. That extremely normal way of showing down your hand. I actually aim towards the muck.

Along with the other what-ifs, this shifts the responsibility to the other players to not get angled or angle themselves. I might be okay with that rule if it were standard, but unfortunately it is not. A non-fold looks like a fold in all but the vertical direction of the card faces.

Plus, the standard rule and the association of forward motion with a fold practically eliminates the practice of throwing a hand face-up towards the middle of the ****ing table for any reason besides a fold or muck.

The dealer messed this up in more than one way. The Dealer should have said "Raise" and apparently didn't. The Dealer also should have asked P1 if he was calling the raise or folding before mucking an arguably tabled hand.

This one is going to come down to the Floor's ruling. Could go either way, even in the same room.

If I am the Floor I would rule in P1's favor because I don't believe a Dealer's error should cause a player to lose a pot. P2 turning over his hand is also whacky because if he believed that P1 had folded then he doesn't have to turn over his hand. So it may be that P2 is trying to take advantage of the situation by making the case that P1 shouldn't be allowed to call because he saw P2's hand. Which IMO is a non-starter as an argument.

As has been stated (by Didace), learn from this and never turn over your hand away from yourself.

I always am protecting my hand until the pot is pushed to me (though in fairness I do start to move the cards towards the dealer while still protecting them). Even then I have had dealers unwilling to push the pot until I relinquish my cards but I still don't. I will call the Floor over (which has happened) told them I will give up my cards once the pot has started to be pushed to me. The Floor will then instruct the dealer to push the pot to me. This does not make me a dealer favorite but I don't care.

In all of the poker I have played I can only remember one time that a dealer tried to take my cards when I was protecting them. And the dealer immediately stopped when he realized I was holding on to them.

That's great as long as you leave me a path to push the pot.

You and I would get along just fine.

Yes. It's how the cards end up on the table that matters. It's no big deal to take a second to confirm action. Just as I would if a player tossed his cards face up and they hit the table flipped face down. I would clarify his action.

Taking 3-5 seconds to clarify action when needed before mucking cards is way better than the mess that follows if you guess wrong and have to have the floor sort it all out after the cards are mucked.

Objection. Statements not based on evidence.

The dealer may very well have announced raise. I've repeatedly yelled things right at peoples' faces and had them not hear me at all.