I trust her account, especially the part where she had to clarify that she "verbally conceded". Why did she have to verbal concede? Because it wasn't clear by her physical actions that she folded; this is the only logical answer, and it's consistent with both her own account and OP's account of what happened.

I'm not entirely convinced this wasn't an angle. Maybe it was just Maria Ho's dumb luck but this is exactly the type of board this angle is pulled on. 9 high straight draw if I remember correctly. Aggressor could have an AJ/KJ type hand and it's possible caller could have a weaker missed draw. Try to get caller to show hand without officially mucking the hand or declaring a fold.

I'm even getting suspicious about the jeopardy hand. Distracting OP while he has to make his final decision in the hand that she was also the aggressor in.

There is nothing unconventional about throwing your hand towards the middle to fold. There is nothing unconventional about verbally conceding that your opponent is good prior to throwing you hand in the middle.

She didn't say she mucked her hand because she didn't. That isn't the player's job. That is the dealer's job. The player just throws the cards towards the dealer. The cards are not yet mucked though. Thus, if OP wants to see Maria's cards he can still request that they be seen and I would expect that the WSOP, like most poker rooms, would expose them prior to them being mucked which would mean that she could still technically win the hand.

Verbally conceding is not exactly saying she said she "folded".

throwing your cards forward and saying "I fold / Good call / You got it" is not a fold?

However bad of a dealer, something was keeping the dealer from mucking Maria's hand.

Watch the interview, she says "you got it, nice call". She also clarified "mucked" by describing the "cards were not in my hands", this is a far cry from saying she threw her hand into the muck.

She also stated in the video the the floor ruled in favor of the OP, that her hand should be in the muck before he shows his hand. She also says that although she agreed with the floor and with OP with respect to her hand needing to be mucked before he showed his hand, it's not her job to make sure that protocol is enforced, that's the dealer's job.

Why then is it her job to make sure the "every winning hand must be tabled", isn't that the dealer's job as well? Which is it, is she policing the table or not? Looks like she was selectively pushing which rules should be enforced for her benefit.

I have a hard time understanding how a longtime live pro can be vague enough with the speed and distance of their fold that neither the opponent or the dealer is sure whether the hand is dead or not.

This is why I asked if you read her account. According to her, the verbal concession happened before she physically mucked her hand:

If you trust her account, then the obligation was no longer on Maria. It was up to the dealer to complete the mucking.

No, it is NOT her responsibility at all. She shouldn't have to take sides and she shouldn't have to risk her mental game, her image, or anything else just because she is an acquaintance with a piece of **** poker player, which BTW we all are unless we are to bury ourselves underneath headphones, hoodie and sunglasses.

Try to be helpful with these degenerate ****s and all you get is poo thrown in your face. I recently told a 75 year old man who I was sitting next to:

"Sir, I'm not trying to look at your cards but I just want you to be aware that when you hold your cards like that I may accidentally see them"

and his reply was:

"I don't give a **** if you see my ****ing cards. I've been playing this gawd dayum game since before you were born. You don't think I know how to play this ****ing game?! How about you play cards the way you want to play them and I'll play them the way I want to" (his diatribe actually went on much longer than this)

Hell, one time I recommended that a 30-something year old buy the button, and was subsequently ganged up on by him and the woman sitting next to him for being a ****ing idiot that needs to mind his own business. He subsequently had to pay the same price from the cutoff. He left the table 2 additional times and I believe out of spite for me trying to be helpful let the button pass him each time and bought the cutoff instead.

My point is that it's completely reasonable to want to mind your own business at the poker table. Also, I'm sure she wasn't the only person at the table that knew Hawkins.

Yes, playing poker 24/7 with disgusting degenerate POS men has an effect on how women handle themselves. Who woulda thunk it?

I thought they were famous because of the penises of male poker fans.

It's seems pretty clear that in this situation OP (the opponent) was sure that the hand wasn't dead, which is why he was insisting that the dealer muck it before revealing his hand. Given the many anecdotes posted about the poor quality of the temporary dealers and staff at the Rio, it really isn't that surprising that the dealer would have no clue.

Either way the obligation wasn't on her. Once OP calls the dealer should have immediately informed her to show or muck. If she didn't show, then dealer should have mucked and pushed pot to OP.

LoL, wish I could have been there to see the look on MO's face when OP called the clock.
I flew into Vegas with MO's backer earlier this summer when he final tabled the milly maker. Cool story I know

This is a very good point.

1. Yes, the dealer not doing their job properly. Nothing more than that.
2. Players do not have to dispose of their cards such that they land square on the muck. You push or throw your hand forwards within reach of the dealer.
3. Maria is allowed to confirm a rule. It is the dealer's job to already know all rules and then enforce them.

4. Any player can ask if there is a rule for a situation. It is clear that some dealers are not fully aware of all rules. She can ask "He has to show, right?" Just like OP can ask "Can you muck that hand?" It was up to the dealer to enforce the rules by responding to Maria "Yes he must show", then to OP by mucking Maria's hands, then tabling OP's hand even if he tries to muck his cards face down.

OPs points about Hawkins sound good. I wish more people would call out idiots that berate recreational/casual players, both live and online. At least online the poker rooms will do something about it. Live it seems like situations like this just as often are encouraged by management because "I recognize that face." Terrible example to set.

The sexist stuff on both sides seems overblown and dramatic.

This whole thread is aids and everyone should be wholy embarrassed

sad how some pros does not do **** to make rec players feel confortable and enjoy their experience. maria ho OP seems to think you tought maurice was funny.. pretty bad on your part

He immediately said "You're a little bitch. You know that? You're a little bitch!"

Floor came over, then Maurice thought then said, "I'm angry and I hate to play when I'm angry" and mucked his cards.

Then after the hand he tells the person who went all in "He cost you a lot of money you know. I was going to call."

The guy who went all in never showed so who knows what he had.

As far as the Maria hand muck thing...

It sounds like Maria is accurately describing the way she let her cards go on the video and that's really cool of her because she could say whatever she wants to since few could dispute her recollection. The cards were very close to her. Let's say 3 inches from where her hands were and 13 inches from where the muck was. Rough estimates.

I often wear ear plugs when I play because I don't like chip clatter but Maurice's nonstop showmanship was tiresome and the ear plugs take some of the edge off that for me. She said something that I didn't hear well that indicated I was the winner but the cards were not even in the same time zone as the muck and they weren't moving by themselves either.

I really appreciate a lot of people in here are able to connect the dots and see this how I saw it. I understand others disagree and even others think I'm whiny and childish, or whatever... but a number of you have played this enough or been in a similar situation enough that you get where I'm coming from which is a good reassurance.

lol live pros

Personally I think this thread should just become a ‘here’s my Maurice Hawkins experience' thread as these are without doubt the best posts in this thread.

I don’t have a Maurice Hawkins story but I do have a ‘WSOPME showdown story’ that amused me FWIW.

Early on day 2, 200/400 and 2 big stacks saw a flop in a pot that went 4bet/call PF. Both guys had around 100k. First to act is a tightish middle aged guy. Other guy is a young agro Scandi.

Flop JJJ. Bet/call.
Turn Q. Bet/call.
River: blank.

TMAG tank shoves for like 50k or something. Young Scandi leans right forward and gives him a 10 minute motionless death stare that would make Timex look like an amateur. He didn’t move (or blink!) for a full 10 minutes. I’m just sitting there the whole time thinking obv AJ v AA or something. Anyway finally he calls. TMAG flips over QQ and the Scandi just gives it the whole ‘FFS what a sick suckout’ agonised look (not verbal – he didn’t say a thing) and just threw has hand face down into the muck and started trudging away like he'd just experienced the worst beat of his life.

As he did so the floor comes over and says to him ‘you’ve got to show your hand’. He says ‘WHAT??’, floor repeats ‘you’ve got to show your hand’…he says ‘YOU SERIOUS???…WHATEVER, SHOW IT' and as he disappears the dealer flips over 66.

Meh I guess winning 500BB pots is fun but the whole thing was kind of weird at the time on a whole lot of levels.

fwiw i played with Shawn Rice, not the kid, the older heavy guy with goatee that went deep in some event along time ago. And he straight verbally abused this huge fish in the Wynn $600.

goes like this

THeres a ton of action preflop, flop, and turn. The river ends up going check check. Shawn stares at the fish for 5 seconds and the fish says "you got it" shawn turns over some junk like 3rd or 4th pair and the fish turns over top pair (J) with a 10 kick. Shawn loses his ****, and starts sneering and berating the fish. He would crack a joke about the fish and the fish would be cool about it and be playful back. Then shawn would sit there for 30 seconds quite. Then think of something else to verbally attack he guy with. The guy actually took about 3 different attacks before he finally said something along the lines of "is it that big of a deal?, i wouldnt have said that if i knew it would make you so mad". Then shawn loses on him for that. The table would talk about something else then here comes shawn bringing it right back up with more trash talk. by this time the fish was starting to get upset and then I told shawn that hes outta line and the guy wasnt being malicious he was just that big of a fish and didnt know better. Which is true the guy honestly had no clue what he had done. Shawn finally shuts up and puts his headphones on and stays quiet for the rest of the day.

Let's take the tournament series in question, WSOP, and do some quick back-of-the-envelope analysis of the numbers then, shall we? These are the participation figures I could find the quickest, from the 2013 WSOP located at http://www.wsop.com/news/2013/Oct/44...CE-RECORD.html

"Female Participation: 5.1% (3,726 entries, excludes Main Event)"

Let n = the total number of participants (I could use the actual number of participants, but this will allow us to neatly examine percentage increases)

Then 0.949n is the number of male participants, and 0.051n is the total number of female participants.

Let's imagine a world in which mouthbreathers don't exist and women play live poker because douchebags don't harangue them at the table.

Can we assume that that 5.1% would jump to 50%? Well if you look at online figures, we find women comprise 33% of players. Why would that be? Might have something to do with the fact that they don't have to put up with men at the poker table. What else do you think would account for such a huge discrepancy in populations? 5.1% live at the biggest tournament series in the world, vs. 33% online. The reason we don't see the full 50% online is likely because the other 17% are still too scared to even play online. And I also believe that's a reasonable assumption.

For the purposes of this exercise, we will then say that with sexism removed from poker, men and women play live poker in equal ratios.

This means you'd now have 0.949n women playing to match the 0.949n men who play (because we don't want to double count the women who already play).

This means you'd now have 2x0.949n = 1.898n total participants at WSOP.

For the slow among you (shoutout to all the sexists reading!), that's an increase of 89.8%. I said a 90% increase in fish right?

The only assumption that's missing is to assume that men and women populations contain fish in equal proportions. I'd like to assume that, because I'm not a misogynist who believes women are intellectually inferior to men.

So, with a 90% increase in overall population, if you assume that that increase contains a fish density that is homogeneous with the previous population, then you also get a 90% increase in fish.

Of course, you'll also get a 90% increase in players who are vastly superior to you. And are also women. And it'd probably hurt the tiny little egos of mouthbreathers everywhere. And that would suck

Tl;dr - Basic math, a little googling and a smidge of logic is a tough combination to get right.

First dealing with Maurice was in a ring event in New Orleans. He was heads up with an amateur player on the button, think he got check raised on the flop and called guys turn bet on something like T32r3x7x

Amateur puts Maurice all in and Maurice has 10bb back...Maurice sits there, tanks, then finally goes "Well, if you got me, you got me." Maurice flips his KT and the guy insta flips his pocket deuces for a full house. Maurice says "ya I didn't call man" gets the floor over and doesn't have to give the guy his remaining chips. Doesn't even get a penalty for exposing his hand with action pending.

This was with ~150 left in the tourney or so, obviously runs his 10bb up and finishes 2nd in the tourney.

Fact is many players do not have enough live experience and can be easily angled. If amateur knew better, he would just sit there and do nothing, say nothing. Maurice hasn't called and he hasn't folded. Even if there was a local rule about mucking exposed hands, I wouldn't rely on dealer or floor to enforce it. I wouldn't ask "Are you calling? Is that a call?" I certainly wouldn't flip my hand over. Until Maurice and Maurice only says "I call", or dealer mucks his hand, just wait patiently.

If I were at the table but not involved in the hand, I would absolutely be requesting floor issue an orbit penalty at the very least.

Saying that men and women would play live poker in equal ratios with sexism removed definitely involves only a smidge of logic.

As for the dispute in question; I don't see huge differences in the account of the OP and the account of Maria. I also don't think OP really had that much bad to say about Maria; the thread is called Maurice Hawkins experience. His complaints are about Maurice (and seem fully justified). tbh, the people white knighting for her are making the thread worse for her by focusing the debate on her instead of this idiot Maurice.

re: berating the dealer; this dealer/floor had already allowed Maurice to harass him, given him repeated warnings without penalty, and now were not following proper showdown procedure. I can't say I wouldn't have been a little upset with the dealer as well.

I mainly appreciate the thread for learning about WSOP showdown rules, and would like to hear more Maurice stories because someone this pathetic is just hilarious.

You are correct. Society as a whole would have to stop enforcing gender roles and pigeonholing women such that the social stigma placed on female poker players by wider society decreases. Male poker players also face a stigma from wider society, but this would simply require it not being higher for female players than for male players.

So, yes, I will certainly concede that point to you. However, you have simply pointed out by saying this that the sexism women face within the poker community is greatly compounded by that of wider society. Which really only strengthens the point I'm making.

In fact, you don't even specify "with sexism removed from the poker community". You write instead "with sexism removed" as an absolute. I certainly maintain that with sexism removed entirely from society that women and men would play poker in equal ratios.