Sticky Situation - Do I give him his hand back?

May 26, 2008 by Rising300.

Ok, here is what happened:

I am called over, player A raises, player B grabs a stack of $25 chips, starts moving forward with chips to call this bet, and then really quickly Player C reraises, at this point, I’m sure he’s thinking “heck no” so he quickly pulls back his bet (which was about semi completed) and mucks his hand. I am called over.

The hand was mixed into the muck, so I said “well you made a motion to call, he is acting on behalf that he thinks you are calling, so I have to make you put in the $300″ However, I had him whisper his hand to me, and i looked in the muck, and found them to be the bottom two cards.

I don’t like to dig in the muck, but our rule says “if there is a misunderstanding, i can dig in the muck and retrieve a hand”. Player B kinda was the culprit here as he started to call, but didn’t drop say the last batch of greens, and then when player C reacts on it, he quickly takes it back.

I got lucky in this situation as his hand, the 8,5 of clubs were the bottom two cards in the muck. Did I open up a can of worms on this ruling? The dealer told me that he started to cut out chips, wasn’t quiet done and then quickly retracted.

Posted in Chip Counts of Pot & Opponents Stacks, Gross Misunderstandings, Underbets, etc, Bets, Min Raise, StringBet, Fwd Motion, Act Out-Of-Turn, Texas Holdem | Print | 3 Comments »