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« misdealed card becomes burn card | Let’s balance this table! »

Folding a winning hand!

Hello,

Here is again this typical situation:

Tournament - Two players left at the river: player A (on the left of the Dealer, place 1 or 2 and near the muck) raises … B takes is time and speaks a lot to try to guess A’s hand (but no move or no sound meaning a fold) … A imagining a fold (?) throws away his cards directly in the muck (!!!) … B pretend it’s a fold and claim for the pot (he had enought chips t pay the raise) … … … my ruling: because the amount was important for A (more than 50% of his stack) so for “the best interest of the game” and because for me a raiser can’t suddenly fold without being protected: I asked him for the exact cards and finded it quite quickly over the top of the muck: nearly the nuts! I gave him a warning (for playing out of turn creating a confusing situation) but exposed his hand alive while letting B decide to play free! Lot’s of complain from B … should I have killed A’s hand?

GG

This entry was posted on August 4, 2008 at 8:43 am and is filed under Exposed Cards, Hand Discussion, Etc., Verbals, Gestures, & Actions: Bet Raise Fold, Fouled Hands, Official Rules & Guidelines, General, Mucking, Dead Hands, Etc, Showdowns & Pot Awarding, Etiquette, Behavior, Play Procedures & Penalties. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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8 Responses to “Folding a winning hand!”

  1. Deadman says:
    August 4, 2008 at 10:16 am

    I would agree that it is in the best interest of the game to not allow this accidental fold (accidental because A probably thought the hand was over). However, IMO, the hand must still be 100% identifiable to be retrieved. If you ask him for the exact cards before retrieving them, there could be some issue (what if he says a pair of aces and you grab an A and a blank - do you look for another ace?)
    I would make sure to grab the cards first (and only after confirming that these are in your or the dealer’s mind 100% retrievable and identifiable), and then maybe ask for the exact cards as a double-check. I would not expose any hand, since this was not an all-in situation. TD ruling is final, and in the best interest of the game, I would allow the hand to continue as if it never happened at that point.

    However, if there is even a 1% chance that you weren’t sure exactly which two cards they are, I would muck them.

    Many places will simply muck anything that hits the muck.

  2. pdrhodes says:
    August 4, 2008 at 5:16 pm

    Unless his hand was clearly identifiable, his hand is dead. It is A’s responsibility to protect his own hand, which he didn’t in this case (nobody’s fault but his own in this case I might add). You always want to award the pot to the best hand, but here its just not possible to give A his hand back unless it is 100% identifiable and retreivable. I would give A back any bet over the biggest bet on the table (the amount of his raise) and award the pot to player B. If A had folded as a result of misinformation from the dealer, I would make an extra effort to retrieve his hand, but that isn’t the case here.

  3. frenchflush says:
    August 4, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Thank you very much for your help & advices!

    GG

  4. ChicagoMike says:
    August 4, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Hey GG:

    To my knowledge there is no defined procedure for WHEN OR HOW card retrieval is to be done… it is left up to the TD in his/her discretion and the general condition is “in the best interest of the game”, and that in turn implies when fairness warrants.

    So, within these parameters I would say that you made a perfectly supportable decision based on the circumstances as you saw them.

    Each of us comes at these situations from different perspectives, fashioned by principles that we each feel are “paramount”. In this situation I suspect I would have ruled that Player A’s cards were dead because he had thrown them away 100% of his own volition. There was no gesture, no utterance, and particularly no dealer action that prompted him to discard his cards here… he simply made a mistake and voluntarily discarded them without being prompted to do so.

    Usually when I attempt to remedy these messy situations I do so because the mess was created either through no fault of the injured player or through substantial participation by some other player and/or dealer and that’s not the case here.

    That said, I think your remedy was entirely within your given discretion. This is an interesting example where different TD’s will reach different conclusions and players MUST ACCEPT that indeed another TD might have ruled another way. This is just one of the risks they assume when they start throwing their cards around.

    This post also raises the question of what STANDARDS must be met in order for cards to be deemed retrievable and while there are some methods in common use (including the method you used here of asking the player what their cards were and then verifying same) I’m also not aware of any exact procedure that is spelled out in any book of rules. The only thing we have is the standard that they must be “retrievable” which IMO translates to “must be identifiable to the satisfaction of the TD”.

  5. JustinFromTulsa says:
    August 5, 2008 at 12:11 am

    I like all the rsponses I’ve read, and agree that it is a TD’s discretion whether or not to try and retrieve these cards. The only thing I would add to this is that there is a chimp-dumping angle at work here too.

    What would you think if you walked past a table and saw someone call a bet and then immediately fold his cards?

    I’m not exactly sure what I would do about it, maybe ask him what he’s doing or try to find his cards to see if it’s possibly collusion. I think that in the above situation if you rule the hand dead you need to give the call back in addition to the raise. Maybe not, I don’t know. What do you think?

  6. frenchflush says:
    August 6, 2008 at 5:56 am

    That’s the point: I was facing a double choice with only extreme solutions: 1) try to save A’s hand or 2) kill his hand AND MAKE HIM LOSE HIS RAISE TOO because:
    I can’t imagine killing his hand and giving back his raise because it could be tempting for futur players knowing this “home rule” while bluffing to immediatly fold their hand if they feel like the opponent is going to call … then try to create a confusing situation and have the TD give them back their raise … too easy!

    To be true: your numerosous opinions toward killing A’s hand will influence me the next time it happen: let’s make the players more responsable of their acts! (poor futur A … lol)!

    GG

  7. frenchflush says:
    August 6, 2008 at 6:03 am

    PS: we must have much more confusing situations here in Europe because the poker is more recent and players (as managers) are less experienced than the americans! So here lot’s of work & tough decisions (you lucky) … but in the other way: lot’s of work is not so bad for me & and my familly (LOL!)!
    With best regards,
    GG

  8. zeekus22 says:
    August 17, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    In this situation player “A” should absolutely have had his hand killed. I am very much for getting the pot to the player with the best hand whenever and wherever possible. However, I feel by making cards that go into the muck “retrievable” you open yourself to a whole new set of improprieties that will reduce the integrity of your poker room and you as a floorperson.

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