aceto5 November 8, 2024, 2:33am 1
Here is what happened during a daily poker tournament.
I will tell you the details, you tell me what your ruling would have been if you were the floor person called over to the table.
You are running a 12-table swing shift Texas Hold’em poker tournament.
You have this tournament 7 days a week starting at 7 pm in Phoenix AZ.
You have a regular who plays at least 5 nights a week and then plays in live games after the tournament. The kicker here is that he is a 70-year-old in a wheelchair without use of his arms or legs. He can talk and sips coke out of a cup with a long straw. When he is assigned a seat in a tournament, we always give him the number one seat so that the dealer can tilt up the back edges of his cards for him to look at when it is his turn, so that he can tell the dealer what he wants to do.
This system worked well for years. No problems 7winbet.
A really nice guy. Then one night we had a problem.
It is halfway through the tournament with the blinds $1,000 – $2,000.
Our special player is down to exactly $2,000 in chips and it is his big blind – all in as the cards are being dealt. A nine handed table. Two players called his big blind and the rest of the players at the table folded, including seats 7, 8 and 9. Our card room has a dealer procedure that the discards are kept under the dealer’s deck hand for protection. This dealer is right-handed, so his left hand is his deck hand. The dealer spaced out and as he brought in the discards from seats 7, 8 and 9, he also brought into the discard pile the cards that had not been touched that belonged to our wheelchair player in seat number one. Seat number one never got to see his cards and his big blind is all of his chips. His hand is dead. there is no way to tell which cards in the discard pile were his. The dealer stops all action immediately and calls for the floor person.
You get called over as the floor person and are told all of the facts.
The tournament clock is running – what is your decision.
I will give it a week and then tell you what my ruling was.
By the way, this is not in any rule book anywhere so you just have to do the best you can knowing that the floor person’s decision is final. Good luck.
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Well, since all action is valid, I would say that it’s an equity split. Since no cards were tabled, equity can be deemed equal and all players who had not folded, including the BB in seat 1 would split the pot equally. Basically all would get their blinds back and the 1000 that the SB folded would divide amongst those still in the hand. If there’s an odd chip, then whatever your house rule for odd chip is applies.
I suppose that all players still in the hand still have their cards could table and equity could be split that way, but since seat 1 has no cards to show I would probably just call it all-way equal equity chop.
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Treat it however you would handle a misdeal; in my experience this means all chips back, reshuffle, replay the hand.
Since the wheelchair player has a disability that makes his proper inclusion in the hand depend on dealer’s action, when dealer fails to include him, it’s effectively the same as a misdeal.
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If the dealer can check the discard pile, they discreetly ask the player to name the cards in their hand. If the two cards mentioned are found in the discard pile, I return them to the player.
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@PegasCrawford we’re told the player never got to see his cards
Not so sure about that. I mean different houses can have different rules sure, but isn’t the standard rule that a misdeal can no longer be called after action starts? Action had gotten all the way around to the BB (SB had folded).
@napkin_holder good point; per TDA rules the 2 calls in front meet the minimum standard for “substantial action” after which point a misdeal should not be declared and the hand should proceed as best as possible (again, per TDA).
However, as this is the bare minimum threshold, and there are extenuating circumstances with the player w/disability, if I were TD I would think it fair to simply replay the hand.
Due to the disability, I would consider that option too.
It’s a tough call. It’s the casino’s fault (responsible for their delaer’s error). Not to throw the dealer under the bus, I’m sure he’s a good guy and an honest mistake that will happen now and then even to the best of them. And it’s not really a blame game, but to sort out the responsibility will sort out how it will be resolved. The point is that it’s on the house to make good as none of the players did anything wrong. On one hand the casino wants to make good to the gentleman whose cards were mucked, but on the other they also want to do justice to the other players who played their hands correctly and don’t deserve a disadvantage just because they are not disabled. The good news is that the hand didn’t get to something hairy like a 3-way turn. It’s still fairly easy to sort out.
You can’t really fold seat 1 and compensate him with a voucher. In a cash game that could be an option but the hand felts him from a tourney.
I’ll hear misdeal, but I still prefer equal equity chop amongst seat 1 and the 2 (it was 2 , right?) callers.
But you can’t assign any equity to Seat 1, as it’s indeterminate what cards he was dealt!
lihiue November 8, 2024, 7:29am 10
I doubt you could ever rule this way, but the correct solution is to deal the big blind 2 new cards. There’s zero statistical difference between what the new cards would be and those discarded, but there is a difference if the whole hand re-dealt for anyone who has seen their cards.
Note that if you do an equity split, the BB essentially gets to stay in the tournament when he most likely would have busted out (with a random hand against 2 opponents), which could potentially disadvantage the entire rest of the field.
A misdeal is likely a disadvantage to the two callers, and and advantage to everyone at the table who folded, but can’t impact anyone at any other table.
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I was watching a Bart Hanson breakdown the other day with a messed up floor story. If you’re not familiar, Bart Hanson coaches live poker and players call in to a live stream where he talks them through their live hands.
So the caller was at this casino and he was in a cash game with Villain on his right. Villain shoves the river and hero calls with two black KK. Villain has AA. Hero thought that he had lost and shows his KK. Dealer mucks both hands and starts pushing the pot to … Villain! Obviously all-in, it was a pretty big pot. Immediately the other players shouted “whoa! Hero had a flush!” Neither Hero nor Dealer clued in that there were 4 clubs on the board. Dealer stopped and told everyone to not touch anything until the floor came. Obviously the board has 4 clubs and Hero had 2 black Kings. That’s a flush. Villain had two red Aces. That’s not a flush.
Floor decides to chop the pot 50/50. Hero asks for the supervisor. Long story short the supervisor stands by chopped pot, despite the fact that 8 players at the table insisted that there were 4 clubs on the board and Hero had 2 black KKs!
Bollocks!
Here’s the video.
Yea, this is messy. I suppose that you could do that so long as everyone agrees. You never know when someone might get sticky about card order in the stub. If seat 1 gets 2 cards out of order then could it be a misdeal after action? Totally unprecedented.
If everyone at the table agrees to it I really like that idea though.
aceto5 November 8, 2024, 8:08am 13
Thank you all for doing some heavy mental lifting on this subject.
There is no single correct answer to this problem, but there can be some decisions that we cannot use as not being fair to all involved. Such as, I would be against dealing him two new cards because that would change the 5 eventual board cards if the hand is played out. Keep in mind that making as many of the players as happy as possible is always in the back of your mind whenever making a decision at a table. It will always color your choice of words when breaking bad news to a table.
“You keep thinking Butch, that is what you are good for.”
(Quote from Butch Cassidy movie.)
lihiue November 8, 2024, 8:35am 14 
aceto5:
Such as, I would be against dealing him two new cards because that would change the 5 eventual board cards if the hand is played out
Except it doesn’t – not a way that matters. You’re replacing one random board with another random board, neither of which has been seen or can be known. The equities don’t shift at all. I agree that’s a fairly hard concept for people to wrap their heads around though, so I wouldn’t suggest it in practice either, but I’m fairly sure it’s actually the only mathematically sound solution.
In terms of keeping people happy, I think I’d just return the big blind his $2K and play the hand out between the other 2 players.
aceto5 November 8, 2024, 9:05am 15
Wow!
I could talk about this video for an hour explaining how badly this player with the kings got screwed.
Now, I started playing poker at the Bike back in the 80s.
In fact, I was asked to come work there on the floor when they were opining up. The place had some really good dealers and floor people, mostly from Las Vegas poker rooms. When making my decision if I should move to L.A. I stayed in the motel across the street from the Bike for two days.
That was all the time I needed. Traffic in L.A. would have put me up in a tower with a snippers rifle within a month.
Anyway, here are some items that were not brought up in the video. Poker dealers are taught certain procedures to follow when dealing each hand to make it more difficult for them to make a mistake. If the dealer who dealt the hand in this video had followed the correct procedures, it might have changed the outcome. Might. For instance, at the end of each hand the dealer is supposed to kill all exposed losing hands individually. The winning hand and the flop are to be keep exposed on the table until after the pot has been pushed. The player said that both hands were killed before he pushed the pot.
The Bike has a rule that all hands that are turned face up on the table to be read by the dealer cannot be accidentally killed. The hand is live until the dealer cuts the deck for the beginning of the next hand. The two kings were still live when the floor was called. The story about they could not read the suits from the video was a lie. The second floor person was just lamely backing up the decision of the first floor person. Back in the 80s when the bike opened up, security cameras were using VHS machines to record action at the table. Back then, I could believe their story that they could not read the cards, but not now. Security cameras at the bike are now digital and they can count the number of hairs on the back of the dealer’s hand. The narrator was right, the hand was still live but could not be recovered from the discards. In this case, when the dealer did not read the players hand correctly, the floor person will ask the players what they saw and if enough players back up the flush story without anyone disagreeing, the flush wins the whole pot. The dealer should be retaught how to deal and the floor people should come in on their days off until they can recite the rule book backward and forward.
This was a disgrace.
aceto5 November 8, 2024, 9:23am 16
I have a problem with returning the $2000 and letting the hand play out.
The players who called the big blind did so based on pot odds of what they would win if their cards held up. You just decreased the pot odds.
I also totally agree with you on random unknown cards. But that does not apply in this case. That rule is only used when you do not have an option. In this case the players know exactly which 5 cards will be put on the board. They can point to them. They do not know what they are, but they do know which they are. They do know that the two cards dealt to the player would have been a burn card and one of the board cards. Plus, the new burn card would take away another for sure board card. Like I said, your random card theory is a proven fact but is only used if you have zero other options.
In this case, our options are endless because we have no set rule to apply.
By the way, everything we say are just opinions, all of which might be possible. None of which are wrong.
lihiue November 8, 2024, 9:49am 17 aceto5:
The players who called the big blind did so based on pot odds of what they would win if their cards held up. You just decreased the pot odds.
Agreed. There’s even problems beyond that – the big blind isn’t facing a forced all in next hand, which potentially affects everyone else still in the tournament (although only by a tiny margin).
aceto5:
But that does not apply in this case.
That’s incorrect. Let me put it this way, say you show each of the remaining players what the new 5 community cards will be, face down, and ask them to pick which set they want. Their choice is completely arbitrary right? Nobody makes any action pre-flop with any guarantees about how the board is going to run out. You could also just deal the big blind new cards from the middle of the deck. Statistically, none of this makes a difference.
They way people react to it emotionally is another matter, but if you managed to find a solution that kept everyone happy and is mathematically sound I will be very impressed. Actually, I’ll be very impressed if everyone was merely agreeable with whatever you decided.
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Call miss-deal and new hand – because i would feel TERRIBLE for guy with the disability and i am SURE no players would say no as most players have a heart:).
I ACTUALLY agree with you ( omg lol ) and this is EXACTLY what i would do.
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