When to kill a hand

[Stuart Murray]

You may have noticed that myself and Georg have been discussing when we would be willing to kill a hand during a tournament, given the move away from killing hands nowadays.

We would now like to throw it open to see what specific situations TD's out there are willing to kill hands - based of course on the TDA rule set.

Regards
Stuart

[MikeB]

One definite situation for me: When a player's hand is not 100% identifiable. Just a few such situations: 1) in THE, a 3rd card goes flying into a players hand, and we don't know the identity of that card. We now have a hopelessly fouled hand. 2) Player tosses their cards face down at the muck pile, assuming (erroneously) that they have won the pot. We have to retrieve their hand for a showdown but we can't identify the cards with 100% certainty.  Tossing cards results in more dead hands that any other single factor, IMO.

[Nick C]

Mike B

  Why would any dealer have to retreive a hand from the muck. Exceptions would be when a dealer attemps to kill a hand that was properly tabled and was misread by the dealer, and that only happens when the owner of the hand releases it before he should. Another might be when the owner of a hand shoots his hand into the muck based on the incorrect verbal declaration of an opposing player, before he sees the hand. I realize there are too many situations to cover that would lead to such a mistake, but if each player protectsd their own hand and the dealer reads  properly exposed hands at the showdown, then these errors would never take place. This is an occurance that I try to prepare my student dealers for; protect the muck from a player that prematurely tosses his hand into the muck, before the opposing player exposes his hand. Example: At the showdown player A says " I have a straight," player B throws his cards face down (three Aces) in the direction of the muck. Player A then turns over his hand, only to discover that there is no straight. Was it intentional? Lets hope not, but how can player B get the pot?
  Like the old saying " an ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure." These situations will always be avoided by following basic showdown procedure:

                                            #1.)    As soon as player A announces his straight, the dealer, with his hand covering the muck says " sir, I need to see your hand before I can read it!"   At this point, if player B did release his hand, the dealer could have easily pushed it back to him. (because his hand prevented the cards from being killed).
                        
                                            #2.)   Players are ultimately responsible for protecting their own hand.
Nick C