Nupz FTAG
I like your question and I like the answer Stuamurr gave you. When a dealer protects the muck properly, it is easy to retrieve the hand and expose it if requested. What I like to teach the dealers is to touch the folded hand to the muck pile (killing the hand) and then turn it over. An even better practice is to award the pot to the winner and then expose the dead hand. This will prevent the pot being awarded to the player that voluntarily mucks his hand and then discovers (too late) that he had a winner. The Rule is easier to understand when two players are involved and one goes all-in pre-flop. Both players turn over their cards and everyone at the table can get involved. I think that it takes on a completely different and common situation when a player goes all-in at the river, it's pretty much like any other hand; Player A turns over a "nut hand" player B throws his hand in the muck. Of course, if anyone wants to see the hand, then it must be exposed. I guess a penalty of some kind can be enforced if a player refuses to show down his hand when asked to comply with rule #9.
I've had situations where I would tell an all-in player to turn over his cards (when one player calls) only to have him say "I'm not turning my cards over, because every time I do that, I loose." I know it goes against what they should do, but if the opposing player doesn't complain then I just burn and turn and finish the hand. You have to understand that the tournaments that I get involved in are very small and not big time tournaments that many of you are involved in.
Thanks for the interesting topics.
Nick C
