Author Topic: All-in preflop and both hands mucked  (Read 5908 times)

Desi

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All-in preflop and both hands mucked
« on: November 30, 2011, 10:18:01 AM »
Is their any fair obvious ruling for the following?

Tournament, blinds 100/200.
Hero raises from early position to 500 with AA.
Villian in mp reraises to 1500.
Folded back to hero who goes all-in for 10,500 in total.
Villian thinks for 3-4 minutes and eventually turns qq face up.
(Tournie director happens to be standing behind villain)

Dealer (and everyone else at table) presmes he is folding, mucks the qq and pushes pot to hero. Hero turns up one Ace and his cards are mucked.
Bolded part happens really fast, less than 5 secs I’d guess.
At this stage tournie director and villain both say, “what’s happening, he said call?"

Hero at this stage has stacked the chips and all cards are shuffled.

What do we do?

Stuart Murray

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Re: All-in preflop and both hands mucked
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2011, 11:00:34 AM »
From what you have described, it sounds like The dealer killed the hand of QQ, as the player failed to protect his hand, the stub has been dropped and washed.  I'd give the pot to the player with AA solely because he has the last live hand, I'm thinking if I should award the player with AA the full 10,500 or 1,500 from the middle player, given that I am standing behind the player and heard him say call.  I certainly would not be re-creating the hand and running it, as the player with AA didn't table his full hand and has done nothing incorrect in this circumstance.

Now to what to give the player to wins the pot? 10,500 from the other player or 1,500, I am leaning towards 10,500 as A) He announced call, which I heard and B) He failed to protect his hand, and the bet he announced "call" to was the all-in from the other player, but does the best interests suggest I should just ship the 1,500 to the other player?  It's a bit grey but I think I have to say 10,500 goes to the hero.

My reason, once again is TDA rule 49:
49.   Accidentally Killed / Fouled Hands. Players must protect their own hands at all times. If a dealer kills a hand by mistake, or a hand is fouled, the player will have no redress and is not entitled to a refund of bets. If the player initiated a bet or raise and hasn’t been called, the uncalled bet or raise will be returned to the player.

Regards
Stuart

Spence

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Re: All-in preflop and both hands mucked
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2011, 08:36:50 PM »
Stu if you were right behind villain you would have shouted stop at the dealer before everything could have been mucked. That said if you weren't in time to stop the dealer from killing the hand how in good conscience could you force the villain to ship his whole stack over.
Hero wins hands down but not what wasn't already across the line
« Last Edit: December 01, 2011, 08:59:23 PM by Spence »

Nick C

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Re: All-in preflop and both hands mucked
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2011, 08:54:40 PM »
Stuart,
 I like your answer but, why didn't the dealer just question what the player's intentions when he tabled his queen's? The hand is dead because he obviously didn't make his intentions clear and he did not protect his hand. I'm not sure about holding him to 10,500 if the dealer didn't hear it, and the bet wasn't pushed forward. That would be a tough one. That would be like saying; I killed your hand because I know you folded, but now you have to put 10,500 in because someone heard you say "I call."

MikeB

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Re: All-in preflop and both hands mucked
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2011, 12:22:00 PM »
Another way of looking at this is what ruling would you make if villain called in another manner: instead of tabling his QQ and softly saying call (that only the TD could hear), instead tabled his QQ and pushed out the amount to call (9500 more). Then the dealer scoops up the QQ, pushes the pot to Hero and hero mucks his hand. Would we award the pot to hero because the dealer pushed it to him? It doesn't matter if the dealer mucked the QQ, it's already been tabled so it can play IMO...

We probably wouldn't award the pot to hero in this version of a call by villain because hero has some contributing culpability for not following the action (villains push of 9500 in chips), even if the dealer pushed the pot to hero.

So we're back to the current situation. IMO it requires a Rule 1 solution because the action is so non-standard. There's culpability to go around: most culpable is the dealer, villain has some culpability for not protecting his hand (but he did table it), and I think hero still has some culpability (although the least here) for not following the action.

My first preference is to retrieve hero's 2nd card. You say that you know he had AA, how do you know this? If the 2nd card could be identified to 100% certainty even if it's technially mucked that's the best solution, and play the hand out. If the card can't be identified with certainty then it's a comedy of errors with shared culpability. My reluctant second preference then is to award the pot through the last intact action which is hero's call of villain's 1500 total re-raise to hero, but not require villain to put in the additional 9500 because there's too much shared responsibility for the error beyond that point. I don't especially like that ruling, but IMO it's the least bad (or least unfair) of several possibilities. Often that's how Rule 1 rulings turn out.

Thanks for a very interesting case.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2011, 12:24:32 PM by MikeB »