Hi guys, here we go with another situation which I ruled the way I'll tell you later:
Pre-flop there's action till the BB who moved all-in, the 5 players called.
On the flop everybody checked
On the turn dealer mucked the hand of the BB, putting the card into the muck. The cards were not retrievable, but the dealer took two cards he thought to be the player's cards and gave them back.
Right there is the end of the story... player has to protect his own cards. If dealer mucks them he's entitled to no re-dress (save any uncalled bet he made, which isn't the case here), reference TDA Rule 56. Dealer was far wrong to "guess" at the guy's cards. Retrieval is optional and only if you are
100% satisfied as to his cards... 99.9% isn't enough. The TDA has grappled for years with how to better "accomodate" the player who has his cards mucked, and at the end of the day there is no other solution.
The player remembered the cards and the suit of them
This isn't a standard I personally accept unless there are two "obvious" cards just protruding from the muck and the guy names them... The TDA doesn't stipulate exactly what criteria to use...
Then, he told me he had two Kings, diamonds and clubs, and one of the two cards returned by the dealer was a King of diamond.
So I checked the muck and there was a King of club.
Put yourself in the position of this guys opponents... if my opponent loses 2 cards into the muck, then tells the house they were 2 kings... no way.
I thought to be in the best interest of the game to return the cards back since there was substantial action and the hand must continue like that, and also because the pot was created in the previous street, and because I cannot kill a hand if his chips were all-in.
None of those apply. There's always substantial action in these cases, otherwise there would be a re-deal. Pot from prior street doesn't mean anything. You can kill the guys hand despite him being all-in IF there are still players with live cards and betting action remains. It's only once the final betting action occurs that the guys hand (and everyone else's) must be tabled. And even then, if they somehow end up in the muck before they can be tabled, there's no extra urgency, IMO, the 100% certainty standard for retrieval still applies, otherwise the hand is lost.
How to Rule? Just follow TDA Rule 56.
This all said, like anything else is situational.. if you're at a "friendly" tournament, everyone knows everyone, a regular customer and you don't want to &^%$#@ him off, then maybe you relax your retrieval standard a bit... but strictly speaking in general circumstances, no.
Great case Luca, thanks for sharing it.
