Floor!

[HalfSugar]

A crazy situation arose during the live tourney I played in London last weekend and I'd like to know what people think is the correct ruling.

The action is irrelevant, all that matters is that two players ended up all-in pre-flop, both turned over their hands and before he could be stopped, the dealer scooped up both face up hands, the muck pile and the deck and started shuffling them together. It was impossible to separate the hands from the muck or the stub, all that was left was a pile of part shuffled face down cards.

Everyone knew the hands were AT vs AA and everyone knew the suits. What is the correct ruling here?

[SDPokerDude]

First, the dealer gets pulled from the table. Other than that, since the cards were exposed, and there was no question of the suites, than those cards would be pulled from a deck and a board would be dealt from the rest of the (shuffled) deck.

What was the excuse the dealer gave for doing that? Did he think the AT was mucked?

[Felting]

the only honorable thing would be for the dealer to commit suicide with a plastic spork.

[HalfSugar]

What was the excuse the dealer gave for doing that? Did he think the AT was mucked?

As you can imagine, the situation was rather tense, particularly for the guy with AT. To be fair, everyone handled themselves pretty well and those not involved (such as me) just STFU.

Saying that, there were a few conversations happening at once at times and the dealer, who was foreign and who's English was not that wonderful, never really did offer too much of a coherent explanation.

The way I see it there are three possible options here:

1) Retrieve the cards and deal a board
2) Return all chips to the players and declare a misdeal
3) Create what would be the all-in sized pot and then equity chop it 80/20 (AA vs AT with no dominated T suit)
(And of course #4 - death by spork)

Taking each one in turn:

1) The reason I personally do not like this at all is that the muck pile is included in the deck from which the new board would be dealt which prejudices the potential outcome quite badly. It definitely swings things in the favour of the AT guy since any folded tens are back in the deck, as are other relevant cards he can catch. If the muck could have been identified, this ruling is 100% the correct one, albeit with a shuffled deck which is never ideal especially for those who believe in fate Online I am pretty sure that the deck is constantly shuffled during a hand.

2) Given the issue with the muck pile being irretrievable, I favour #2 as the correct outcome. It sucks for AA who should immediately punch the dealer square in the face but shit happens.

3) This was an option proposed by someone after the event and I quite like it in a way but since this is an impossible outcome, I don't think it could ever work. If every hand was dealt with in this way, no-one would ever run out of chips because unless you are drawing dead, you always have some equity no matter how small. If you run AA vs AT 100,000,000 times it may come out 80/20 but every deal has to go one way or another and this result should be no different.

As a caveat to #2, strangely there was an identifiable pile of chips on the table once the error had been spotted. Since I had missed the build up to the incident by talking to the guy next to me, I have no idea how this pile appeared but I can only assume that this was the betting that occurred prior to someone (presumably Mr AA) declaring themselves all-in. My guess is that someone pushed the pot together (the dealer) or requested that the pot be pushed together (Mr AT) for some reason. I can't think of one but there was definitely an identifiable pile of chips which was perhaps 1/4 of what would have been to the total all-in pot. Another option therefore is to award this pot to the AA and move on without dealing a new board. That would probably be my choice of option personally.

The floor ruled............................I'll tell you soon once I have more ideas from you!

[miaowmiaowchowface]

yipes

[SDPokerDude]

The closest I can think of to this is the situation in the Main Event a few years back where the lady in s10 claimed to have had AA but the dealer pulled her cards into the muck because she did not have them protected. The floor declared that her all-in bet would be reduced to a call-and-fold, but that still killed her stack by about 75%.

If I were TDing this tourney, I would have dug out the hands from the muck (there was no question of what the two hands were, apparently) then shuffle the entire muck and deal a board. Not ideal, but the closest to ideal given the situation.

[golddog]

If I'm TD, I think #2 (although not particularly palatable either), and that dealer has dealt his last hand in my casino.

[BeerWench13]

the only honorable thing would be for the dealer to commit suicide with a plastic spork.

QFT