Rare Situation

[Cottie]

Right i hold a poker night every week at my house and usually we play with a new deck every game so there is never any problems however this evening we didnt we used old decks lying around and as we were waiting for other players to arrive me and a friend were sorting out and shuffling the decks ready to play. he had 1 deck he was shuffling and i had another i counted my deck 3 times to make sure there was 52 cards in it an there was but my mate didnt and he just sat there shuffling them for about 20 mins and when everyone arrived we started using the deck he had in his hand as we were ready to go and at this point i hadnt realised he didnt check or count the deck but only after and hour of play a huge problem occured and i could use some clarity on what we should of done.

I'm player 1, my bro is player 2, my bro's friend is player 3, my friend who originally shuffled deck not involved in this hand at all.

Player 1 QQ
player 2 AA
Player 3 Q9

Player 3 goes all in pre-flop, player 1 an 2 calls. High betting on turn and finally on river player 2 bets all in, player 1 calls. Community was:

QQ7KA

we all show our cards and thats when the arguments happened. I said as none of us was dealer and that no cards were shown until after the river was down that everything on the board should count as is, however the other 2 players said that it was a complete misdeal and that the hand should start again, but on closer inspection of the deck we found that 6 cards were missing and 3 extras as well so after alot of arguing and getting no were i thought it best that everyone over start chips keeps them anyone under gets them back. I have searched high and low on the net for any situation like this but only found the futurama refernce with bender having 5 kings so if anyone could clarify on this it would be a great help thxs.

[crack]

I dunno, but I would say seeing as the deck was not correct then everyone before the hand should have their chips back and the cards should be dealt again with a new deck.

[HalfSugar]

I think it's an impossible one to rule correctly on and there is no standard answer.

My personal opinion is that that hand is definitely void and the players involved (and any blinds paid by players not involved) should be refunded their chips.

As for dealing with what has gone before, I personally would have just changed the deck and continued without amending anyone's chip count. I'd argue that everyone was at the same advantage/disadvantage until the error was spotted and it would be impossible to assess the effect of the foul deck on hands that have gone before.

[jeffonline]

NO QUESTION, FALSE DEAL. all money returned players. Please in future leave your guns at home.