[Zetack]

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To add another wrinkle, we also had taped "betting lines" in front of each player position and established that any hand is dead if it is placed in front of that line.



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Well house rules control over standard rules of course.

However, if I understand the situation, it looks like the guy with winning hand threw his cards forward of the betting line and so it would have been dead even if he'd tabled them face up.

For what its worth, I don't much like this rule as I'm commonly in the situation where at showdown I announce my hand, my opponent says "that's good" but waits to see it and I then flip my hand up. Frequently I flip them somewhat towards the board or the dealer at that point. Undoubdtely often that would be forward of the betting line and suddenly my hand, which I had been declared and which would be the winning hand, is dead for crossing the line.

Or am I misunderstanding your rule?

--Zetack

BTW when you say rules are rules, but what would you do, it would be helpful to supply the homegame rules and context like you did in this last post. If you have variant rules which are well publicized to your group, it makes our commentary based on the standard rules pretty irrelevant.