Floor Ruling

[NoChance]

I was at Casino Arizona Walking Stick last weekend when the following situation came up:

Early position loose player enters the pot. He has a very low stack. I raise in late-middle position with pocket sixes to try and get heads up for when he goes all-in. Small blind calls and RP better calls for three of us in the hand.

The flop came Axx. The early position player bets which puts him all in. I raise to try to knock the other guy out but he calls. The turn is an ace and the river is a blank. I bet both the turn and river and the small blind called.

The dealer asks the two of us who are not all in to flip up our cards for the side pot. I show a pocket pair of sixes unimproved and he shows a pocket pair of tems unimproved. At that moment, the loose early position player also turns his cards over and shows AQ for trip aces. The small blind sees the trip aces and grabs his pocket tens that are laying face up on the table and throws them in the muck. The dealer had not begun to push him the chips yet and frankly, the early position player probably should not have even revealed his hand yet.

Who wins the side pot?

Two spots to my right was an off duty dealer playing at the table with us. I could see the dealer looking at him as if to ask, "Who gets the pot?". The dealer ended up calling a floor person for a ruling.

[4_2_it]

The cards talk. If he placed them face up and everyone at the table confirms this, then the floor should give him the side pot. The dealer should have ignored the all-in player and pushed the side pot to the pocket 10's before ascertaining who takes the main pot.

This is more cut and dry then the situation where a player mucks his card face down and then wants to retrieve them because he has the winning hand. He displayed his cards, the cards talk, he wins the side pot.

[W. Deranged]

The other guy had a better hand. He turned it face up. Everyone saw it. You lose.

Frankly, I don't even think you should be thinking about trying to win pots this way. Card talk. Even suggesting that you might be in some way entitled to any part of this pot puts you in a category of undesirable poker players (angle shooters, nits, etc...) that you really don't want to be in.

[NoChance]

They called the floor person over and he asked what happened. We ALL admitted he had pocket tens and they were face-up on the table for a few seconds. Both dealers at the table simply didn't know who to push it to.

Now for the strange part. They implemented a new rule a couple weeks prior where the dealer MUST push the winning hand(s) into the center of the table (for the cameras) before a pot can be pushed. The floor person simply said that because the cards were mucked, they can't grab the cards out of the muck to place them in the center of the table. They pushed the side pot to me.

I felt like it was a crappy way to win a hand. The other person didn't put up much of a fuss or I would have offered to split it with him. I was not angle shooting or anything. The dealer called the floor. I didn't even ask them to do so. I even admitted I saw the pocket tens. The side pot was small in this case that it really wasn't all that important. I just wanted to see what others thought of this ruling.

[Jeffage]

The tens were shown face up. They are a live hand and the cards speak and must be properly identified. He gets the money.

Jeff

[4_2_it]

[ QUOTE ]
They pushed the side pot to me and I kept it even though I didn't win it .

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP

BTW - The karma police have been notified. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[NoChance]

Yes, this is probably true. I can't stop thinking about that hand and wondering how many times out of 100 they push the pot to me. I guess I can see both sides of it but I honestly thought they would push it to the other guy.

[4_2_it]

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, this is probably true. I can't stop thinking about that hand and wondering how many times out of 100 they push the pot to me. I guess I can see both sides of it but I honestly thought they would push it to the other guy.

[/ QUOTE ]

The floor made a mistake and the other guy didn't bitch and moan about it. Seems to me, he showed a lot of class by accepting 'his mistake' without much fuss (It if was me in that position, I would have had a few choice words for the floor).

However, no one prevented you from doing the ethical thing here. The fact that it bothered you enough to post it tells me that you aren't a douche or angleshooter, but rather you probably just regret the way it went down. Your table image would have been +++EV if you would have pushed the guy that side pot.

That was one of the worst floor rulings I've ever heard about...Thanks to the poker gods that it wasn't for an enourmous hand.

[Percula]

[ QUOTE ]
The floor made a mistake and the other guy didn't bitch and moan about it. Seems to me, he showed a lot of class by accepting 'his mistake' without much fuss (It if was me in that position, I would have had a few choice words for the floor).

[/ QUOTE ]

No the floor made the ruling according to the rules at the club.

I do not have all the details, but recently there was a big stink over a high stakes hand like this. The state gaming commision got involved as did the camaras. The problem hand that started the big stink was outside the "best viewable" area of the camara aka the box.

So to avoid this type of problem in the future the club has made a rule that winning hands have to be in the "box" on the felt before a pot can be pushed. There are marks on the table defining the corners of the "box".

It is the dealers job to pull winning hands into the box before pushing the pot. If anything it was the dealer that was at fault here, he/she should have blocked the muck and placed the hand in the box and pushed the pot, not too mention stopping the AI from showing down early.

The house can not bend the rules on something like this it opens up big time legal problems. Rules to be rules have to enforced consistantly all the time.

Did the guy with TT win the side pot, absolutely! Did he make a major live poker mistake, absolutely... Never muck your hand until you are sure you have lost or have the pot pushed to you.

If I was the OP I would have got up after neatly stacking the side pot and set it in front of the player with the TT and say "Nice hand, careful next time, not everyone here is going to do what I just did".