Cards live till literally touching the Muck?

[Iron Tigran]

[ QUOTE ]

You don't. If he had thrown his cards into the muck, and then tried to retrieve them, you still would have lost. Cards can still be played from the muck when they are "easily retrievable", and it's in the best interests of the game.

If the dealer mucks the cards, then they are dead. If the player mucks, they sometimes still can play.

[/ QUOTE ]

It would be a terrible ruling to allow a player to retreive cards from the muck. Adding "sometimes" makes it even worse.

Opening up the game to that kind of chaso seems very much against the best interests of the game.