Players Prematurely Flips their cards

[dabluebery]

OK, just want to make sure we did this right.

Player goes all-in pre flop. 4 people still in, but when the first of the remaining 3 folds, she thinks she's won the hand, and she turns over her cards.

Now players 3 and 4 know what she has, and they've yet to act. What's the right play here?

We didn't have the robert's rules, and i just looked at them, and i didn't see this specifically.

We ruled that since she had already acted, her cards were still live, and players 3 and 4 had an advantage, knowing her cards. (Had she not acted all-in, we would have considered this a muck)

Rob

[Richard Berg]

Her play was very -EV; no need to think about punishing it. Sucks for her (and possibly for the first folder), but all you can do is make sure all's fair among the remaining players.

[ThinkQuick]

Ya in our game we'd say that it's simply a disadvantage to the exposer.
But we'd say that whether she was all-in or not.

[chesspain]

I was playing in NL cash game last week during which there was a hand where there were three players at showdown. The first player checked, and then the third player (not realizing that he had acted out of turn because he thought they were heads up) checked by flipping his hand up. At that point, the first player, with concurrance by the others, said that player three's hand was dead! Player three apologized and mucked.

I was dumbfounded, and stated that the premature show cards rule was only for tournament play. The others claimed that one gets an advantage by showing early(!?), and that even if it was accidental in a cash game, it is a muck.

Has anyone ever heard of this before?

[ThinkQuick]

I've definitely had some analogous situations occur..
A player accidentally exposes his cards, and then another (strangely enough this player is usually in the hand as well), comes up with a top-of-his head explanation for why the act was angling.

I.E. In your example, Player 1 would claim that that Player 3's check was a clear angle that revealed to Player 2 that Player 3 thought his hand was weaker than Player 1's.

In each case we've decided to let the hand play, and at the same time strongly strongly admonished future angling of any kind.

[Jaquen H'gar]

At a casino, I'm on the button with pocket 8's. Board is Q 10 and rags. First two players check the river, the cutoff forgets about me and checks, showing his AK. I just laughed and said, "Well, I've got you beat." Dealer tells me "bet or check." I ended up checking and taking the small pot.

[jmark]

I guess if there's more than 1 player at the showdown left to act you could give one of them an advantage. But headsup who cares?