Don't argue about the misdeal

One of the advantages of online poker is that you never have a misdeal. That's not enough to outweigh all of the other stuff that makes live poker so vastly superior to online games, but it's something. Misdeals are a pain in the rear.

A misdeal happens when for some reason the cards get dealt out wrong. There's a list as long as your arm of the different ways this can happen, but they all basically boil down to that one simple essence.

When the dealer realizes that a misdeal has occurred, it's a no-discretion situation. He or she has to collect all the cards, reshuffle, and start over again. OK, not a huge problem, maybe one minute out of my life wasted, but that's about it.

It seems, though, that the problem always gets compounded by one guy at the table who won't accept it. Predictably, somebody was dealt pocket aces or kings or queens before the mistake is discovered, and wants to play the hand out. So he starts kicking up a fuss, trying to find some other solution to the problem instead of just returning his cards to the dealer.

This message is for those morons: Give it up. It does no good. A misdeal is a misdeal, and nothing can be done about it. Your protests only accomplish three things: (1) They label you as a whiner. I can't stand whiners. (2) They waste everybody's time. (3) They tell everybody that you had a monster starting hand, which means that even if you somehow got your way and we played out the hand, you wouldn't get any action, because you've basically told us that you're holding one of the only three or four combinations of cards that anybody would care about relinquishing. Yes, usually the problem was caused by a dealer error, and you're the innocent, wronged victim. So what? Get over it. Things are unfair all over. Move on with your life, and let us do the same. Another hand is coming in about 30 seconds, if you'll just cooperate. The dealer already regrets the error, and piling on abuse will neither remedy the situation nor make it less likely to happen again in the future. Strange as it may seem to you, the rules on what has to be done do not change just because you happened to get two cards that you like.

While I'm on the subject, there is occasionally a related issue. Some kinds of errors in how the cards are dealt can be fixed by the dealer. For example, accidentally dealing a hand to a player who is sitting out until the blinds come back around (e.g., somebody who just came back from a dinner break) can be cured by simply killing the hand after the deal is completed. If the button gets only one card instead of two and doesn't realize that fact until it's his turn, that can be repaired by giving him the second card then, because nothing about the deck has changed. In some casinos, the accidental exposure of the first down card to the last player (the button) is an automatic misdeal, but in others it's handled with a replacement card, just as with any other player position (which, in my opinion, is the preferred approach; the reason for considering that a misdeal is just silly).

Anyway, when one of these fixable problems occurs, I frequently hear a player--always, always somebody who thinks he's an expert on poker rules and procedures, but isn't--calls out "MISDEAL" and throws his cards in towards the dealer. This triggers a chain reaction of other players doing the same thing. Then we really do end up with an untenable situation that can only be fixed by starting over again, but if the know-it-all had just kept his trap shut and let the dealer handle it, we'd be on our way already.

So here's the thing to remember: Only the dealer, not a player, can declare a misdeal. In fact, "misdeal" is a word that should not come out of your mouth at the poker table unless you're the dealer. If you're playing and you hear somebody other than the dealer call it, don't do anything unless and until the dealer asks you to return the cards. There are nearly as many false misdeals because of loudmouths who think they know everything as there are true misdeals, and every one of the former could be eliminated if players would just let the dealer run the game.

The painting above, by the way, is titled "A Misdeal," by the great Frederic Remington (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Remington). Click to enlarge it. You can buy a print of it from the same site from which I lifted the jpeg: http://www.printsoldandrare.com/oldwest/. Fortunately, I haven't yet seen anybody get quite that angry about a misdeal, and hope I never do.