Variation on a theme

Here we go again, just a few hours after the last incident. Once again, as presented by PokerNews:

Hand Killed, Table Flips

A controversy erupted over on the high Green tables. A player was all
in and another player called. Both players turned their cards over, and the
raiser walked away, refusing to look at the board. The dealer, thinking that his
cards were now dead, mucked his hand and started pushing the pot toward the
other player.

That's when the controversy started. The floor was called and the players
were asked what their hands were - but neither player could remember exactly
what they were. Ultimately, the pot was reconstructed and then split between the
two players.

This one is a little trickier, but the same bedrock rule applies: Each player is responsible for protecting his hand. Before the cards are revealed, that usually involves capping them and/or keeping a hand on them. But the responsibility extends all the way until the hand is over.

The usual safe practice is that you keep your now face-up cards directly in front of you, and only relinquish them to the dealer in exchange for the pot. The pot should be coming your way before you turn your cards in, because at that point the dealer will have killed all of the other hands, and anybody who thinks he has a claim to the pot or a portion thereof should have spoken up.

However, in some tournaments (especially at televised tables) dealers are instructed to bring the players' hole cards in toward the center of the table so the camera can capture everything important on the table in one shot. That means that you lose physical control of the cards. But even then, your minimal obligation for protecting your hand means staying right at the table, so that if the dealer makes a move to kill your hand erroneously you can instantly speak up. Most dealers will pick up the hand to be killed, check it one last time, tap it on the table once or twice, then turn it face down, then put it into the muck. If the dealer is doing this, then you should have several seconds of warning of the impending muck in which to yell "Wait!" before the cards get lost irretrievably. Of course, in that situation you have the added protection of all the other players (and the cameras) having seen what the cards were. But the primary obligation is still on the player himself.

Yes, certainly the dealer made a mistake here. I can only guess that he or she assumed that the player walking away had decided he had no chance of winning. That happens sometimes. (In fact, it happened at the WSOP yesterday. I don't remember all the details of the PN story, but one player made a full house when three of a kind came on the flop, and his opponent gave up, thinking he couldn't win, and headed for the door. Well, he was right that he couldn't win the hand outright at that point, but he had forgotten about the one in a squintillion chance of ending up with a chop--which is what happened when the final board was quads with an ace! Other players had to run to catch up with him and bring him back to the table.) When a player basically abandons his hand, what is the dealer supposed to do--push chips to a now-empty seat? So it's an understandable mistake, and one that could easily have been avoided if the moron had just stayed at the table.

As with using a card cap, this is really, really simple. Basically all you have to do to prevent loss of your hand in such a situation is stay at the friggin' table and pay a little attention until the hand is over. What the hell is so hard about that???

And, by the way, what is this nonsense about not looking at the community cards as they come out? Probably some sort of stupid superstition he has developed. If so, his allegiance to bizarre unseen forces (apparently some being that will take offense if the player looks at the cards, and will thus magically change the order of the cards in the dealer's hand so that they come out unfavorably to the offending player, I guess) is greater than his commitment to protecting his hand. What brilliant, wonderful priorities. Frankly, he deserves whatever happens to him.

I will never understand poker players.

As for the floor decision, it may have been the best (or the least bad) of the options available at that point. Another option would be to check the security camera tapes, pull those four cards out of the deck, reshuffle the remainder, and play the hand out. Might be more trouble than it's worth, though.