Showing a called hand

A few days ago while playing at the Riviera a situation came up that I've read about many times but never witnessed before.

The under-the-gun player (UTG) raised to $17. It was folded around to the small blind (SB), who shoved for his last roughly $60. UTG called and showed J-J. SB didn't show his hand. The board ran out 6-Q-2-8-7. SB nodded grimly, as if acknowledging defeat, and slid his cards face-down to the dealer. Nothing unusual so far.

But then UTG asked to see the hand. OK, this is uncommon, but I've seen it a few times before. It's a pretty slimey thing to do. You gain a small amount of information about one opponent, but it comes at the cost of possibly embarrassing him unnecessarily, possibly angering him, and getting yourself branded as a USDA-certified Grade A douche. It's much better to just take the pot quietly and unceremoniously, and be happy with the outcome. Really--why do you care what hand you beat?

Anyway, the dealer tapped the two cards on the muck, then turned them face up. It was 9-10 offsuit. The dealer then plowed them into the muck.

That's what I've never seen before: the apparent winner of the pot asking to see his opponent's folded cards and learning that the opponent misread his hand and had thrown away the winner. (In this case, SB obviously overlooked having made runner-runner straight.)

It wasn't clear that the dealer or either player recognized the significance of what had been revealed. I saw it, as did another player--a thin, middle-aged woman. I don't know her name, but I've seen her around town many times before. She's a decent and obviously experienced player.

She saw what I saw and caught my eye. I just shrugged, because there was nothing to be done. I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) that the dealer's action of touching the cards to the muck meant that the house rule was that the hand was deemed dead before it was exposed, so it didn't matter if it was the best hand or not; the pot would still go to the guy with J-J.

The woman, though, started making a fuss about the pot going to the wrong player. Then it became clear that the dealer did, in fact, recognize what had been revealed; he simply hadn't reacted for the same reason that I just shrugged it off--there was no recourse, so no point in making a big deal about it.

When the woman questioned him about it (I think she was initially a bit uncertain whether she had seen what she thought she had seen), he explained that that's exactly the reason for touching the cards to the muck--to kill the hand before exposing it. Once that has been done, there is only one live hand, and therefore only one place the pot can be awarded.

The woman refused to accept this. She thought it was an abomination. She not only insisted that the dealer was wrong, but that there was no poker room in town in which that would be the proper procedure.

********

Allow me to digress for a moment about the idiocy of how people tend to argue with each other. Actually, there are a whole bunch of interrelated stupid things that they do. First, they seem to care intensely not just about actually being right (I fully sympathize with that part of it; I, too, value being right about things), but about convincing some other random stranger that they'll never see again of the rightness of the position being staked out.

If it were me, and if I hadn't seen the dealer tap the cards to the muck, I might speak up initially to be sure that the dealer knew that SB's hand was the straight. If the dealer made clear that he had recognized that, then explained that the house rule was that the hand was dead anyway, I'd accept that and be done with it. I might even later, away from the table, check with the floor person if I had some substantial reason to think that this was wrong. (Regular readers will know that I've enountered many situations in which dealers didn't know either the general rules or the house-specific rules.) In this case, though, it's one fairly standard variant of a rule, so I would see nothing surprising about it.

The second stupid thing that people arguing do is step back and start making their arguments broader and more all-encompassing than their initial position. Here, for example, it wasn't enough for this woman to question whether the dealer had the rule right for the Riviera. She quickly enlarged her claim to being that no other poker room in the city worked that way. This is where I started rolling my eyes. It's just not plausible that she has gone around and taken a survey of all 50+ poker rooms on this very specific question, or that she has played in every room enough times to have seen it come up and get handled in every one of the rooms. In short, she is just making this up (or, at best, making an overly broad generalization from whatever her experience is).

The dealer, in turn, also backed up so that he could take a bigger, broader swing. Had I been the dealer, I would have told her, "I can't speak for what any other casino does, ma'am. I only know for sure what our rules are." That's it. Let it drop. Who cares what she thinks any other card room does?

But no. He was getting palpably irritated at being questioned. He upped the ante, so to speak, and said just the opposite of her claim: that their rule was the same at every other place in town--in fact, it was the same at every poker room in the whole state, because--get this--it's a Nevada gaming regulation to do it that way.

This is just as much of a lie--or, at best, a gross instance of being badly misinformed--as the woman's claim about what the rule is everywhere in town. His, though, is more easily checked from a readily verified source. The gaming regulations are available here, in a text-searchable PDF file. The word "poker" occurs only four times. The most detailed rules pertaining to the game are at Regulation 23, and there's nothing said about what happens to a killed hand. For that matter, there are no details about a flush beating a straight, the action going clockwise, or a zillion other large and small points of the game. The regs just aren't that detailed. Nearly all of Regulation 23 is about what happens to the money, not any details of how the game is played.

The next stupid thing that people arguing tend to do is make appeals to authority. In this situation, the woman first proclaimed her own experience as a dealer and floor person for however many years. When that wasn't sufficiently persuasive (by this time, the dealer was finally starting to bite his tongue and tell her that he wouldn't argue further with her about it), she said, "Ask Linda Johnson. She's been in the poker industry for 30 years and she helped write the rules for the World Series of Poker."

You see how stupid this is, don't you? First--again--why on earth does she care so passionately about convincing this dealer that she's right? If I know I'm right about some particular point, and, after explaining my position, some random person that I happen to be talking to about it doesn't choose to believe me, well, OK, suit yourself. I just can't bring myself to care whether that person leaves the encounter thinking that I'm right or wrong. People's egos are so fragile; they can be damaged simply by a stranger not accepting their version of some obscure factual point. I just don't get that.

But beyond that, is this woman really so daft as to think that after this dealer invokes (1) the house rule, (2) his own personal experience, and (3) a claim about what the state regulations require, he is going to suddenly abandon his belief when she mentions how many years she spent as a poker room employee? He is obviously just as stubborn as she is. Next, how does invoking Linda Johnson's name change the situation? Again, does she think that that will suddenly cause his position to change? That's insane. Moreover, does she expect him to say, "Hey, asking Linda Johnson is a great idea. Excuse me a second while I go make the call"? It makes no sense whatsoever to invoke authority that is, for all practical purposes, unavailable at the time. You might as well be having an argument about the Big Bang, and when your interlocutor disagrees with you, riposte by saying, "Oh yeah? Well, call Stephen Hawking and ask him!"

I love the scene in "Annie Hall" in which Woody Allen nicely skewers such moronic ways of arguing (taken from the imdb.com page here):

Alvy Singer: [the man behind him in line is talking loudly] What I wouldn't
give for a large sock with horse manure in it!

Alvy Singer: [to audience] Whaddya do when you get stuck in a movie line
with a guy like this behind you?

Man in Theatre Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a
free country!

Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean,
aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is,
Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan!

Man in Theatre Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class
at Columbia called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr.
McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity!

Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr.
McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me... [pulls McLuhan out from behind
a nearby poster]

Alvy Singer: come over here for a second... tell him!

Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my
work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in
anything is totally amazing!

Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this!

It's all so, so stupid.

*********

So what is the actual rule? Well, it varies a lot from place to place. There are differences in who can ask to see a called but unshown hand, and differences in the details of the procedure invoked for it, which are related to whether the hand can be deemed the winner once exposed. In some places, only players still in the hand at final showdown can claim the right to see the hand; in others, any player can make the request. In some, as at the Riviera, the hand is killed before being shown so that it cannot win no matter what. In others, it is deemed still live. In yet others, it is live if the request is made by the ostensible winner of the hand (so that asking to see it carries the risk that you'll lose the pot if the player folding misread the situation, as happened here), but the hand is dead if the request is made by a player not involved.

Here, for example, is the relevant text from Robert's Rules of Poker:

Any player who has been dealt in may request to see any hand that was
eligible to participate in the showdown, even if the opponent's hand or the
winning hand has been mucked. However, this is a privilege that may be revoked
if abused. If a player other than the pot winner asks to see a hand that has
been folded, that hand is dead. If the winning player asks to see a losing
player’s hand, both hands are live, and the best hand wins.

Here's The Rules of Poker by Lou Krieger and Sheree Bykofsky, p. 142, #5.25:

Any participant in a hand may ask to see a hand that was called. The proper
dealer procedure is to kill the called hand by touching it to the muck, then
place the hand face up on the table. If the player who won the pot asked to see
the mucked hand, and the mucked hand is actually the superior hand, then the
caller's hand is assumed to be live and the pot will be awarded to that player.
If a third party asks to see a called hand, the called hand is considered dead.
Even if it turns out to be the better hand, it is dead and cannot claim the pot.

Here's Roy Cooke and John Bond, Rules of Real Poker, p. 74 #11.08:

Players shall not be entitled to see a called hand except in cases where
there is a reasonable suspicion of collusion, in which case the floorperson
shall be called over for examination of the called hand. This is contrary to the
traditional rule. However the traditional rule, which was designed to prevent
collusion, has not served its original purpose. Asking to see called hand slows
down the game, causes resentment and impedes action. The first alternate rule
continues to be the most prevalent, but in the interests of the game it should
be completely done away with.

Alternate Rule: At the showdown, any player who was dealt into the hand has
the right to ask to see any called hand. Before turning over the hand the dealer
shall kill the hand by touching it to the muck. If the hand is not killed it is
still live and eligible to win the pot.... The purpose of this rule is to
protect against collusion, not to satisfy a player's curiosity or get a read on
a player's style of play, or worst of all to intentionally irritate a player.
Abuse of this rule is very bad for poker as it kills action and causes
resentment....

Second Alternate Rule: Only players who have been in on the turn in hold'em
games, fifth street in stud games, and for the draw in draw games shall have the
right to see a called hand; also, a winner cannot ask to see a loser's hand.

Here's Dan Paymar, Donna Harris, and Mason Malmuth, The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook, 2nd ed., p. 143:

Showing a Folded Hand

The policy of seeing a "called hand" or a "calling hand" that was discarded
can be seen by any player at the table. [sic] The dealer must tap the cards face down
on the muck to "kill" the hand, then turn it face up on the table.

If a player abuses this privilege--that is, if he constantly asks to see
other players' hands--he may be refused the right to see any hands. The
floorperson will make this decision.

So you can see that even among published rule books there is considerable disagreement about this rule. But at the very least, the detail of having the dealer kill the unseen hand before revealing it (in some circumstances, anyway) is present in all three of the books that I have on hand. Thus, for the woman at the Riviera to assert it as some sort of unique perversion of the general rule is woefully misguided.

I don't claim to know which specific variants of the rule are used at what casinos. I doubt that anybody has taken a survey and could tell us definitively what is most prevalent on each of the sub-questions involved. And it really doesn't matter. All of the possible variations carry advantages and disadvantages. There's plenty of time to find out what a particular room's rule is if and when the situation arises.

Incidentally, neither player involved in the hand ever spoke or reacted in any way. I was never sure if either of them realized what had happened. Maybe one or both did, and simply realized that nothing was going to change by talking about it and shrugged it off. I'll never know.