Dealer mistake

[hoosier418]

 I will explain the best I can , but I was at another table when this occurred. Seats 1 and 9 (players left and right of the dealer) are involed in a hand . After the flop Seat 9 bets 1200 . Dealer turns to the player on his left and says "player all in for 1200". Seat calls and turns his cards face up . After exposing his cards he sees that seat 9 is NOT all in and quickly turns his cards back over. Thinking that seat 9 did not see them. Dealer did not ask if the cards were seen.
The hand played out and seat 1 wins the hand with a flush. In the discussion afterward seat 9 admits he saw the hand but did not see the suits . After the game the player in seat 1 asked me what should have happened .
I told him the dealer should have questioned the other player. Hoping for the truth obviously. If he stated that he had seen the cards . I would have stopped the betting and played the hand out as if a player was truely all in. My feeling was because of dealer error I cannot give one player an advantage . And that this would have been the best solution.
Would that have been correct?

[Stuart Murray]

Hoosier,

I like your interpretation of events and your solution to the possible problem of the exposed hand.  Whilst it is still the players responsibility to check the bet they are being faced with, the dealer did give incorrect information to the player who flipped over his hand and therefore freezing action and checking down the rest of the betting rounds seems perfectly acceptable in this circumstance.

Other factors I would be considering are, why did the dealer give this information?  were player 9s chips hidden? why did player 9 not correct the situation if he was sitting beside the dealer he was bound to hear him say that he was all-in.  In this instance I would be very suspicious of player 9s actions (or lack of action) towards duty of care and the best interests of the game.

Best Regards
Stuart

[MikeB]

Interesting situation, Hoosier. I don't think the TDA has a single specific rule you can apply here, in my mind this comes down to the best interest of the game and your sense of fairness as a TD assessing all the facts at hand.  These are the kind of situations "you have to be there" to make a definitive judgement but I'd probably reason it out something like this: 1) Player 1's cards have been exposed through very little fault of his own. While we could blame seat 1 for not watching player 9's stack, we could equally blame player 9 for not speaking up and telling the dealer that he is NOT all in at 1200, which he didn't do. And we can all agree the dealer has the greatest share of culpability here. So Player 1 is looking at a real injury with exposed cards. 2) Player 1 called the 1200, perhaps he would have called a larger bet if given the opportunity. SO 3) If we allow Player 9 to continue to raise here having seen Player 1s cards which were exposed by at least in part some error on 9's part we're really shafting seat 1, IMO, albeit player 9 is shafted a bit too if his right to continue betting is cut off.  4) Did Player 9 see the cards or not? I don't usually want to guess at that. If there is any remote possibility, I assume that he did, and that seems to be the case here. I certainly wouldn't take his word that he did or didn't, I'd assess the viewing angle and see if the possibility existed. Not calling him a liar, it's just an issue of protecting seat 1 here. Given that, I'm pretty sure I'd consider Seat 1's cards expsoed here, and in fact player 9 said he saw the values if not the suits;.

We don't have great options here, but IMO we have a "lowest harm" option and that's to call it all-in for 1200 and show it down. This is just my personal viewpoint as a judge, that when these situations arise, where all your options hurt someone, pick the one that does the least harm....
A second option that I might consider would be to allow 9 to reconsider his bet because his bet was improperly declared as an all-in, but I struggle with the basis for that ruling.... Similarly, you might consider allowing Seat 1 to re-consider his bet because he called an "erroneous bet" of sorts... but he did have some culpability in that he should have been following the action also and he may have pick up valuable reads on Seat 1 given all this commotion.
I just don't like the fourth option of allowing seat 9 to continue to bet, given the degree of his participation in the error that led to seat 1's exposure, and the fact that the dealer was deeply involved in the error.

[hoosier418]

 Thanks for the input . At least I know I was on the right line of thinking .

[Nick C]

Hoosier418

  I like your call. I can only blame the dealer in this situation for his incorrect statement. I will assume that these were the only players involved in the hand when this occurred. Playing the hand out the way you did, was proper. This might be irrelevant but, player one was the winner of the hand and he possibly could have made a lot more money, there were two more betting rounds. Thinking out loud. Who knows what could have been? I like what Mike said "why did the dealer think that player 9 was all-in."  Interesting, but, I think you made a good call.