7-card stud, Ran out of cards

[Brian Vickers]

I understand stud well, and I know that if you don't have enough cards for everyone to get a 7th street that your first goal should be to combine the burn cards with the stub and if you have enough cards that way, then you give everyone a 7th street down.  If you don't have enough with the burns, then you use a community card. 

I was thinking today of a screwy situation that might happen with a break-in dealer or just one that wasn't paying attention.  Say you have 8 players still in on 7th st and your dealer starts dealing to the first couple spots and then realizes he's out of cards.  You get called over and then find out that combining the stub and burn cards you won't have enough to give everyone else a 7th street face down.  Now, 1-2 of your players already have 7th st... so what do you do?  I don't think you can bring back 7th street from those players because they could easily give you the wrong card (intentionally or not), so I see two options, Option A) use a community card for the remaining players only and the other players keep their 7th st.  Option B) If there are muck cards, possibly using the muck(?).  I think I like option A better then B, but there might be another option I haven't thought of.
If you use either of these options may have to give a player the option to "declare himself all-in" (expression only, not actually all-in for those who aren't aware of this use of the term) where they are not included in the last betting round, and all other players bet on the side pot.

Have any of you run into this circumstance in stud?

[Nick C]

Brian,
I've dealt stud and I've never had that situation arise. Consider this; with 8 players on seventh street you would have only one card left (6X8=48+three burns=51)...so you would have no alternative but to call the floor, mix the three burn cards with the last card and burn and turn the final card as the community card. In other words it can't happen. I guess if some other irregularity occurred prior to the last round (like an exposed bur card), then your example of no more betting would be good. Your situation could take place with less than 8 players on seventh street and your example A is perfect for that. Of course the best solution is to train the dealers to be sure that they have two more cards than players before they begin to deal.

[Brian Vickers]

This situation was totally hyopthetical, of course.  I'm sure there is some mathematical way of setting it up, but I'm too tired to think clearly today

[Nick C]

Brian,
I'm sure there are many different situations where that could occur. I just wanted to mention the exact scenario with 8 players could not happen. I've never seated 9 players in any stud tournament (even though that is what stud tournament rules allow), so I guess it could happen if a player dropped out on an earlier round. In any event, your suggestion for mixing the burns and using a community card for the remaining players makes the most sense. You could stop any further betting, or (as you suggested) you might consider offering them the chance to declare themselves all-in.

[Brian Vickers]

It seems to be the only reasonable option.