Playing Live Poker Pt. 2

Protect your cards. Protect, protect, protect your cards.

If the cards from one players hand make contact with the cards in another players hand, both hands are automatically dead.

This is especially important to keep in mind if you're in seat 9 at a casino. Why? The dealer's muck pile is to the right, in front of the rake hole, which is between the dealer and the 9 seat. If someone is trying to be cute and throw their cards straight into the muck instead of just across the line and let the dealer do their job, the cards can sometimes miss and go straight in front of the 9 seat.

If the 9 seat has cards and isn't protecting them (easiest way is to just set a chip on top of them) and the muck-bound cards fly past the muck onto seat 9's cards, seat 9's hand is now dead.

That all said...when you want to fold, just toss the cards across the line and let the dealer do their job instead of potentially pissing of the seat 9 player.


So why do I post this lesson tonight? Well, I was at the casino tonight...it's a $1/$2 cash game. Seat 5 player made it $12. Seat 7 player calls. Seat 9 player raises to $45 or something like that. Seat 5 player reraises. I can't remember to what, and it's not actually important.

Seat 7 throws his cards kinda at the muck, but they end up missing (quite badly) and it looks like seat 9 is playing Omaha.

Seat 9's hand is now dead and there's nothing that ANYONE can do about it. So seat 5 won the pot, including seat 9's $45 and seat 9 was actually counting out a 4-bet. Seat 5 showed AK and seat 9 made a claim to KK. But it didn't matter, and after the floor was called, the pot was appropriately pushed to seat 5.


That all said, seat 9 is at fault for not protecting his own cards. Seat 7 is a douchebag for costing seat 9 $45 instead of letting him at least get a chance to play the hand. But worst of all, in my opinion, since it looked like a genuine mistake and not an attempt at collusion (which is why the hands are ruled dead), seat 5 is kinda a douchebag for not giving seat 9 his bet back. If it were me, I probably would've given it back to him.

Anyway, so yeah, moral of the story, if you play live, protect your cards, and don't throw your muck cards all over the table. Just push them across the line and let the dealer do their job.