[lmcjaho]

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Also, how on earth did this happen?
Did he push his chips out and say, "all-in" and then the dealer snatched up his cards? Seems kind of weird.

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A friend of mine mucked an all-in players cards once which resulted in the guy losing on the bubble of a satellite-type payout structure (top 20 advance, just surviving into the top 20 is all that matters).

Apparently the guy had been folding the whole time my buddy was at the table by moving his cards about 1 inch to the right (he was in the 1-seat) and had even snapped off a peevish response along the lines of "if I wasn't folding they wouldn't be there" when my buddy told him the action was on him once earlier in the night. So apparently what happened on the hand in question was two other players had moved all in and the 1-seat moved his cards aside to push his chips into the middle of the table - well, since he had been folding in that exact manner all day my friend instinctively grabbed his cards and swept them into the muck...

The best part of the story is the guy didn't even notice until the turn (all action was on the flop) was out and the third burn card was down, at which point he starts shrieking "Where's my cards?!" - and my friend realizes what happened and calls for the Tourney Director... Who informs the gentleman that his cards are gone and he is SOL.

So maybe the guy in the OP had a similar history of folding by pushing his cards to the side, and then he did the same motion to make way for his chips and the dealer just reacted the way he had been "programmed" to by the guy's previous actions... [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]