[bav]

One person at the table admitted the Kh was in her hand, and no she didn't have the Jh. So what the guy without cards got really was two randomish cards. (Two kings came on the board which is why the topic of whose king it was came up.)

How could a dealer do this? Well, that topic also came up. Nobody saw the cards disappear and the dealer was really perplexed and apologetic...the cards disappeared from the 5-seat. He said he'd never in his life swept away cards from in front of him like that, but admitted that yeah, he'd snagged cards from the 1-seat and 10-seat a couple times. People ask if the $54 dude had the cards tucked against the rail or were they out in the middle and $54 said they were RIGHT HERE!

So 10 minutes later Mr$54 is all-in again, this time with his $110, or so. And woosh...his cards ALMOST go away again as the same dealer is sweeping away the cruft. And we all see exactly where they were; they were sitting out well past the yellow line at least a foot from the rail. AHAH!

As for "couldn't he have insisted that the all-in guy's raise stands"... no player gets to insist on anything. The floor will make whatever ruling the floor thinks is right. In this case, were *I* on the floor and had the players not decided to resolve this their own way, I woulda taken $12 from Mr.$54's stack, given him back $42 and pushed the pot to the $12 raiser. Yes, that's a little unfair to the $2 limpers who've already folded, but it's more unfair to the guy without cards to insist he hand over $54 to a player who hasn't even said "call" yet. But yeah, you may find a floor willing to do that.