Dealer Screw up

[DNutini]

Hey guys......I usually just lurk and let you all do the talking, but I wanted some opinions on a situation that happened last night that I literally have never seen before.

This is NOT at a casino, but at a local club near my home. MTT in which the final table just came together......I have one of the top 2-3 chip counts at the table when I look down at AKs in 2nd position. I am sitting with about 8000 chips with blinds of 100-200. I open raise to 800, and the player to my immediate left goes all-in for roughly 4000. It folds back around to me, and I have a decision to make whether I want to race (so I believe) for half of my chip stack. I am looking down thinking when I hear a little commotion amongst the players......when I learn that the all-time dealer (he was also playing in the tournament) had taken all of the 16 mucked cards and put them on top of the live deck.......he claims he did not shuffle or anything, but I didnt see anything, so I am hesitant to believe anything. The older gentleman next to the dealer takes the cards and starts trying to find his 2 cards, and says only one is there......but he is rather goofy and may just not remember his cards....who knows. But the point is, is that I go ahead and fold (which I probably would have done 75% of the time anyways even without the debacle). It helped my decision to know that if a pile of cards containing folded cards (that are not as likely to be aces or kings) are possibly being dealt.....my percentages really fall drastically.

The guys who runs the club comes over.....who is also pretty loopy and doesnt know a ruling,and since I already folded.....kinda just forgets about it.....which is fine since I just wanted to move the game along. But what could have or should have been done here? It was suggested that the entire deck (folded and undealt cards) be shuffled and flopped, etc.....but I wasnt having that at all.

I know this game sounds like a cluster-F---, but it is actually not a bad game....just one that the dealer made a bonehead mistake.

Opinions?

[Cornell Fiji]

I am not sure what you are really asking but you should have called pretty quickly with AKs after the other guy shoved.

You only need to be ahead 40% of the time for the call to be +ev and considering that the other guy has 20bbs left his pushing range is wide enough for this to be an easy call (you are 50/50 if he is only pushing pairs and AQ+, if you add anything else to that range your equity is over 50% not even considering pot odds)

Did you suspect that something shady was going on or that the dealer was just not paying attention? Why was one of the players looking through the deck after the dealer mixed in the stub? There are other things that also strike me as wrong but I guess thats what you get for playing in a poorly run club.

[DNutini]

[ QUOTE ]
I am not sure what you are really asking but you should have called pretty quickly with AKs after the other guy shoved.

You only need to be ahead 40% of the time for the call to be +ev and considering that the other guy has 20bbs left his pushing range is wide enough for this to be an easy call (you are 50/50 if he is only pushing pairs and AQ+, if you add anything else to that range your equity is over 50% not even considering pot odds)

Did you suspect that something shady was going on or that the dealer was just not paying attention? Why was one of the players looking through the deck after the dealer mixed in the stub? There are other things that also strike me as wrong but I guess thats what you get for playing in a poorly run club.

[/ QUOTE ]

With due respect, I am not sure how this is an insta-call. I fully understand the pot odds of the hand, and that I likely priced myself in (not overwhelmingly) for a call after my initial raise, however, there is something to be said for TOURNAMENT STRATEGY in situations like this. Whether I was "priced in" or not.....I knew this player's playing style, and I was confident that he was pushing with a made hand. While I cant say with 100% certainty that it wasnt AQ or AJ....I put about a 15% chance on it. All of the other factors with the dealer screw up aside.....I simply didnt want to race for roughly half of my chip stack in a tournament where I felt that I was the best player at the table. I would rather try to grind out some situations later on and accumulate chips after someone made a mistake......if I wanted to coin flip the guy for money, then we would have just went outside and flipped quarters a hundred bucks at a time.

I guess my question in the post is if any of you were the TD here, and were called while cards were still on the table, what would the correct ruling be?

[Sherman]

Actually, the fact that all the mucked cards were reshuffled into the deck increased your equity!

Here is why:
Put your hand AKs vs. any pair. I'm choosing TT. You have ~46% equity vs. TT with all the cards in the deck.

Now run it again with a single A or K not in the deck. Your equity drops to 42%.

Now put that A/K back and run it again with one T missing. Your equity only jumps to 49%.

Now run it again this time with an A/K and a T missing. Your equity goes to 45%.

Finally, run it one more time with an A and a K missing and both Ts missing. Your equity goes to 43%.

Basically, cards being folded hurt AK more than TT. Looking at it another way, drawing hands like AK get hurt more when their "helpers are gone" than made hands like TT when its "helpers are gone."

BTW, you are making a serious error thinking that just because the cards were folded no Aces or Kings were folded. You were second to act. People could have folded all kinds of hands behind you including A2-AQ and K2-KQ.

IMO, I would have suggested that they reshuffle the remaining deck and been happy to call.

[DNutini]

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, you are making a serious error thinking that just because the cards were folded no Aces or Kings were folded. You were second to act. People could have folded all kinds of hands behind you including A2-AQ and K2-KQ.

IMO, I would have suggested that they reshuffle the remaining deck and been happy to call.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I am not donkish enough to think that all players must play all aces and kings at anytime.....that is obviously ridiculous. I was just making the assumption that on the whole, the majority of the mucked cards have a better chance of not helping my unmade hand than the cards that have not been mucked.....granted, this is information based on an assumption, and really doesnt carry much weight, but it was something that went into my decision.....slightly. But after you break it down, I do see your point on the potential equity of both hands.

[fsoyars]

Without reading the other replies... if you are going to fold, you should at least have said, "I was planning on calling but now I'm not. This is a misdeal and I want my 800 chips back." I mean, seriously...

[Sherman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
BTW, you are making a serious error thinking that just because the cards were folded no Aces or Kings were folded. You were second to act. People could have folded all kinds of hands behind you including A2-AQ and K2-KQ.

IMO, I would have suggested that they reshuffle the remaining deck and been happy to call.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I am not donkish enough to think that all players must play all aces and kings at anytime.....that is obviously ridiculous. I was just making the assumption that on the whole, the majority of the mucked cards have a better chance of not helping my unmade hand than the cards that have not been mucked.....granted, this is information based on an assumption, and really doesnt carry much weight, but it was something that went into my decision.....slightly. But after you break it down, I do see your point on the potential equity of both hands.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mason did some analysis some time ago and wrote an article or book chapter on what you are talking about. I think the concept is called "bunching." Meaning we assume that b/c people fold it is more likely they held low cards. He found that this effect either wasn't true or wasn't significant and I don't remember which. I can't blame you for thinking it was true. I did until I read the article.

[canvasbck]

A similar question came up in the B&M forum. One of the poker room floor guys over there said that the correct ruling (had you not folded) would be to shuffle the muck back into the deck and continue the hand.

Edited for spelling.........I'm huked on fonix

[goodluck2me]

all cards shuffled back into the deck and dealt as normal

[ymu]

This happened in a Cloutier hand he, or someone, wrote about recently. He reraised an EP raise with TT and got reraised AI by someone holding AA and the initial raiser folded. TJ called - and the guy who folded said he had folded TT.

Fortunately for TJ the dealer hadn't noticed TJ's call and had already put the deck in the muck. The cards were reshuffled and the flop dealt. TJ ended up catching quads to beat a set of Aces.

Different card rooms have different rules, but I think the standard is to reshuffle the cards in the muck and deal from there. It changes the outcome of the hand but not in a predictable way - especially if the folded hands are unknown at the time the decision to reshuffle the remaining cards is made.