I call villians river bet and he mucks, am I in my rights to ask to see his cards?

The players shouldn't even have to request this rule be followed.
Any time a player shows his cards to another, the dealer should automatically turn it over for the whole table to see.

But some of you seem to think collusion is ok I suppose.

I'm never, ever showing the cards unless someone asks me to.

Let me ask this... You and I are heads up on the river. You make a small bet. I jam all in. You fold. While the dealer is pushing the chips to me I whisper in my neighbor's ear, "I had top 2 pair."

Am I cheating? Is this collusion? If it is cheating, then what rule have I broken? If it's not cheating then how is this materially different than me showing my hand to my neighbor after you've folded?

I think that is bad as well, but I wouldn't complain unless it was happening very often.

Very big difference though - your whisper could be a lie.

This conversation probably won't go anywhere. chillrob believes that all cheaters are worse than all non-cheaters. I believe not only that his belief wrong but that this is actually a perfect counterexample where the cheater is less harmful, even if we were to all agree on the point that it is cheating.

He will rightly respond that SOSA does not apply to whispering and that no other rule prohibits whispering in that moment, thus it is not cheating. The material distinction is irrelevant when his test is the bright line between what is and is not in the rule book.

Round and round. Neither side is likely to move the other.

I hit publish before seeing this. I'm not sure what the complaint would be or what outcome you would expect. Collusion? Whatever it is, you can move the hypothetical farther away from the hand in both distance and time.

I think players sharing information is generally bad for the game. And I actually once had the complaint made against me! I was playing a small LHE with a friend, whom I was trying to tutor. After each hand he played we whispered a bit of information to each other. After maybe 30 minutes, a floor came up and told us to stop doing that. I assume another player at the table had complained to him about it.

Just to clarify, I was not trying to say that anyone showing his hand to his neighbor is a cheater. I was talking specifically about a player who showed his neighbor, then when another player invoked SOSA, that player attempted to irretrievably force his hole cards into the muck.

Two big differences. First you could be lying. Second there is not a tell one tell all rule but ther is a SOSA rule.

I take exception to this being called cheating.

To me, poker is first and foremost a social game. Many (probably even most at lower stakes) play it primarily for social reasons, not monetary reasons.

So I am all for a culture that brings people to behave in a social manner at a poker table. Make it so social players feel welcomed at the table and drop money. That way everyone is happy. Social players get their fun, monetary players get their money.

Don't get me wrong, I 100% want clean and fair games. Having dishonest games hurts everyone in the long run, even the cheaters.

But when one player briefly flashes a player his hand before folding I absolutely cringe at that being called cheating. Yes there are rules in place against showing other players your cards. These are generally in place to discourage team play. Knowing folded cards can strategically help in the play ofbthe hand.

99.9999999% of the time, a player showing his neighbor his cards is not team play. In fact, if it was, they are going to find better ways to share that information without making it obvious.

If a player shows his cards to his neighbor it is literally almost always because of social reasons. Always. The two players probably recently had a discussion about a particular hand. Maybe someone won a tournament with it. Whatever.

They aren't trying to cheat. They are being social.

To label them cheaters misses the whole point of poker to me. I want social players coming to the table and dropping money. I don't want to run them off by labeling them cheaters when that is clearly not their intent.

I recently played at a $2/$5 game where a player kept trying to bet $100 pre-flop before the cards were out. Sometimes he was UTG, but more often he wasn't. He might be in the cutoff or on the button. Technically he was breaking the rules by betting out if turn. However it was clear he wasn't trying to cheat, he was looking to degenerately gamble. He wanted to splash around chips. Could have someone at the table called him out on his "cheating"? Sure. No one was that crazy though, everyone knew he wasn't cheating to get an advantage, he was a degenerate. Everyone was happy he was trying to spread his money around.

^ you typed out that long comment in opposition to something no one claimed.

By request everywhere I've dealt.

Player has no right to see mucked cards in cash game. Player who mucks gives up his right to contest the pot.

The first part is not accurate in rooms that have a IWTSTH rule. Second part is not accurate in those rooms when invoked by apparent winner.

Heck at showdown player “mucking” (more correctly described as discarding) doesn’t give up all rights to the pot until the dealer has mucked the cards such as they are no longer clearly distinguishable. As long as the cards can be identified they may still have a claim.

rob, I think this might have been where some folks thought you were saying that the mere showing of one's cards to his neighbor is collusion (cheating). I understand that you were talking about the avoidance of SOSA by burying one's cards in the muck, in case that wasn't clear. My comments should be read from that understanding.

Since we are sharing stories, here is one that I have likely told before (because I don't have a lot of stories): Sitting in the Seat 2, I was moving to muck my cards when Seat 3 said "I saw his cards". Then Seat 1 said "Yup, me too". Then Seat 4 (!) said "I saw them too". This was years ago, but I remember kind of chuckling incredulously because I hadn't lifted the cards enough for my direct neighbors to see them, let alone someone two seats over.

There were some requests for SOSA while all three of them took turns naming the ranks of the cards that they saw. Not one of them agreed with another. Not one of them accurately named the ranks. By then I was like "ha, okay" in a "**** this" kind of way, and I buried my cards in the unprotected muck.

The dealer was upset, but you don't get to play three-player whack-a-mole, whiff completely, and then still coerce my hand to be shown through SOSA. That opens the door for any hand to be shown at the whim of a curious player by claiming to have seen it.

This makes me a cheater. I would handle it the same way today!

^ Based on your description of the hand, the SOSA rule should not apply to the situation, since you didn't show your hand to anyone. Even if some of them did catch a glimpse of your cards, you clearly weren't deliberately showing them to anyone. It's my understanding that has to be the case to invoke SOSA, and it's certainly the only time I would invoke it.

(At the end of the hand, anyway. If a player accidentally showed his hand to one of my opponents while we were both still in the hand, I would ask to see it as well.)

Maybe I was unclear with that comment. Obviously most instances of someone showing a hand to a neighbor are not meant to be collusive, but if someone deliberately evades SOSA, that shows it is collusion IMO. If he wasn't meaning his buddy to get useful information, then why would he mind the hand being shown to everyone?

The reason I think dealers should automatically do this is that it prevents other players from having to ask, which can cause unnecessary tension between players. If I ran a room, that would be my rule anyway.

Vloggers should have to show all their hands since they could selectively show some people their hands later