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

Same concept applies if a player bets, his opponent folds and the winner flashes his cards to his neighbor before tossing them forward while collecting the pot.

Invoking show one show all in these situations misses the whole point of poker.

And what do you think IS the point of poker?

I wrote earlier:

"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."

If poker ever gets to the point where there are more people playing for money than are playing for social reasons, then poker will die.

When a winning player flashes his cards to his neighbor before tossing his cards in, the advantage the neighbor gained is so ridiculously infinitesimally small that it might as well be zero. Yes, it is 100% technically against the rules for one person to see the cards and no one else see them. This rule was in place to prevent collusion and team playing. However enforcing this rule without having realistic reasons of collusion is crazy.

You don't have to believe me though, just go play in Bobby's Room at the Bellagio. Or go play in the highest limit games at Aria or the Wynn. You will see players flash their neighbor before tossing in their cards all of the time and no one else at the table cares. They recognize it doesn't matter strategically and adds to the social aspect of the game. Why discourage it?

A few months ago I took a bunch of weeks off from dealing where I normally deal. A couple for personal travel, then the last two weeks were spent dealing at a nearby tournament stop. I was in the formal mode of dealing tournaments.

So my first day back to my regular dealing job I get the $10/$20 game. This day there was 3 or 4 regs, 2 semi-regs, and then a couple of players I never saw before. Early in my down there is a hand where one of the semi-regs bets, his opponent folds. He doesn't directly show his neighbor his cards, but holds them in a way that they might be seen. A grey area. Then he tosses them forward. They land, I push the pot. I start to clean up but hesitate to bury the cards in case someone asks to see them (again, I am on formal tournament mode of thinking).

One of the regs sees me doing this and asks me what I am doing. I kill the cards and sheepishly explain that I was waiting in case someone asked to see the hand. He laughs at me and says "You know no one is going to ask to see the cards and even if they did, if you showed them you wouldn't get tipped by anyone else at the table for a month".

He was right. At that level, no one is going to strictly enforce the show one, show all rule. No one. There is nothing to be gained strategically by anyone and it would take away from the social aspect that pros at that level live on.

It is no different than straddling. In 99% of the rooms that allow straddling, technically the straddle has to be out before the first card is pitched. The reasoning behind the rule is obvious, however if it was strictly enforced there would be a bunch of pissed off players who aren't trying to cheat.

Well, we feel so differently on this that there is really not much point to further discussion, but suffice it to say that I disagree with pretty much everything you just said.

Ok.

Let me help you clarify your position then.

In your opinion, what is the purpose of enforcing the show one show all rule of a winning player flashes his cards to a neighbor before tossing them forward?

I know your inital reaction will be "because it is in the rules." That is not what I mean. Why do you think it is in the rules?

Because it's unfair for some players to have access to more information than others.

Your use of the word "unfair" is telling.

Would you bet a large amount of money (whatever that means to you) on a bet of two 5 year old versus you in a fight?

Would you say that it is "unfair" that there is two of them versus one of you? Or would you recognize that you still have a hugh advantage and arguing over fairness misses the point and is costing you money?

Why are you playing poker? If it is for money then you are doing it wrong by being a Nazi on the show one show all.

No idea what you think the fight with 5 yos has to do with anything. It doesn't have anything to do with "two against one", it's about the player who is shown the hand having an unfair advantage over myself and others.

I mostly play poker for the same reason I play any other game - I like playing strategy games and competing using my brain.

It's silly to call me a Nazi about it, when you haven't even played with me, nor have I said how often this comes up in the games I play. I also disagree that it's costing me money when I do ask to see a shown hand.

Same here. And I play just as hard at 4-8 as I do at 20-40 because it's all about the competition.

20 years ago I was firm about making sure each and every rule was enforced. If someone showed their neighbor their hand, I demanded to see it. Even at 4-8.

But eventually I learned that wasn't optimal for many reasons. It would instantly change the vibe at the table making a friendly money making chatting game into a quiet slog.

Nowadays I will never do that at a 4-8 table, I won't do anything that will change the habits of people just having fun, calling every hand, and donating.

Now, at a 20-40 table it's going to vary. If it's a loose table with recs occasionally showing each other their hands before folding I'm not saying a word. But if it's a serious tough table with regs frequently trading info then I'm going to ask.

And sure, there are times it's tough to stay quiet when recs technically break the rules. But I've learned that in the long run it's more profitable to have to bite your tongue.

Of course if somebody is being cheated, if the pot is about to be awarded to the wrong person for example, I'm speaking up regardless of stake or who gets pissed about it. There can be a big difference between breaking the rules and cheating.

Dealing with people is difficult, poker not so much.

With Rob here. But my response is not because it’s in the rules. You enforce it at this level so it doesn’t get out of control. And yes I have seen it get out of control to the point player flashing cards such that in hand sees them.

This is like controlling table talk that starts out as a harmless rule violation but escalates to harmful talk. When you blur the line, players will push it until they went too far. But trying to stop th3n is WAY WAY harder with much more pushback.