Check the camera!

Well, I never saw this one before.

Just back from a week in the juicy Southern California cardrooms (report on that adventure to come), I decided to get reacclimated here with an afternoon trip to the Muck.

Shortly after I sat into the $4/8 kill game, in Seat 4, the young woman on my immediate left raised from the button and got called in a couple of places (I wasn't in the pot). She bet the flop, bet the turn, and by the river was heads-up with a middle-aged, yellow-sweatered woman in Seat 9. I forget the flop, but the turn was the jack of clubs and the river was a king, and the third club on the board.

Now Yellow Sweater bet out. Seat 5 sat staring for a second at the board. Finally she flipped over her cards -- pocket jacks, for three of a kind -- and muttered something about her Seat 9 opponent getting there on the river. But she didn't put any chips out as she showed her jacks, so the dealer scooped her hand and Yellow Sweater's unexposed cards into the muck and began to push the pot to Seat 9.

Wow, I thought, what a laydown. There's no way I muck a hand that strong in this situation, not on the off-chance of a single opponent hitting a runner-runner flush draw. I looked past my neighbor to Seat 7, where Judy, a very good player and frequent opponent, shot me a raised-eyebrow look. She would have called too.

"Wait!" Seat 5 interrupted. "What does she have? She never showed her cards!"

The dealer looked stunned, and several of us, including me, informed the player that she never called the river bet.

"Call the floor," she said. "Check the camera! Why would I fold a set of jacks?"

The floorman came over, interviewed the dealer and then directed her to "impound the pot" while the game continued and technicians checked the security-camera recording of the action.

Seat 5 continued to protest and explain, but I had little doubt how the challenge would turn out. I wondered, though, what would happen if the camera showed somehow that my neighbor had in fact slid her eight chips forward as she claimed. How could they possibly determine who would win the pot, since Yellow Sweater's cards were never exposed and the cards were long-since shuffled?

By the time the case was settled -- no, the camera confirmed, Seat 5 never called the bet, the impounded pot would go to Seat 9 -- a new dealer was in the box and didn't even know the back story. So I asked my question, and he informed me that Seat 5's triple jacks, as the only exposed hand, would have been declared the winner.

OK, fine.

But what really should have happened, Brysen continued, is that the dealer should have asked Seat 5 whether she intended to call or fold.

Wow, what a horrible policy, I thought. And then I remembered that this was the very scenario that cost Michelle that big pot a couple weeks back and led to our vow to never again tip the offending dealer, "Triple H."

And who do you think dealt today's disputed hand? That's right, HHH. Looks like she's out to piss people off on both ends of the same play.