Was dealer incorrect in handling prematurely dealt turn card?

Question

I was on the final table and blinds were 2k and 4k. I had 70k chips and was one of the shorter stacks. The tournament paid 7 people. A guy raises to 16k, I'm the only caller. I have J♥9♥, the raiser has AA. The flop was T♣8♠2⋄ and villain bets 20k. I go all in and the dealer thinks it was just a call, so deals the turn card (a deuce) before villain says he calls. Now the river comes, I miss and lose.

My question is: wasn't the dealer wrong to deal the turn card before villain made the call? The dealer said there was no difference. I was pissed they didn't even think to call the floor and so I left. Was the dealer wrong, giving villain a better advantage?

Answer 1

As soon as the dealer begins to deal the turn without having resolved the action (as he obviously thought you called the 20k bet from villain, rather than raising it), you should have brought this to his attention. As dealers usually tap the table before dealing any board cards, this should have given you ample time and opportunity to point out his mistake and then he would have been able to abort dealing the turn and villain would have had to make his decision about whether to call.

If we assume that for some reason you have been unable to halt the deal and the turn card is exposed - you should call for a floor yourself and they will likely rule that the turn which was dealt should be reshuffled into the deck, villain must then make a decision about whether to call your shove, and then the hand will continue as normal, with a turn card being dealt again if villain does elect to call you.

The moral of the story is that it's your responsibility to pay attention to what's going on and raise any problems with the dealer and/or floor immediately as your notice them. In this instance, while I don't believe the dealer has acted correctly, you really only have yourself to blame as you had multiple opportunities to remedy the situation and get a fair outcome.

Answer 2

Number one thing you missed is thinking that dealers do not make mistakes, they do, and you really need to be aware of what is going on around you at the table, because the simple fact is that it is you that looses if you don't.

You were not very clear about what happened. Did you push your whole stack in, throw a single chip in and mumble all in? In my experience this kind of burn and turn mistake happens because the player is vague, the player keeps his hands where its not clear he has no chips left, etc.

So not being really sure how clear or unclear you were at the point you think you were all in, it is difficult to say rather or not the dealer made a mistake or not. It is difficult to say rather or not what you did looked enough like an all in rather then a call for the dealer even to ask for clarification on your part.

This is part of protecting your hand. If you do not watch what is going on, if your not clear enough about your intent, more situations like this are going to happen with you, and they are not going to always go well for you.

In this case it went really bad, it seems that no one understood you were all in but you, so the turn was turned. Then it seems that the dealer was so sure that you only called that he did not think the situation was worth calling the floor. You should own some of that and it may be in the future you will be able to avoid this kind of thing.

Having said all this, when you said to the dealer I bet all in, than he said it did not matter, the dealer made a mistake. The floor should of been called to make a ruling. It is simple, whenever the dealer and a player are not drawing the same conclusion about a thing, you call the floor, let them make the decision.

Now when the floor comes over it may or may not be obvious to him rather or not what you did looked like in all in or a call. So we get back to the more vague you were, the reputation you have, effecting what that decision may be.

If the floor makes the decision in your favor, the procedure is simple, the action for the flop is clarified and finished, the turn card is replaced with the river card. The card that was burned and turned is shuffled back into the deck, after the shuffle the top card on the deck is used as the river. A player on a draw gets the magical six card flop.