Flops only have three cards
Mistakes happen in life, and that includes poker. Players act out of turn, misread the board, miscount chips, and more. Dealers also mess up sometimes, as like any one of us, they are human. Unfortunately for Ricky Landais, a dealer error may have cost him tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even a million dollars.
Twenty-two players remained during Wednesday’s action in Event #11: $10,000 GGMillion$ High Roller No-Limit Hold’em, and Landais was one of the short stacks. Needing to make a move to stay in contention for the $1,089,964 first prize, he found A-K and went all-in pre-flop. Bobby James, who had already raised, made the call with A-9. Landais was in good shape. He was already guaranteed $41,942, but he was hoping for more.
And then confusion. The dealer laid out a four-card flop of 6-5-4-K (suits don’t come into play here), obviously one more card than there should be. The floor was called over and determined that, according to the rules, the four cards needed to be reshuffled, then one removed as the next burn card, with the other three forming the flop.
As it turned out, the card that was burned was the King, which would have given Landais a huge lead in the hand and a prime shot to double-up.
But alas, after the new 5-6-4 flop, the turn and river came down 8 and 7, giving James a 9-high straight, eliminating Landais in 22nd place.
Landais speaks out
Landais took it in stride, but later posted on Instagram about how upset he was.
“Sitting up late night and I am absolutely devastated,” he wrote. “User Error cost me a potential bracelet plus 1 million. Can you imagine how hard it is to process.”
Landais also may or may not have implied that the floor made the wrong decision, as he said, “The floor is called and has no idea what the ruling is but ultimately decided to put all 4 flopped cards together and shuffle.”
As unfortunate as this was for Landais, it was the correct ruling. In Section VII of the official WSOP rulebook, rule #167 states, “If the flop contains too many cards, it must be re-dealt. To re-deal the flop, the four cards will be scrambled by the dealer and a floor supervisor will randomly select one card to be used as the next burn card and the remaining three cards will become the flop.”
Potentially costly mistake
And for those wondering, yes, Landais would have won the hand had it been dealt correctly. As can be seen in the video, a card had already been burned pre-flop, so none of the four cards should have been the pre-flop burn. The true flop should have been K-5-4, as the 6 was the fourth card the dealer peeled off the deck before turning them face up (and thus became the card furthest to the left on the flop).
Therefore, the 6 should not have been part of the flop and should have been the card burned before the turn. Instead, it was the King. The rest of the community cards would have been the same, and the 8 and 7 would not have completed James’ straight.
Image credit: PokerGO.com
