Accidentally Exposed Cards

In every poker game there are occasions where a card is exposed accidentally (or shown deliberately). Every house game or casino should have rules to deal with such situations. Following are the most common way to solve this issue.

Most common exposed card situations are: Most common exposed card situations are:

  • The dealer accidentally flips a card over during the deal.
  • The players flip their card by accident or on purpose.
  • One or more of the burned cards have been exposed.

Misdeal: is to deal the cards incorrectly due to dealer/player errors. Therefore all the cards should be collected and the dealer should redeal the cards.

Dealer exposes a card during the deal

Every dealer accidentally exposes cards from time to time. If there is only one card exposed during dealing the hole cards, it should not be considered a misdeal. Instead the dealer should continue dealing as if no card was exposed. Once every player (except the player who received the exposed card) has received their hole cards, dealer should deal another card (face down) to that particular player. The exposed card will be the burned card. In other form, the player with exposed card will receive the burned card and his originally exposed card will be the burned card.

If there are two or more cards exposed during the beginning deal, that has should be considered a misdeal and redealt completely.

The dealer flips one or more of the burned cards

In this case, the dealer would have to put the exposed card back in the deck, shuffle the deck, burn a card, and deal the the next street. Even if the dealer exposes both the burned cards, it should not be a misdeal as there are already bets in the pot.

A player flips his/her card over for some reason

The best thing to do is not to let that happen. Before the game starts ask every player to conduct all the poker etiquette standards and not expose their cards until the hand is over.

In case a card is exposed, the player’s cards should be dead and considered folded.

Notes:

  • In situations where cards are exposed try not to ask everyone what they want to do or take a vote. Usually one person has a very good hand that he is winning or slow playing and except him and maybe one other player, no one else would vote to continue the game. Have a definite rule about such situations before the game starts. Make sure everyone knows your house rules too.
  • When a card is exposed it is the dealer’s responsibility to make sure every player has seen the exposed card.