You are the Tournament Director: Playing Three Card Omaha

Situation:
In the £5000 Pot Limit Omaha competition player A calls, Player B raises and now player A re-raises the pot at which point player A realises that he only has three cards. How do you rule?

Matt Savage Matt:
Difficult question because A, our number 1 rule is that if cards are delivered out of sequence or not enough cards to certain player then it’s a dead hand and we re-deal. In this situation if the player is on the button then obviously he receives the next card. I would give him the next card and allow that. There’s a problem here for this player because its his responsibility when he enters a pot to know that he has the right amount of cards so...this is gonna sound really bad... I would probably allow... I would kill his hand, I would give the guy back his re-raise and give Player B what was in the pot before.

JB: So he loses his raise, but he gets the re-raise back because Player B hasn’t called it yet?

Matt Savage Matt: Correct.

Thomas Kremser Thomas:
Don´t call me to the table, please.. lol..., because this decision is cruel!!
Any hand not consisting of the right amount of cards cannot win the pot. Player A is responsible to have the right number of cards. If Player A acts, he will not get his money back!

Jack Jack:
Nice question. Since player A had three cards, none of the players had their correct hands. I would recreate and split pot.

Liam Flood Liam:
Has to play with three cards. He can win the pot with three.

Mel Mel:
Hand is dead , chips given back to players.

Marty Wilson Marty:
I rule his hand’s dead, the chips from the last re-raise which has yet to be called are given back to him. It’s up to him to protect his own hand.

The Mob Verdict

The ruling for this is really dependent on where you are. In some places the three card hand is dead but the hand plays out. Jack would rule that as the players don’t have the correct cards the hand is completely void. Jack is confident in this ruling but if there was considerable action we could see some players being very upset.

Matt would let the player take back any uncalled raise but forfeit any other chips already in the pot and Marty sees it this way as well. It is the player’s responsibility to make sure that he has the correct number of cards. Poker is a visual game and we like Matt’s approach here best as then no other players in the pot are penalised apart from the player who isn’t paying enough attention.

Another thing to consider is that if the player with three cards knows he has three cards and that he will get a refund if he raises and then later announces that he only has three cards he could use this as an angle and take it as a free-roll.

Liam would allow the player to play the three cards. We can remember a ruling in Dublin once where the player was given the option of playing three cards and when he was re-raised he then re-raised himself all-in!

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