[Big Mike]

Originally Posted by rakrul

This is kind of an interesting situation that I sometimes run past dealers and pretty much gets strange answers every time. This happened to me in Vegas once and from time to time in the home games.

Rivercard is dealt and it's HU. One player bets, the other calls. The first player (better) mucks his hand.

Now if it's a tourney, the first player's hand will be retrieved if possible and shown (to avoid chipdumping). The other player can then choose to show or muck. However in a cashgame I don't see any reason why the remaining player (caller) has to show now. He's the only player left with a live hand and thus the winner, right?

When I pointed this out in Vegas, I asked "so what happens if I muck my hand too?", which certainly baffled the dealer and he only muttered "you have to show, sir". Another interesting situation was when the board was the nuts on river (also cashgame) and neither of us wanted to show and declared that we played the table, but we still had to show. Neither of us wanted to hold up the game by discussing it, so we just showed them but I don't understand what would happen if we declared "playing the table" and mucked the hands. Why do we have to show the cards when the stone cold nuts are on the board? (A-high straight, rainbow)

You need to have a legal hand in order to win. Like if you have only one card or a joker in your hand, you should have declared such at the time of the deal in order to have a playable hand. Maybe there's something else to it, but i think that's part of it. I've had the same question come up before at a casino.