Can you please solve a dispute

In a live game, can someone answer the following questions as this situation caused a heated debate in a local casino with the TD not actually knowing what the correct procedure should be. ( yes I know thats strange but hes not really au fait with the rules of poker, just the dealing side ).

When the hand reaches the river and both players have checked once the river card has come over, then can you tell me

1) Do both players have have to show their cards to the table if one player has revealed his and the other knows he has the worst hand. Can the losing player refuse to reveal his hand and throw his cards straight into the muck.

2) When its been checked down then who is responsible for laying down their cards first revealing their hand.

Anyone able to tell me what the proper ruling is ?

1. He has the option to muck. But the winner of the hand does have the option to request to have a or all losing hand(s) exposed. This however is generally frowned upon and considered bad etiquette.

2. The player who would be first to act, that is the first active player to the left of the dealer button, is required to show first.

This is poker 101 stuff and if there was some sort of dispute that the floor manager couldnt resolve I would bring it to the attention of the casino management that their floor personnel are unclear of all the rules.

It is the rules of the casino or card room.

Normally hands are shown from the SB up (same as the order of action). If the first to show beats subsequent players then the losers can muck without showing.

Make sense?

So if MP2 and Button are heads up, then MP2 shows first at the showdown. Button only has to show if he wins. Otherwise its his call.

I've never played live poker in my life and I know the answer to both of those questions, if you had a floor manager that doesn't know that stuff I probably wouldn't play there.

Thanks, you have confirmed what myself and several others thought, but one player ( you know the kind . "oh I've been to Vegas and played in proper tournaments " ) argued like hell. He won the hand but he insisted the other player had to show his cards.

Everyone argued and the TD was called over. He said ( being fair ) that he felt the bloke was wrong but he wouldnt swear to that being the official line.

The bloke then argued that because he had laid fown his cards first ( he was on the SB as it happened ) the other player should do the same because the hand had reached "showdown" meaning both players must show their hands together.

As I say it got quite heated with the bloke telling everyone else they were a joke blah blah and that he had never been to a place that didnt know the rules..

^ this.

This is one of those issues where, because there's no universal set of rules for poker, what the tournament director says goes.

The TDA rule, however, (http://www.pokertda.com/rules.pdf) is that if there was no betting action on the river, showdown starts with the first player to the left of the button. The next player isn't obliged to turn their hand over, but the other players can request it be shown as it has technically been shown down.

Yes, it is up to the rules of the cardroom or casino what the rule actually is. Having been to 50+ different cardrooms, I've yet to play at one that doesnt follow this practice.

the loser can muck his hand but if the winner request to see the losers hand he/she must show the hand.

You can throw your hand in the muck at anytime at least at the casinos I play, as that is accepting that your hand is beat. I have seen a player muck quads on accident by showing the table his hand and not setting the hand down on the felt.

I dont know about the must show the hand, as I dont play limits that are too ridiculously high and I have seen it go both ways.

Do anybody else see that episode where that actor, whose name I forget, last name being Woods, mucked his cards after the river and it was the winning hand. If he had shown them he would have won.

It is a rule that the winning player can ask to see the mucked cards, but it is frowned upon to do so. I never believed this myself, but was given a link to Hoyle and read it there.

I saw that! Woods had a pair of threes, and he expected to be beat and was poised to muck, when the other player showed deuces with Woods' threes in the air on the way to the discard pile!!! Was too funny! Kind of puts a tarnish on his rep!!