How come in online poker at showdown you can see the mucked cards?

..but live play you can't?

Cause you can at live play if you ask.

Are you sure? I thought of this but didn't wanna sound stupid.. Do they just let you see or show everybody?

Show all. Search the forum as this has been discussed a number of times

To prevent collusion you are allowed to see people's hole cards at showdown if you ask.

However, in a live game this is considered very rude because you are essentially accusing them of being cheaters.

Online, everybody would demand it in their hand histories anyway, so they automatically put them in your hand history.

Care to elaborate more?

It's one of those things that have come down as being established etiquette when playing live. Been around for years and the older players seem to care about it the most. In my local poker room there are very few who object when asked to show their hand before mucking and it happens at least once an orbit.

Yeah, I just saw on the WSOP main event where begleiter asked a player to show his mucked cards. And, the announcers were kind of reproving him. Lol.

That's one of the only things players would frown upon more than a slowroll actually. I've literally never seen this happen live.

I'm not positive about this. But basically if two players are working together, more in limit than NL, they can trap players between them. Say one bets, if a couple call, then action is on the accomplice. He raises! When action comes back to the first player he 3bets, forcing the 2 players in the middle to either call 2 bets cold or fold. Often they'll fold because these 2 should have strong hands.

In limit, if this keeps happening, then something could be up, because there usually isn't much FE, so if a guy's raising then folding, something's pretty odd to begin with. If someone asks to see his cards, and he's just playing utter trash, and it just happens to be when the same guy is betting/raising, well that'd be a good bit of circumstantial evidence, and where it leads from there I don't know.

However in NL, people make weird moves more often, as fold equity is much greater, therefore it's a lot harder to say if people are colluding in this manner, at least it seems that way to me.

This is partly true however if they get the other 2 out and it hasnt gotten to the river then you can't ask to see the cards. Asking to see the cards can only be done at showdown. So if player A bets and player B calls then player A shows a winning hand and player mucks anyone dealt into the hand can ask to see what player B had, or if player A bets and player B makes the call and then player A fires his cards in the muck you can ask to see what his cards were, but if you dont ask to his cards you dont have to show yours either it would be treated like a bet fold.

UltimateBet explains it here: Showing Cards at Showdown

The purpose is to prevent collusion. Requesting that someone shows slows down the game and embarrasses bad players who are apt to tighten up otherwise. It's considered a common courtesy to let the loser fold with dignity.

In the UK its the opposite.
Everywhere I play people just expect to see any losing hand and its considered rude to muck hands on showdown.
90% of the time or more anyway people will ask you to show the hand if you try to muck it on showdown so theres not much point trying it.