But in this case he DID know where it was going to be pitched. This wasn't simply the dealer hitting the player's hand with the card and it then flipping, the player moved his hand TO the card as it was about to hit the felt more or less in an effort to grab it. The player proved to not be an "Ozzie Smith" of the card felt and because his hand hit into the moving card it flipped over. No doubt had he kept his hand back the card would have lieterally landed on top of the first hole card in the perfect spot, hence my thought that it was the player's own fault the card ws exposed - or flashed, and he should keep it.
You're assuming an awful lot of skill on the part of your dealers - FWIW I know some very good professional ones and even they won't hit the exact same spot every time every hand. Even though this particular card may have been about to land perfectly the player couldn't have known that and most of the time the dealer couldn't have either.
I just can't see how you can lay blame on the player for this unless it's something he's doing on a regular basis.
Plus we have to look at the spirit of the rules as well. Even before we get to the exposed card rules,
rule #1 of Roberts Rules of Poker is this:
1. Management reserves the right to make decisions in the spirit of fairness, even if a strict interpretation of the rules may indicate a different ruling.
So even if you
do think the player was at fault do you really think it was deliberate and malicious? I don't see how it could be since he can't know what the card is at the time he exposes it. For all he knows it could have been a good card for him. It's not like he saw the card, didn't like it then deliberately turned it up hoping to get a new one. That second situation is the kind of thing the player-exposed rules are meant to deter. And if it's not deliberate and malicious, is it really
fair to be invoking a rule that basically says the player has to play that hand face up?
Putting this on the player, especially if it's a once-off, is being the worst kind of rules nit IMO.