What counts as a fold - Live gameplay

This one hand from last week popped into my mind where a player pushed his cards clearly over the line on the poker table, and holding onto them took them back. Is this allowed?

I haven't been able to find this type of behavior in the tournament rules, so any help is appreciated.

The cards need to be released for it to count as a fold

^^ similar to chess

There are those who like to shoot angles so your best idea is to wait till their cards are in the muck before you do anything based on them folding.

Strange things can happen at a live table. At our casino live tourney yesterday, one of the gals announced an 'all-in' but threw her cards face down toward the pot before pushing any chips in.

It created some discussion as to whether it was a fold or not, but the dealer and pit decided it was not a fold since she had 'announced' the all-in verbally before tossing the cards. The pit said that if the cards had touched the muck or burn cards, they would have ruled it a fold.

I was sitting in a ring game where a cutoff player had been re-raised on the river. He threw his cards down (behind the line next to his chips), said nothing, and leaned back in his chair looking around. The dealer reached over the line and mucked his cards.

The guy had bullets. Even though he was beat anyway, he screamed bloody murder to the floor because in his words "I was looking around for an Aces cracked bonus" and thought the dealer had no right reaching for the cards. The floor backed up the dealer, and by the way, there was no aces cracked bonus either...

The lesson: Always protect your cards.

Vegas style rules say they have to hit the muck to be dead. The line on the table is only a courtesy line for the dealer , so they can reach the chips and cards. It displays the average reach lenght for the dealer.

RAMARAIDER said:

Vegas style rules say they have to hit the muck to be dead. The line on the table is only a courtesy line for the dealer , so they can reach the chips and cards. It displays the average reach lenght for the dealer.

Click to expand...

^ this. In almost all cases the line isn't actually binding.

The hand is folded if you verbally announce fold, or if you push/toss/move your cards towards the dealer and release them. If you haven't done either of those things (ie: they're still in your hand, or they're still capped and on the felt, and you haven't said "fold") then they're still live.

The TDA doesn't seem to have a rule for what does and doesn't constitute a fold. Rule 28 speaks to the dealer's ability to kill an unprotected hand though:

Rule 28 - Unprotected hands

If a dealer kills an unprotected hand, the player will have no redress and
will not be entitled to a refund of bets. However, if a player had raised
and the raise had not yet been called, the raise will be returned to the
player.

So long story short, always protect your hand (put a chip or something else on top of your cards) if you're not folding it.​