A lot of the discussion has revolved around counting down large bets. The issue that comes up far more often is the announcing of small bets. Using 2/5 as a frame of reference, someone in seat 2 puts out a bet, lets say 30, with 6 red chips. What happens a lot is the bettor will do that thing where they tip over the stack so you end up with chips in a row sort of like those old greek columns that have fallen down. So then the guy in seat 7 knows he's going to call, but cant see the chips clearly enough to tell if its 25, 30, or 35. So he asks the dealer, who immediately says 30 without needing to count because he had a clear view when the guy bet.

This happens all night long, and IMO it speeds up the game when the dealer just announces 30 when the guy bets. Plus, when looking across the table, many will ask the bet size just to ensure there wasnt a green or black chip put on the bottom. IME the dealer almost always already knows the bet size, so there is no extra time/work involved in having him announce it. It just seems to me that the game moves more quickly when they announce.

And its easy to compare because for some reason our room doesnt seem to have a policy enforced, as some dealers always announce, some announce small bets but not big, and some never announce unless asked.

I don;t like the idea of dealer announces small bet amounts but not larger bet amounts for two reasons...

1. It feels a lot like the dealer commenting on the bet .... "Little itty bitty $20 bet" .... "Whoa nelly look at the size of that large bet .... I sure can't count that."

2. You are training players to expect the dealer to announce an amount .... so when the dealer doesn't they stop and wait and or get irritated by the damn dealer not doing his job.

I well settle for any dealer that notices bets and raises.

I call BS. If this is true, your room has a collection of the best players to deal to in the universe.

Maybe he's doing one hour downs.

Maybe he's dealing multi-action poker.

Maybe he's counting each individual players cards as a hand.

#1. I've never encountered that. It doesnt even make sense to me. Its not like a player will see a small stack of chips and think its 200 unless the dealer announces its 25. The players I play with realize that there is a difference in the time it takes to announce a 5 chip bet vs counting down a large stack bet. Frankly, that concern seems really odd to me.

#2 again, players can tell the difference. IME people have to ask all the time on small bets not to decide whether to call or not, but just to know how many chips to put in the pot. If the dealer just announces what he already knows things go faster. But when someone pushes out stacks, I havent seen players ask for an exact count unless they are seriously considering action. But they dont just sit there waiting for a dealer to count down every large bet each time.

Its not like you have to treat small bets and large bets the exact same way.