I only played 1 event but I thought the dealers were VERY good. Much better than years past. And I relish opportunities to hate on harrahs

rich players are cheap. pokerstars knew it and thats why they put just a 2$ cap on a 10,000$ pot lol

I thought my experience was bad until skimming this thread.
Started off in an early Stud8, $1500 and 3 of first 5 dealers had never dealt it. The second one made eye contact, I smiled and got a blank stare.. seemed to be in shock, and just going through the motions mindlessly. I immediately suspected it was chemically induced. That one proceeded to forget to burn a card once in a while.. People were very attentive, making sure cards got burned, but said very little. We all knew enough to not to make the situation worse.

In a few hours of low limit PLO cash game, most had little or no PLO experience. When asked, suspicions were confirmed. I actually thought the better dealers were in the higher limit games. Evidently not.

I often ask my dealer friends in regional tournaments if they plan dealing the WSOP again this year. Not one said yes. Complaints about pay and tips (lack of) was primary.

I wondered if Jimmy Sommerfeld's retirement had anything to do with it. He had a good crew and I don't think I saw any of them, and generally I saw few familiar faces. I believe he was like 2nd in command at the WSOP last year.

My best wishes to anyone who deals that circus. I'm not sure what the actual problem is, but it's not fault of the dealers or players, imo.

The dealers on the streams have been rediculously good...

but ob thats the streams

dealers defence: tokes suck this year, good dealers from years past didnt come back. so you should be lucky and grateful that you have any dealer that is sitting there trying to make a living on minimum wage while you rich tight wads pass thousands of dollars around a table playing a game, and buying into tournaments that would take some of us dealers a very long time of saving to even afford to play. I also think the higher limit tables should be played in a semi private room/area where you would get great dealers all the time and it would cost you more rake, but for that rake you get better dealers and all the amenities of the casino at your disposal.

Players defence: FYI to qualify for dealing this years WSOP I had to demonstrate my dealing ability to the person doing the auditions... EACH dealer dealt 4 hands.... thats right 4 (FOUR) one hand of holdem, one hand of Omaha, one hand of a version of stud, and one hand of a draw game.

I personally think that there should be some sort of ribbon or badge of sorts that tells players of that dealers skill level. kind of like boy scouts merit badges. its as simple as it could possibly be, each game has a 1-2-3 level, if you have a level 3 badge you can deal any cash or tournament of that particular game of any stakes, if you have a level 1 badge of that game, you are confined to dealing micro limits in cash and small sattelite tables and start daily deepstack turneys, and no tournament over $1500!!! then all the cash tables would be setup in sections to where only level 3s can deal anywhere needed and level 1s could only deal in a specific section. and also the dealer coordinators would all have this info as well so there would be no confusion of where that dealers assignment needs to be.

Thanks to Jack Effel many of the bad parts of the WSOP persist.

Hopefully, someday they will put someone competent in charge.

If you're a tournament player and bust a big one and want to come and relax playing cash, I can sympathize. But even then, you should never be taking your frustrations out on the dealer. When you make your choice as to where to play - for example, the Rio or the Aria - you choose between great games, high time charges/rake and terrible dealing, and so-so games, cheap rent, and good dealing. Once you make that choice, you live with it. We should definitely be helping dealers along - correcting them (politely) about their mistakes, hurrying them when appropriate, etc, as well as being a bit sterner with the lazy ones, but being angry after you've made the choice to play at the Rio seems absurd when there are games everywhere else.

Playing at Rio/WSOP is like eating at McDonalds...you 100% know the quality is horrible, but yet you continue to go there.

Played event 21 of the WSOP and several of the daily's in the pavillion. Also played a bunch of 2-5 NL. Didn't run into a single dealer that I would consider "bad". Some were clearly less experienced, but none were bad to the point that it effected the game.

Instead of this year to year shallowness that the WSOP runs with the dealers and the rules, mebbe after this series some real planning will go into training and KEEPING good dealers in the brand....

obv you got players and in the next 3 years there will be a **** ton of new growth, so why not prepare now? make it an even stronger industry by setting up a proper school and add some decent pay and benefits so you can have seasoned dealers just like the floor guys that have built relationships with ur customers...

make dealers line up and beg for a shot at dealing ur games, not players begging for decent dealers.....

I played the 1k on sunday June 10, my bday..... My dealer at my first ever wsop1k buyin was a ****ing imbecile ......he was very daintily passing out the cards ...i wanted to choke him

As far as the high limit cash games go I think it is stupid of Caesars to put brand new dealers in there and expect them not to get eaten alive. The logical thing would be to only have experienced dealers in those games but the problem is no dealer wants to be stuck in that snake pit night after night making minimal tips. It would be like punishing them for being experienced. In my opinion the solution would be for Caesars to take a percentage of the time drop in those games and give it to the dealer as compensation on top of any tips he may receive from the players. This way the good dealers would know that even if they get stiffed on their down at least they are getting something from the company to make it worth it.

Of course that would involve taking money out of Caesars' pockets and putting it into the employees' pockets and God forbid that thought should ever occur to them.

Fair enough if your dealing a 10k pot maybe you should be given a tip if your dealing is very good and it should be nothing to the players.Maybe if your not getting tipped your not dealing good enough?

Even the small stakes dealers.I dont understand how you can expect tips constantly.The whole point of the tip is if the standard of dealing is high.

The dealers get paid by the hour.Anything extra is a huge plus.

On the first day of the WSOP I was railbirding a big PLO game. I believe it was 25/50 with a 100 straddle or something along those lines. Anyway these two guys went at it and the one guy won a pot that had to be close to $10,000. The dealer pushed it to him and after a few moments he threw her a blue $2 chip...... and asked her to chop it.

I don't know what the point of this story is other than to point out that this is why dealers generally don't like dealing big games. Why deal with the stress and insults like chopping a $2 chip when you can deal a laid back 1/3 game and get nice tips from normal everyday people who can actually identify with a dealer who is probably on the same rung of the economic ladder as themselves.

Played in cash games for several days and there were a lot of dealers who came through that had no idea what they were doing. I don't remember it being anywhere near this bad last year. Most people were patient and tried to help the dealers, but there were a few who were jerks to them. As frustrating as it was, as others have pointed out, it's not their fault. Blame the WSOP...the Rio...or whoever for not training them properly. And people berating them only makes it worse.

I played 5 days last week in the WSOP cash games (all 5-10 NL) and only saw three who were truly hopeless (one guy misdealt his first 5 tries, and for the rest of his down someone threw him a dollar each time we made it to the flop).
But for the rest they ranged from OK to real good.

I gather some of the newer dealers struggled with pot limit and mixed games but that may be more a lack of adequate training than innate incompetence.