It's definitely unprofessional and a big no-no.

That's what I thought at the time. I wish I had said something but I was too busy in the table talk and too shocked that he did this at the time to say anything. I'm assuming he's one of those poker players who deals for money and is just curious about my play, but that's way crossing the line.

Haven't played at TI for years but when I did, I remember a dealer getting off his shift and sitting down at the $1/3 game, the very one he dealt just a few minutes ago. I was surprised and also uncomfortable because I don't recall if he was peaking at cards earlier. The kicker was that he wasn't a friendly player at the table (kinda douche-y) and made me regret tipping him. I ended up leaving.

I think it is a bad rule to let your dealers play at your poker room. I don't mind dealers playing at neighboring casinos (even Pho dealers at Caesars or Bellagio dealers at Aria, etc) but I'm not a fan of dealers playing in their own rooms.

In fact, I don't like playing with dealers at all. I know this is generalizing but from my experience in Vegas, while most dealers are friendly and polite while dealing, too many are rude and dare I say douche-y while playing. I can only assume they have been dealing with rude players and feel like they are blowing off steam but they tend to act poorly to fellow players but they tip well obviously.

My sample size is small (maybe a 1-2 dozen dealers), but it really blows my mind to see them act so much differently on the other side of the table. It has changed my opinion of many dealers in town.

+1

I also never understood this. There are 25 poker rooms alone in Vegas on the Bravo app. Like the saying goes "don't shop for your meat where you make your bread." It is not good for business. Ways to spot a dealer: always over tipping every hand.

I dont know about TI but several rooms dont allow the dealers to check raise or be eligible for any of the promotional money. Plus it gives me a shot at getting some of those tips back...

I have never heard of a room where dealers aren't allowed to check raise; could you tell us where that is? I can't imagine any employee wanting to play under those restrictions.

I play with dealers at belagio all the time. No issues except this one guy who played for 30 min then go back to dealing at a different table for another 30min. People were getting pissed because they didn't want to play short handed and the list was 20 deep

LOL ummmm, no.

Maybe 30 years ago when some people actually considered check raising rude.

I love when dealers play games. They sit and watch poker all day and somehow haven't managed to learn a thing. About 20% of them are the nittiest nits you'll ever see who you can safely fold kings preflop to a 3 bet (usually nearing retirement age), and 75% of them are calling station spewtards, leaving about 5% who aren't awful. I wish my games were all dealers all the time.

I've played with a few dealers who are solid players, definitely big winners compared to the field.

But yea, many of them are surprisingly poor players. I guess many of them can't really focus too much on learning from the game when they are tasked with the gazzilion responsibilities they have. They hardly take a break from mucking cards, giving change, etc until maybe the turn and river. So learning becomes hard when you can't keep track of the game like we players can.

I've played in poker rooms in Colorado a few years ago where they also openly employed props.

This is actually a very good promo if you are broke or trying to grind a little roll. If you play horses it is even better because you can clock in at 10:00 am and you get credit for any hours that you are in(near) the room and are willing to play 4 handed. I used to sit and just do my horse stuff for the east coast tracks that start around 9-11 vegas time, and by the time the game got going at 3 or 4 I had 5 or 6 hours in. Worse ways to grind 10 bucks and hour and earn 2 per hour in comps. If you think about it, show up at 10, make 10 an hour until 3, then try to grind for the next five hours say 7 bb's an hour and you got yourself a potentially 4k a month job staring at your I Pad and flirting with cocktail waitresses. Not exactly third world level ****ty life.

Only problem is if you lose it at the horses like I do.

You are not making 7bb an hour at that game. Half or more of the players at the tables will be tight regs doing the same thing as you. Maybe 3-4bb if you're good at exploiting that.

You do get the occasional action player but they get chewed up pretty fast.

Jesus, that's tight. Is it really that bad over there, haven't been there in a while cause I got a hold of a little money and haven't needed to. I'd love to go over and put some hard beats on the guys grinding for the 10 bucks though, lol.

I mean - 7BB/hr is $21, and I'm going to say that's on the high end of win rates for 1/3 games anywhere now, even good games. My long term win rate in 1/2 and 1/3 games is about $23, and I'm a pretty amazing bottom feeder. And that's a combined rate from when I started playing live poker a decade ago - in the last 3 years it's more like $16. There's just not nearly as much easy money out there as there used to be.

And those games, while they're not super tough, are rarely easy - you've only usually got one table to choose from and it's probably going to have at least 4-5 tight players. It's kinda like what playing poker in the daytime was before the poker boom - a bunch of regs pass back and forth a little bit of money and wait for a sucker to sit down and spew off occasionally.

Making $10/hr in rakeback and $10/hr in the game and $2/hr for food (although as far as I can tell everywhere in treasure island sucks for food) isn't a bad deal - it's potentially a lower variance way of making $20-22 an hour than other options.

It's pretty boring, though. No game selection, you can't tell when the game is going to start or break up - you can end up playing around the game's schedule to try to clock in your hours.

That said, I wish more people played there. If there was a room that had $10/hr of rakeback and had 3-4 games going that were average quality, I'd probably be a regular. They get pretty good tournament traffic for the size of the room and offer a pretty amazing promo, and the room and dealers are fine - I honestly have no idea how it can't do as well as the small reg-heavy strip rooms like the Flamingo.

I forgot it was 1-3, so yeah 10 plus 3-4 bb's isn't terrible way to grind. You are also absolutely right about the Flamingo, it's awful and I have no idea why all those nits just sit there with each other en masse. Oh wait, yes I do. They want to play without chance of losing too much, lol.

But you're not really making $10/hr. because (unless things have changed recently) they're dropping an extra $2 (for a total of $3) every hand to pay for it. If you scoop just a few hands per hour, you're paying most, if not all, of the $10 yourself; so you're just getting reimbursed the extra money that you've paid out. It's pretty much a zero sum game.

Yeah, I don't know why anyone would think they would be a longterm winner in that game. It's mostly populated by good, but broke, 2/5 players as discussed earlier in the thread.

I think they drop $4+2. You end up paying $6 a hand in a lot of places with worse promos so it's really not that bad. Wynn/Venetian are $5 now too with nothing back, so in comparison paying an extra buck for the consistent money back is a good deal for anyone investing a decent amount of hours.

I've played this game where you got $10 an hour until the game started at 2 PM or after and then the game was relatively good after with plenty of fishy locals and walk ins.

Been a while, but the last time I played it they had the most hours promo and it started as pretty much a full game at 10AM every day with a bunch of colluding nits.

so you got credit for hours you weren't playing? or you were playing short waiting for the game to fill up? im not quite understanding what you are saying. You contradict urself by saying willing to play 4 handed, but the game didnt get going for another few hours. If you are playing 4 handed the game is going.

You might want to double-check on that. When they've run this promo in the past, it was $4 + $3.

I got paid the promo for hours not playing as long as was willing to play once they had 4. seemed reasonable, it's been a while, but I ran into a guy who deals there and he said it's the same. In room and willing to play 4 handed does the trick.

Off topic but.......

This is the only thing I'd disagree with. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from a food snob and easily pleased but Kahunaville in TI is pretty good. It's over priced but it's very fair for LV prices and there are all kinds of half price special coupons floating around for the place. I eat there every trip and I've never paid full price. The Pho Asian place is far from fancy (it's tied to their coffee shop restaurant) but the food is surprisingly good for what it is. Their buffet sucks. It's one of the worst and smallest casino buffets I've ever eaten at. Even with a buy one get one free coupon they give you at checkin, it still isn't a deal. If they give you a free meal there it still might not be a deal.haha I've never eaten at most of their other places but I heard the Seafood Shack or whatever it's called is decent.

I will freely admit that by LV standards, their food isn't the fanciest or best but it's as good or better than 90% of the options we have down here in the South. Just saying.lol

I like their steakhouse.