Not earth shaking, but I'm curious if there's something I could do to improve my handling of this situ.

Summary: I ask to see a winning Omaha hand but the dealer scoops it into the muck and tells me, "He had a straight." I try to delicately but assertively help her see that Omaha hands are all four cards, but I probably mess up the tone thing.

LO8, an otherwise great dealer dealing, but like many dealers here she runs the showdown so fast that I can barely see shown down hands on the other end of the table. I have a bad tendency to zone out and forget to look at entire O8 hands, which I'm working on. But I often have to ask the dealer to see the hand before it gets mucked.

(So far, nothing improper, although I wish they'd slow down half a second per showdown.)

The other night, there was some fairly unimportant action that ended up with me folding the turn and other players going to showdown. I wondered what draws my opponent had been raising, and he won the pot, so I was obviously entitled to a reasonable amount of time to examine his winner. So I made a point to ask to see the hand.

"He had a straight," she said, and scooped the cards into the muck.

I didn't shout or anything, but I did emphasize, "I asked to see that hand!" and she apologized.

(So far so good.... she messed up and apologized. It's tilting that dealers don't understand it's a four card game, but I don't care as long as the behavior gets corrected.)

I said, "OK," and let it go for about 30 seconds and then just tried to explain fairly calmly, "In Omaha it matters what all four cards are...." but got cut off by the pot winner, himself a former dealer. Was this out of line to try to explain why four cards matter?

I think it probably would have been better to wait until away from the table -- if nothing else, I'd rather my opponents not think it's important to look at four cards, even though every regular knows I'm a geek.

I think this is a situation where there may be some awkwardness. The dealer 99% already understands why you want to see the cards. She doesn't need you to explain that to her. She also wants to just keep things moving for a variety of reasons. There is pressure from the players to get as many hands in as possible. She undoubtedly pressures herself to get more hands out to make more money. She is also pressured by her employer to do the same.

Through what I know of you from these forums and reading your posts, I believe you were being completely sincere in your attempt at educating this dealer. Looking at it in a vacuum, however, you trying to explain something this basic to the dealer would almost always be seen as you just trying to rub it in that she didn't give you enough time to look at the hand. What I mean is that from her point of view (and probably everyone's at the table), this was the same as if a situation occurred where she put the turn out too early and it completed your flush in an already huge pot only to have it shuffled back into the stub resulting in your losing the hand...then after she apologizes, you try to explain to her why having to shuffle that card back into the deck affected the hand.

Obviously the situation is much more severe, but the harping on it doesn't help and it probably just seemed like you were venting at her about it. Again, you and I know you were being sincere. I'm just trying to help you see how she could be bothered by your explanation.

So it's not enough that you were right and she apologized, you want to be really, really right? What exactly did you expect the outcome of your "Omaha has four cards" comment to be?

This is very well put and from reading your posts as well I'd have to agree. The dealer was undoubtedly is under pressure from the floor and the majority of the table to keep the game going, so you berating her by explaining something so obvious unfortunately just makes you the bad guy... even if you were being 100% sincere.

Without being offensive to AKQJ10, I think he was just a little oblivious Now that it's been pointed out, I'm sure he can see the situation a little more clearly.

"Hey dealer. I am fast enough to locate and assimilate the two cards in his hand that make it a winner but being a little bit senile I have a problem then refocusing and registering the other two cards in his hand that I would like to remember so I have his complete hand to analyze his play. So, I would greatly appreaciate it if you would slow from your current Mach 3.2 to a more player-friendly subsonic speed."

Haha, basically.

@Didace, I wasn't trying to be "really really right", just sincerely thought she didn't understand the reason why I would care about four cards. Even a very good O8 dealer who doesn't herself play O8 might not get why it matters.

Reid has it about right -- I was oblivious, but really just stream of consciousness felt like it was worth clarifying. I dropped it, then talked to her about it after the game broke (mostly because I felt bad when another guy, a couple of hands later, went ballistic at the dealer when he was totally in the wrong, and I feared that I had escalated tensions). It was fine, no big deal, and now she understands why I want to see all four cards.

To be clear, the game didn't break for a while. Hopefully my career opening my big mouth and making games break has come to an end.

I have the same problem often too when I sit far from the center, plus I don't see very well. The reason they do the showdown fast is more hands = more tips for her and more rake for the house and players like the game to keep moving a fast as possible. She doesn't have your best interests at heart. She was out of line. You were not. Simple as that. Unfortunately little you can do about it except sit in the center or pay extra attention at showdown or ask to see the cards in advance like you did.

I'd put this at closer to 50% in general, and far lower in this case - perhaps 5-10%. The dealer's response, "he had a straight," demonstrates that she didn't really understand it.

I think it's really unfair to "say she was out of line". It's not like she got snotty toward him. She just folded the hand and moved onto the next hand. No big deal in the grand scheme.

Exactly. A dealer that did would say something like "He had JT97 single suited JT, sorry". She's thinking you mean "please Miss can I verify that you awarded the pot correctly, what was his final hand?"

You give poker dealers too much credit for understanding poker and analyzing hands, especially in Omaha where the other two cards do really tell you a lot.

Yeah, that was certainly my inference from "He had a straight."

I don't berate poker dealers for silly mistakes because that's not how decent human beings treat other decent human beings. If the dealer flips up my ace and replaces it with a seven, or brings a premature turn card I like and it gets shuffled back, hey, it's random.

Once she apologized, if I thought she really understood why I was asking, I'd have dropped it immediately.

I guess I'm giving too much credit then. The dealers where I play are generally very in-tune with the game, but then again it's not a casino where non-poker players were taken in from off the street and trained up I guess. Carry on

Actually they're among the best dealers I've played with, but that's neither here nor there. A veteran HE player could learn to deal Omaha and still think that the only hole cards that matter are those that the player is playing. The issue rarely comes up in HE because, even though good players understand that both cards matter regardless, they can almost always note both cards in a single glance.