Another vote for "straight", not "board".

of course its irrelevent because at least 3 players will scream chop chop.

If the dealer says "board" instead of "straight", he is asking the other player if he can beat the board because the first player to act CANNOT beat the board. That's a violation of OPTAH.

That is not what a dealer is supposed to be doing.

Announce the straight, nothing more. At that point in time, the player with his cards still unexposed has to be able to read the board and his own hand.

One more reason to just turn over your hand when all action is complete and it's showdown.

Yep and I hate that. Invariably someone will say something that tells others there is a straight on the board.

A few weeks back a player said "wow, a 8 high straight on the board!" I asked him to not talk about a hand in progress.

He said "I bet everyone saw that, didn't you" and he looked around the table.

One guy flipped over his suited connectors (which did not play in anyway) and said "nope, I didn't, I was looking for the flush on the river but missed."

And the answer to this is of course .... Well if everybody already knows it .... why do you have to tell them? Is it so they all know how smart you are that you saw the thing which everybody saw? (or at least thats the answer I'm saying inside my head)

Actually, I said that very thing to a player ~ 3 months ago.

On the flop, 1/2 game, 5 players see the flop. SB leads off for $20.

BTN (a regular he's been playing there for years.) He says "protecting your flush draw?"

I ask him not to discuss a hand in progress. He looks at me and asks why?

I explain that you are not supposed to discuss a hand in progress in multi-way pots. BTN acts as if this is the first time he has ever heard of it. He tells me I must be wrong, I'm about to call the floor when he says: "Besides, everyone here saw the flush draw anyway."

This is probably when I should have just called a floor, the player is a royal PITA but I went ahead and said.

"Then there was no need for you to mention it, was there?"

I can't recall how the hand played out but afterwards he started to pick up his chips and leave then looked at his watch and said "hell, you'll be gone in 10 minutes anyway." and he left the table.

Since then if I push into a table he is at, he leaves. I do not miss him at all. He has never said anything to a floor person either or I would have been asked about it.

Dealers, watch this video:

http://youtu.be/Yx7tukP7aHE

Tell me it doesn't give you nightmares...

Bet she protects her hand in the future.

Dealer mistake but she could have prevented it.

Cards unprotected in the 10 seat, she has her hands in her lap.

I'm holding on to my cards in that situation.

lol knew what video it was going to be before clicking. That video is like bait to bring in the "OMG FIRE DA DEEELUUURRR" crowd in here.

All of this is true and we all know it's a player's responsibility to protect his or her own hand.

None of that changes the fact that the dealer made a calamatous mistake at one of the worst possible times and I feel so very horribly for him.

It doesn't give me nightmares. Doesn't bother me in the least.

It probably bothers her far more than it does the dealer. She'll remember the times her Aces got mucked in the WSOP forever, whereas the dealer may never think about that again.

I'd imagine the dealer will remember that episode as vividly as she does.

The most interesting part of that video to me is the interaction between the supervisor and the dealer. I thought the supervisor was a bit demeaning but I can understand how trying to preserve the muck in a crisis situation would lead to an overreaction.

Bonus trivia: Googling around, I see that Estelle Denis is a French sports TV host and partner of a former French national soccer team coach.

Yeah, I disagree the dealer won't ever think about it again. I still remember mistakes I made at the table - and how I felt when the floor had to come over and players were staring at me - and I never made one as publicly or as severe as this one... And hope I never do.

(Not a dealer)

Wow I'd never seen that. I'd always bought the argument that a chip is the best card protector. But if you're all-in you don't have chips left.

Your hand is the best card protector.

(BTW, I'm not a dealer either, but I'm extrapolating from how I would feel if I made a mistake at work that cost a customer $1000s and led a supervisor to have to come address a crisis.)

Well I've also seen complaints that if you're covering your cards with your hand that it can cause others (including the dealer) to miss that you even have cards.

No way to win.

that's a terrible point

if you're all-in, the other players should probably be able to tell that you still have cards considering all your chips are in the pot. if not, who cares? you've protected your action and your hand. no one could claim you were trying to conceal your cards at that point.

i don't care if i'm all-in in the main event or for $20 in a home game. i'm keeping my hand on my cards.

You really think its that hard to keep your fingers on your cards in a way that the cards are still visible? Even if you completely cover half the card .....

I have this problem, especially in the 1 and 10 seats, because I have large hands. As psandman says, I try to be mindful of this fact and make my cards visible, but if the 1 and 2 seats are going to not pay attention and act out of turn, there's only so much I can do to stop them.

I think one week of reading B&M shows that 'should' matters much less in poker than it should.

well yeah, players will be idiots. but who cares in the scope of that video? we're balancing players behind us acting out of turn vs leaving our hand unprotected? it's not close. it's not even worth mentioning as a counterpoint.

I really don't know what's hard about it.

--I've never had a player tell me he couldn't see my chips.

--I've never had a player act out of turn behind me because he couldn't see my cards (oh, they've occasionally claimed, "I didn't see his cards," but then everybody looks and sees the view of my cards is completely unobstructed from all angles, and it becomes clear that the only reason he didn't see them wasn't because he COULDN'T see them, but rather because he didn't bother to look).

--I *did* have a dealer muck my unprotected hand once. ONCE!!!

So dealers, whats the closest thing to an all out brawl you have seen at the tables? Do you remember what started it? Did it actually get to blows? Did either/any of the combatants return to the game?

Someone once had the cops called on him and when he refused to leave, he wound up getting tased at my table.

While this guy was drunk and had a huge attitude, it was his brother who was the huge problem. He was not playing but he was lording over the table, threatening people at it including me and other employees and supervisors. It was not a cool scene but our casino protocol was to call the cops and have security just monitor the situation.

The guy goes all in on the river against an Irish regular who had previously been involved in a hand/altrication with him and he is deliberating when the cops show up. His brother is trying to get him to go, the cops are saying he has to go, but he keeps saying "I'm all in!"

Finally, the cops are starting to get physical and he says "I have aces, I ain't going nowhere!" He then proceeds to flip up two aces - which matched with a third ace on the board - in an attempt to get the cops to let him finish the hand.

No dice... They wind up tazing him. He was in the one seat (naturally) so he is flopping around on the floor next to me, kicking my chair, while I am desperately trying to get the cover for the rack up to secure the chips.

Finally, things settle down to a low roar. Guy is led off in cuffs.

I look at Kevin (the Irish reg) and say, as deadpan as I can, "So, do you call?"

He looks at me and in his thick Irish brogue says "I can't win!"

So I say "I take it you are folding then..."

I push the pot to the empty seat, the floor bags it and gives it to the cops. Maybe he used it as bail...

It's funny in retrospect and I got a lot of grief from regs and co-workers but at the time the whole incident was quite unsettling, to say the least.

(And yes, Kevin could have probably done a lot of things like which would have been able to kill the other guy's hand, but at the time, we were all dazed and he didn't care that the pot was dealt with the way it was.)