Now that's sad.

Yup. I didn't last too long at that place.

Anyway, some shenanigans going down at my current place.

Remember Tank (the intimidating poophole) from my previous story? Well, he's still around.

Dealing a 2/5, two players in a pot, one tables at showdown, the other mucks. I pull the mucked hand into the pile and start counting down the bet. It's in the 2 seat, so I'm turned a bit. As I pull it in, I see Tank (in the 7 seat), casually looking at two cards, and then sliding them into the muck.

So okay, it's my fault for not fully burying the cards, but this is unacceptable. I ask him if he looked at the other player's cards. "Huh? No." Yeah. Normally I'd take care of this myself, but this guy needs a paper trail. "Floor!"

One of the room supervisors comes over. I like this guy, he wants to run a tight ship. Tank says something like, "I was distracted talking to the massage girl, I turned around, and thought they were my cards." Keep in mind this is at showdown, and dude hadn't been in the hand for a while. Supervisor isn't biting, tells the dude that if that's the case, then he needs to pay more attention. Really not much to be done, and he understands why I called him.

I get up for my break, chat with supervisor. Apparently Tank had previously been banned for a year for being a poophole. Supervisor tells me of his techniques, like just staring people down (which he's done a lot to me, I just look back, raise my eyebrows, smirk my face, and shrug), etc. Supervisor says he's a whisker away from getting banned again.

So that's good. It's nice to know the higher-ups understand what's going on, and will have my back.

Anyway, later that night, there was some really shady stuff going on...

This doesn't directly star Tank, but he was a part of the shadiness.

We have a girl who's been playing lately. She's very young (maybe even just 19) and a total space cadet. She can't stack chips, she doesn't seem to be aware of what's going on around her, she barely speaks above a whisper, she never posts blinds, she's not aware that when she raises or calls a raise that it includes chips already put out there, and she never responds when I let her know it's her turn. She needs help from someone next to her almost all the time

And she wins. A lot. The other players seem to think she's pulling a master con. Me, I think she's just gotten lucky in the right spots. I don't think she's going to last.

Late at night, I'm pushing into the table, it's short-handed. Something big has just gone down. Space Cadet is getting a massive pot pushed her way, several thousand in reds alone, plus stacks of greens and a bunch of blacks. She's making no move to take them, seems distracted, there's some kind of bad blood in the air. I get the floor to help her get some reds racked, just to get them out of the way and colored up.

Later in the down she and a few others take a break, so the two players remaining just hang out waiting for them to get back. I ask what happened. Apparently in a 3-way pot, Space Cadet shoved all-in (probably a massive over-bet), and as another player was tanking, she said something like "You're good." Player eventually called, Space Cadet showed an over-pair, it was good. Nothing really bad here, right?

Except apparently here that's a no-no. You're not allowed to talk about your hand, not even heads-up. Of course, I've never seen that ever be a problem. Floor confirms that it's against the rules (even heads-up), because it's "angling". Me, I think it's called "a tell". Regardless, it's a minor violation, and they're making this girl feel like she committed a major crime. So much so that she is offering to give the money back. I tell her not to do that, but of course she doesn't hear me. She's talking about how she didn't mean it, she figured he had a set, etc.

And these players know it. They've been playing with her long enough to understand some of her thought process. There's no way they were "angled" by her. They misinterpreted a tell, nothing more.

So another hand, Space Cadet raises, guy who almost got stacked shoves for a few hundred. This is where Tank comes in. He tells her to shove all-in. She does so. I call the floor.

The hand plays, of course, and Tank makes his case that he was only telling her to shove all-in, because she wants to give money back to the other guy. Like that matters, or like it's his place at all to say anything. And in my mind, they should all back off and not encourage her to lose money back. It's awful and shady and just poor sportsmanship. The floor explains that he shouldn't be giving her advice, and Tank looks at me like "See? Told you." Dumbass has to be told again that the floor was ruling against him, not against me.

When I get up from my table, I try to explain the situation to the floor, and he says there's not much we can do. I think she needs to be picked up. Floor even said that she had been playing for several days straight. If that's not a sign of not being of right mind, I don't know what is. Oh well, can't save everybody.

And it's a stupid rule, too.

But speaking of that "no angling heads-up" rule, Tank is very adamant that it's a rule and it needs to be followed. I say okay, if that's a rule here, it's just not where I come from, so I didn't know. (That's just to get him to ask where I come from, so I can say "Las Vegas" and have a bit more weight behind me when I talk to him. People here see Vegas as Shangri-La.)

But now it's on. Since he's such a stickler for rules, he gets every rule violation called out.

Four-way pot, he checks out. "Please don't open fold, sir." "Huh? What? It was my turn to act, I can muck if I want." "Your options are check or bet. You seem very concerned with rules, so I'm letting you know." "You don't know what you're talking about." "Floor!"

This was a gamble. I wasn't sure which way floor would go on that. Turns out, he has my back. He explains a few times to Tank why it's bad for the game. Tank finally acquiesces.

We had a couple more minor scuffles. I got to drop the line, "You're very concerned about the rules, except when they apply to you."

He gave me the stare-down. I chuckled.

Looking forward to when he gets banned again.

Last week I did something really odd. I've never done this before. I dealt out the player sitting in the 6 seat because I thought she wasn't there. But she was sitting right there in front of me the whole time. She had her head down, and apparently her black hair against the background of her black shirt, and her black coat made me think that the seat was occupied by a black hole and I just went past her.

Ha! I've done that from time to time.

Actually I had a typo. I meant I have NEVER done this before.

Mr T had a great line in Rocky III when he was getting the staredown from Stallone.

"That the meanest look you got?"

Hah, love that line.

So I was in the rotation to deal Tank's table tonight, but just as I was to push in, the floor juggled a bunch of people around, and then fixed it later so basically I skipped that table, but other than that the lineup remained the same. When I asked him about it, he acted like he had made a mistake, that it wasn't intentional. Uh-huh.

Regardless, there was some kind of big controversy tonight involving - you guessed it - Tank. Boy, this guy must have the worst luck to always have high-conflict stuff happening to or around him. He spent a long time up away from the table, talking to various security folks and floor, etc. And then he was suddenly gone from the room for the night.

Asked floor what happened, I was told it's best if I don't know, but that it was something to do with a cocktail waitress. I had overheard something about leaving some money somewhere (maybe?), so I really hope Tank didn't get someone else in trouble.

Dude's a walking ball of problems. He sure does crave attention.

This is a good point I didn't really think about. I don't BnT that much but not pulling in bets could help make them even more infrequent.

I could see it speeding things up, but it would only save a second or two and not worth it IMO.

I asked because a high % of dealers I've known do it. However, there are a select few dealers that I consider to be some of the best I've seen. I'll watch them for a hand or so when I'm down, or while I play if I'm at another casino. When I only sample these dealers, they seem to be split pretty evenly when it comes to pulling the bets in, whereas overall it's probably like an 80/20 split for not bringing in bets.


After I asked I tried to bring in bets first my next few downs, and holy hell, that's a hard habit to break. Some hands I would bring in bets before the turn, and think "Ok, I can do this." Then burn and bring a river and realize I left the bets out "Damnit". Oh well, I'll get there.

I would hate to leave bets in and have honestly never done it dealing in a casino. I simply can't understand how it could speed things up. The number of floor calls for things like a player betting before the pot is taken in and B&Ting before action is complete on that street would result in a decrease in speed overall and an increase in player confusion.

Just like when you place out the flop, turn or river, players will often wait until you look up at them before checking or betting. The principle is the same here such that players will end up waiting until the pot is combined before taking action on the card they have seen turned a few seconds earlier so essentially time is wasted, not saved.

First night on dice. Boy I couldn't hear anything and apparently forgot to breathe at times.

It gets better...stick with it!

I hadn't considered how important hearing would be to a dice dealer. My hearing sucks.

The state I'm in has a $100 max bet law governing their poker games, so we don't spread NL cash games, everything is fixed limit. However, we recently started spreading a 2-100 spread-limit game, which is pretty close to NL, so now I get all the joys of tanking and staredowns, which I expected...but here's what I didn't expect:

On every street, the bettor silently slides out a stack or two of chips (the game is played with $2 chips, a decision by management which is an entirely different controversy). The next player stares at it for a minute, then turns to me and asks, "How much?", and I count it down. ON EVERY STREET OF EVERY HAND! These guys would see twice as many hands per hour if they just said "Forty," or whatever when they put their bets out, or if they counted it out...but nope, they're just going to do it this way.

In my room, the policy is for the dealer to break down every bet automatically, except for an all-in bet. Player throws out a stack of chips and scatters them in front of him... automatically I'm straightening it up and breaking it down without prompting from anyone. "The bet is $87. The action is on you, sir."

I can't properly express how much I love this policy. I could name a hundred things I'd like to change about my room, but I love this rule. Even at the higher limits, I'm breaking bets down and keeping the game moving. "$5425 to call, sir." And I can't recall a time when a single player has ever complained about this.

My room is also liberal with breaking down and announcing bets in a cash game. Tournaments we aren't to so much as touch the chips unless asked.

Well today I learned how to possibly make a 2-100 game worse thanks to YTF! Whee!

Thanks, scheduled roulette tonight but wouldn't mind getting pulled to dice to warm up again and stay that way on the game. Just completely panicked and brain shut down on first night

I wouldn't mind learning dice if it became legal here. I hear it's tough.

Seriously, ytf, just count it before they ask. I've finally adopted this policy. It's much better.

My room is the same as these two:

For cash (big bet), announce amount of wager (x to call). All in is the bet size.
Tournament the more classical "bet" or "raise".

Personally I like it, games move at a good pace and I can run down a bet while directing the action and managing my game. Higher limits the only thing I do is simplify my calls to just the numbers. Lower limits I'm more verbose.

Oh, and my other thing is that all bets announced are the total of the wager. Always (for consistency as much as anything).

I would definitely agree on the toughness of the game. I've dealt blackjack for many years, plenty of variety on carnival games, poker in a room where 7stud is very popular, and roulette. Craps is a totally different beast, don't even think pai gow tiles can be as hard

I may start counting and announcing 100% of the time at entry level spread games.