I think it has to do with verbal allin bets being fairly common and unnecessary to have chips moved or counted.

I'm shocked by how many people announce bet sizes in any form... I do it but I've always felt like a rebel and that I was in a grimey minority

I think there is a reason ..... ..... and I think it helps make my case that its better not to count until necessary.

I'll give you my blunt honest answer. As a player I prefer that bets never be broken down and announced unless asked for for obvious reasons. However, as a suit I want to speed up the game and drop more rake. As much as I want to speed up the game I think the courtesy should be extended in an all-in situation or in bigger games (which unfortunately no longer run regularly in the room). In tournaments I'm not worried about the few extra hands per hour.

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Counting stacks slows the game. The reason is players don't wnat to interupt the dealer, so they will wait until the dealer is done counting until they act. The most common action at a table is "fold" so let them fold without the dealer counting the stack.

I am not saying that you are wrong but from what I have experienced I would disagree. A large number of bets don't need to even be broken down and the dealer announcing a $30 bet is going to speed the game up.

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In tournaments I never announce the amount unless it doesn't match the chips put in or the player says something while putting the chips out. I'll always repeat what the player says to give them a chance to correct me if I mis-heard.

Cash I tend to announce but it's on a case by case basis. Bigger games they often just want you to shut up and deal and by 4th and 5th streets players in the smaller games have usually woken up enough that they don't need it. Sometimes when a player throws out a bunch of chips sloppily I'll motion to the next person that it's their turn while I tidy it up so they know they don't have to wait until I'm done before folding. As I player I hate it when everyone waits for the bet to be fully counted even though none of them were going to call any bet anyway.

I took for granted we were t as liking about a bet made by putting out chips. Alway repeat verbal declarations.

This is my take on it. Also, in one of the rooms I deal in for a variety of reasons players use green chips at the $1/2 NL game pretty frequently and very often a player will throw out one greenbird and verbally declare some other value which, unless announced, can confuse other players.

I always announce bet amounts unless it's an all-in. I understand that it's silly for me to announce the bet amount when a player bets $995 of his $1000 stack, but to keep quiet if the throws in that one extra red chip, but so be it. I do it in the spirit of moving the game along and I'm pretty quick about breaking chips down.

And when a player verbally announces an amount I'll repeat that amount 100% of the time. For one thing I want to confirm that I heard the player correctly and for another thing it's not fair to the game when seat 2 announces a bet and only the left half of the table is able to hear him in a noisy room.

FMP

BTW. There two other reasons that I don;t think bets should be broken down and counted or announed but I thinkl they are less important than the first reason I gave and RR gave.

1) Dealer should be touching chips as little as possible. Since it may happen that everyone folds to the bet the dealer shouldn't touch the chips because he may never have to do so.

2) Players should be able to present their bet as they see fit (not talking about hiding chips here). Some may feel that the issue of whether the amount is announced or chips are just set out influences other players perceptions of the bet. They may be right or they be wrong but should still be their option .... up until the opponent asks for a count.

Hi, do any of your rooms have some kind of monthly ranking system for their tournament players? I'm looking to set one up and am thinking of what would be a smart formula for calculating points.
We are a small club, have tournaments on Saturdays and Sundays, with an average attendance of just 15 players fwiw.

When I have done it in the past I used a point system. I put 10 points per player into the prize pool and paid out points with a payout schedule that I made up. I pay out a little deeper with points than what I pay out for the cash prize. So... 15 players gives you 150 points to pay out. With 15 I pay top 4 (40%/30%/20%/10%). Should be pretty simple since you only generate 15 players average. If you want my points payout schedule for an example just shoot me a PM.

I see this come up in the Home Poker forum fairly frequently. You might want to search around there for some ideas.

Personally I don;t like these sorts of things. But if you do one I like the idea of marrying the points to the money. Easiest way is just track the money.

To me the benefits of this are ...

1) Easy
2) Distributes points on chops the same way as money. This means you don't need a seperate policy about how to distribute points for chops.
3) If you have different tournaments with different buy-ins it scales well.

I think that you guys are incorrect in your assumption that counting down stacks or announcing the bets slows down the game (on non-all-in situations). In fact, I believe that having the players know the bets speeds up the games.

This is our Player of the Series / Month formula:

Points = 10 * [sqrt(N)/sqrt(F)] * [(Logrithm Value)1+log(B+0.25)]

N = Number of Entrants
F = Place of Finish, 1 for 1st, etc.
B = the Buy In Amount

Logrithm Variable 0.1

Places a higher value on number of entrants versus buy-in amount. You can adjust the Lorgrithm Variable to weight it more towards buy-in amounts if you want.

In most rooms I have worked in, we are instructed to announce bet amounts at 1-2 and 2-5, but not in higher limit games and tournaments. And in my experience announcing bet sizes does keep things moving faster.

I used to agree with RR, that players will stop if I break down the bet.

But times have changed. Now players stop more if I DON'T break it down.

RR has been out of poker for a while. If he walked into a room today, and saw the way everyone holds their cards in their left hand in a way that the player to their left could not possibly see them (leading that player to act out of turn, then tell us what we already knew: "I couldn't see that he had cards!"), I think RR would faint.

Had a tourney player the other night who asked for a count on every bet, as the chips hit the table, before I could even reach for them. THEN he would look at his cards. They were usually min-raises or min-raise plus a small chip, and of course the voice in my head is screaming, "If you know it's a raise, and you can't call a min-raise, then how bad is your OCD that you need to know the exact amount of every bet that means nothing to you?"

I agree there are times when this is true. There are certain players who just believe you must announce the bet and they are going to freeze until you do. But i still think counting slows the game more .... and takes my attention away from the action. (If I am breaking down the stacks in front of player 2 and someone says the 9 seat string raised while I was doing this .... there is a good chance I didn't see what happened.)

One reason I think some dealers don't realize that counting and announcing bet sizes slows the game down is because while they are counting they are actively doing something ... it doesn;t feel like the game has paused.

Old people can't see across the table and want to know bet sizes.
Young internet people are used to knowing bet sizes so they want to know it.

Our rooms policy is that the dealer will announce (and count down if necessary) all bets unless it is an all-in, which is counted on request.

With smaller bets it's easy to just see what they've put out without handling the chips. If a player breaks them down before putting them out I can also watch (as can the other players but they don't always) and verbalize the amount as soon as it's pushed forward.

I don't really know if another way would be faster, this is my first dealing job and I follow the policy and verbalize every bet unless it's ridiculously obvious (they toss a single chip or a small and easily seen number out there).

Frankly I don't think verbalizing makes much of a difference - it seems like at least 90% of what I say isn't listened to anyway, even though it's relevant to the game.

The important thing is that everyone in the room does it the same. If you verbalize all bets and the next dealer doesn't, the game is going to go much slower for him as the players got used to you doing it so they sit and wait for him. If every dealer does it the same, the players know what they're in for and get used to it pretty quick. It's really not an issue here as our dealers all do it the way thats in the manual and most players are used to how we do it.

I'm surprised no dealer has mentioned limit games yet. As a LHE player it's surprising (at least to me, who doesn't fit into the stereotypes you all seem to have of us) how often I hear the dealer announce a bet, followed by a player asking "How much?"

Good Morning,

I have a question on protocol, if you could please check out and reply to this thread it would be very appreciated.

Thank you,
Amber

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/27...cards-1523731/