nice.

dealing an even lower buy in tourney than that, 10-10 versus KQ all in

losing reg with 10s "no k or q, please ste"

first card out 10. reg taps table.

other two flop cards j a. snap royal flush np.

i pause before doing the turn. "no king or queen, and i even put out a 10 for you"

Today, a Mega satellite. 4 players limp to see the flop. Blinds are 25/50

Flop 8,9, Q (rb)

Player 1 bets $200T

Player 2 makes it $800T

Player 3 makes it $1600T

Player 4 folds.

Player 1 pauses then folds.

Player 2 shoves, Player 3 calls all in.

Player 2 had 10, J for nut straight

Player 3 had pocket 9's for middle set.

Turn is the case 9

River, X

Player 2 had about $300T left after that.

I looked at player 1, a regular and a very skilled tournament player and asked him if he made a good lay down?

For the first time in forever, I can afford to play poker, so I got myself out of the lineup to prop a 5-handed O/8 game. I played good for about an hour, then played horrible and donked off a rack of chips, most of them going to the solid player on my left. My last hand, I'm BB for 3 chips, with only 3 more chips behind. UTG folds, all limp, I get my last three chips in, all call.

Solid player, the only one who folded preflop, remarks, "Wow, look at all this action! How am I missing this?"

"Gee whiz," I told him, "You got the first 94 chips from me, sorry you won't be getting the last six!"

And they weren't $1 chips. I was really bummed out about losing so much, but on the way home I realized, "Hey, wait a minute--I can totally afford this now." I've been broke for about two years, just getting back on my feet this summer, I'm not used to being able to afford to spew a rack of chips, if it had happened in the past 24 months it would have been devastating. Feels weird, is my point. A good weird!

Grats man. I know it's been quite a road for you getting to where you're at.



So I'm thinking about starting to put together a "how to protect your hand" post with some visual aid photos and videos. Kinda like these quickie videos I made but with less sarcasm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6TW-UZJ5eE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcR7uT7XP1Y

Think there'd be an interest?

I just spent 20 minutes searching the interwebz and came up with nada, what movie is this from?

It's from Mr. Mom. The original version is "220, 221, whatever it takes."

There would be. I have thought of making this same video myself of how to show your cards. I first thought of it when someone on here tried to say that your cards had to be flat on the table at showdown.

Thank you, sir.

It's used twice. In the dream sequence near the end, Keaton's character is "shot" and someone asks the woman who shot him if she used a 38, she said "38, 39, whatever it takes".

My first table tonight was the most lively $3-6 game I've seen in years. I don't mean lively action, I mean lively conversation. Strangers all, but they were swapping stories and making each other laugh, all without slowing down the game. It was awesome. The ringleader was in the 2 seat, a young guy whose background is in radio. He was like the emcee, getting everyone to tell a story. If you know anybody in radio, there are three invariables:

--they can talk all day
--they love the sound of their own voice
--they think everything they say is interesting.

But like I say, he wasn't annoying anyone, a grand time was had by all. It was the most fun down I've had in years.

Best story was from an older guy with a heavy NY accent. When prompted, he started his story with, "Well, I was born and raised in NYC..."

"No kidding!", I interrupted, my first and only foray into the discussion, with a "no ****!" tone of voice, which got a laugh out of everybody.

But the guy's story was awesome. When he was 12 years old in 1963, he worked concessions at Yankee Stadium. One cold early April day, they assigned him to work the commissary, which is the big kitchen that makes all the food for the vendors and concession stands. They told him to bring a bunch of cups of hot chocolate to the Yankees dugout. He did so, it was about 7th inning, "And I never left the dugout after that! They were all there: Mantle, Maris, Berra, I'm a twelve-year-old kid! I'm hanging out with these guys! After the game, they took me into the clubhouse, I got signed balls, signed bats, a signed first-baseman's mitt..."

Cool story, bro.

"A few years later, my father decides to move us back to the old country. We sold the house. As my mother is cleaning out the house, getting rid of as much junk as she can..."

Oh, no...

"Yup. Tossed it all. She had to decide whether to pack that stuff, or my bowling ball. I still have the bowling ball."

Everyone remarked on how much that stuff would be worth now. I was the only one to remark, "Hey, none of that stuff is worth more than the memory of that day, and they can't take that away from you."

I was sorry to see that down end. I get pushed and go to the next table, the biggest-stakes game in the room. A very stoic game, as expected, so I just shut up and deal to 9 silent players. What a contrast.

After a few minutes, the player in the 8 seat points to the radio guy who is sitting about a foot away, and asks the player next to him, "Who is this guy, and why won't he STFU???"

At our casino, usually the higher stakes games are the most lively conversation wise.

Yeah, because the players all know each other. That's what made this table so great, it was all strangers.

As most of you know, I recently moved to a part of the country I had never been to before to deal poker, and adapting to their nonstandard procedures has been frustrating, but it led to a good laugh tonight:

When dealing limit, every time I've tried to enforce the cap in a heads-up pot (where the betting round had started with more than two players, but was down to two players by the time the last raise went in), the whole table would usually try to correct me. I'd calmly and firmly explain the rule to them, and they'd all say, "Wow, I never knew that." When this happened in the higher-limit games, full of regs, it made me think, "How could these guys not know this?"

I've been able to play in the room a few times this week. Last night, it came up, and the dealer let the two remaining players keep raising without a cap. I just kept my mouth shut, and let him run his game.

At the end of the night, I asked the floor about this, and he explained that in this room, my interpretation of the rule is incorrect. It doesn't matter how many players were in the hand at the start of the round, it only matters how many players are in when the fourth raise is made.

Like every other adjustment I've had to make since arriving here, that's not a terrible way to do it, it's just different, dammit. No point in complaining, they're signing the checks, I'll do it their way.

That was last night. Tonight, in the break room with Dealer A and Dealer B:

DEALER A: Did Floorman X give you the "cap" speech yet?

DEALER B: No. What do you mean?

DEALER A: I guess some dealer was enforcing a cap if the betting round started with more than two players, even if it was down to two players when the fourth raise was made. So now Floorman X wants to make sure we're all doing this the proper way.

DEALER B: Well, that dealer is an idiot.

ME: (waves hello to Dealer B)

DEALER B: (turns red, hangs his head, then weakly tries to play it off like he was joking, he knew it was me the whole time, nobody bought it.)

BTW, the fact that the floor took it upon himself to make sure all the dealers are doing it the same way, is one of the many things I love about working here.

My local room just opened about 9 months ago, but the dealers and floors are, on the whole, fantastic. We have the same rule as your new room (it's whether it's heads up at the time the 4th bet goes in).

That didn't stop an argument from breaking out about it 2 weeks ago at the room's highest limit table, a wrong ruling from the floor after we called him over after the hand ended, one player refunding a bet to another player, the argument spreading to other players at other tables, a reversal of the ruling from another floor, the player un-refunding the money to the original player, a re-reversal to the wrong ruling from the floor supervisor, about 45 minutes of floors arguing about it at the podium, and a call to the room manager at home, before it finally got straightened out.

Sometimes things just go bonkers.

BTW, how they are doing it became industry standard about the same time you left Vegas.

Here in Vegas I see it about 50-50 in the places I have worked whch rule they use. I am surprised that you had never heard of this variation .... its one of those first questions I ask when starting in a new room.

For the second time in a week, I dealt with someone saying "collusion" when someone else did the whole "Let's check it down" thing.

First time, a father and son squeeze out some guy who goes semi-ballistic. The two guys probably know it's soft play but have no idea that it's against the rules. Floor comes over, doesn't do a very good job of explaining it, and they are all still arguing over it for my whole push.

Last night, two guys do it, some guy says to me "collusion" (it is revealed later he did this just because it happened at another table recently to him - not the one above, however! - and it was on his mind, not because he thought they were really colluding). Turns into an argument, I call a floor to explain it but a new dual rate guy comes over and he says it's perfectly fine to verbally ask to and agee to check it down if you are head's up!

It turns out that the other supervisors corrected him even before I had a chance to ask them about it (he probably asked them the deal after he left me with a very confused and maybe a little angry look on my face) but the rest of the down, I heard about it and how it was perfectly good. Wonderful.

So I ask you seasoned dealers, how the hell do I handle this? It's a rule that nobody seems to understand. If nobody complains (which is the case when someone asks to check it down and there's no dead money in the pot and/or everyone is friendly, i.e. a majority of the time) I just deal the cards. But what happens if someone says something?

My response is usually to say "It's a form of collusion; I'll call a floor and they can explain it," but the floor is 0 for 2 so far.

I want to say: "That is soft playing. Even if you do it when there's no dead money in the pot it's a form of collusion, but it's tolerated. Do it with dead money in the pot after someone was squeezed out of a pot and people will complain. Do it often enough and people will accuse. If it gets to that point, warnings get issued, players get broken up and nobody wants to deal with that crap." But I am there to deal cards, not delay the game dealing with something the floor should be able to handle.

(Not to blame the supervisors, as I know this is a pain for them as well.)

I just cannot see a way to resolve this sort of thing. I am only glad it happens infrequently.

I've heard someone complain about "you wanna check it down" in a cash game approximately one out of 100,000 times. No one cares. You would be wasting your breath as a dealer if you wanted to try to butt in and explain it every time it happens. What's going to happen is a 5 minute debate instead, freezing your game, getting people upset, when the fact is nobody cares.

IF someone complains about it (and boy, what an if), you've got it exactly right, imo. Ruling on collusion is a job for the floor. I've had to call over the floor for someone calling collusion for "you wanna check it down?" exactly one time in 5 years that I can remember.

In regards to the cap question:
I've worked in one room where heads up before "last" raise = no cap.
I've worked in one room where the betting round has to start heads up for there to be no cap.
I've worked in one room where I'm pretty sure the poker room manager didn't know what the rule was, because his explanation made no sense. That poker room is no longer open.

Correct, which is why I typed the following:

I don't look for trouble. But it found me twice in a week. Hopefully that's an anomaly.

NOW you tell me!

I'm pretty sure we did it my way for 9 years in Tunica. Ah well, whatever.

Yes, we did. I can remember explaining to people that Tunica hadn't caught up to LA.

How hard is it to get a job as a poker dealer in Charlestown, WV?
What are the requirements?

speaking of Tunica, how;s the craps down there?
Is there still $0.25 min with 20x odds? (Bally's, i think)

If you can't post it in B&M, I'll put it up in LLSNL.

The best answer to this can be found by calling a poker room in that city.

it's quite possible that each room will have their own qualifications.

Some rooms, like mine near Dallas, Tx only hire from within.

Some want only experienced dealers. Some will take all comers, if they are hiring and that's the problem. Finding a room that is hiring.

Most qualifications include clean criminal records, clean drug screen results and the manual dexterity to handle cards and chips accurately and quickly.

I would pick a casino I wanted to work in and ask a floor person about their hiring practices and requirements. That way you stand the best chance of getting the correct information.