I worked in a room where the ac wasn't working for about a week. In South Florida. In the summer.

They brought in 4 or 5 huge portable fans and opened the doors to the outside, but the heat was still unbearable. Supervisors would bring bottles of water to the dealers to drink while in the box.

And there were 3 other rooms within a 20 minute drive, but all the regulars stuck around to complain about the heat.

I will never understand poker players.

I had racebook players crying to me because the room was full of thick smoke, from a fire down the hall. Even when I SUGGESTED they were a two-minute walk from the racebook next door, they still would not leave. They just covered their mouths with cocktail napkins, kept gambling, kept complaining.

Question for the dealers in this thread, though I suppose players might chime in.

A player at a table where I was playing brought this up, and I'd never given any thought to this not being okay and above board...

There's a high hand promo. You only need to play one card in your hand to qualify.

The hand on the board to beat is quad 10s. This hand, we're heads up and the board has 3 kings on the river. Player A bets, Player B folds. As the dealer is getting ready to push the pot, Player A pushes his cards forward, face down. The dealer asks, "Do you have a king?"

Does anyone have a problem with this?

Not a problem from a business standpoint but I think the dealer is creating a problem for himself. If the player with the quad 10's happened to be at the table and then the player in the hand says. "oh yeah I forgot!' and flipped a K, then the other guy is going to hit the roof.
The guy chose not to show his hand. Move on.

At showdown on a 4-spade board, one player shows two pair and the other player goes to muck. Do you ask him if he had a spade? Of course not.

It's not exactly the same thing as asking if he could beat the king, but you're still trying to stop him from making a mistake that would make a significant number of chips go to someone else instead of him. It's probably someone at another table who will never know, but it's still happening and you're doing it for selfish reasons.

A dealer in my room just lost his gaming license (and job with it) for interfering in a high hand. He did it in a much more dramatic fashion but still.

If you're going to coach players on how to the high hand works, do it between hands.

It is a bit different because all players aren't aware of the high hand, especially the non promo chasing regs.

How is this different than a player not being aware that they have a flush? The information is there, but it’s up to them to figure it out.

Because the player is aware he has quad kings, he just doesn't know that this room is taking money out of the pots he won and distributing it based on a different set of rules that aren't constant from room to room. Just another way for regs to take advantage of recreational players?

I don't think the dealer should be doing that.

If you could reveal the specifics without being so specific as to identify the dealer, I would love to know what happened.

In an alternate universe, this might have happened to me. I dealt a hand out in a room with standard Bad Beat rules in play: Both cards have to play, minimum of $20 in the pot, any quads or better have to lose.

The board has a pair of Aces and Sixes on it and both players are all in. Young man flips over AA, the immortal nuts. The older woman in the hand is ready to flip and I say "If you have sixes, everyone will be happy." And then she flips over sixes and the table went nuts.

It could be argued that what I said voided the hand even though the player was obviously going to flip them over whether I said anything or not. I sometimes imagine how that would have gone down and it's not pretty - the table hates me, I lose my license and job.

So I feel badly about the dealer in your room but maybe it can be a teaching moment... My guess is whatever he did was much more egregious but still.

The responses to that can vary widely. Short term the Dealer might get a larger tip than normal by alerting the customer. Long term the word might spread to the 'loser' and result in less tips cumulatively. Some would say that if Mr. TTTT confronted the Dealer the Dealer can simply say "I would do the same for you. I'm taking care of my table." It could be considered personal if the Dealer knows who has the HH and wants to displace them.

As with most poker spots .. It depends. In a 20-table room, go for it and give the Players ever shot possible to score. In a 4-6 table reg-heavy room, then use caution.

Best Dealer scenario IMO ...
1) Push in, give name and alert table to any 'instant' promos running (The BBJ typically takes care of itself) and how they work (one or two hole cards req'd)
2) When a possible HH hits the Board and there's no Showdown ... just pause an extra second or two before mucking the holding/Board as a courtesy gesture and perhaps add in a little glance.

Please, lets assume that 99.5% of Dealers know the difference between offering information at Showdown and offering at least an added opportunity for a Player to get some promo funds back in their pocket. GL

AH yes .. BBJ nightmares. As a consummate worrier, I've come up with many scenarios where a BBJ might go bad, including the one time EVER that a surveillance worker can also read lips and void it per discussions during the hand ... or the one blabber mouth at the table who starts a play-by-play before payouts are verified.

Comparing "helping a player read their hand" to "pointing out to a player that a promo is running at this moment" is ludicrous.

How far are you going to take this?

PLAYER: Where is Table 12?
DEALER: Sorry, can't help you with that. It might lead to chips that would have gone to one player, going to another.

Would you still stop someone from mucking if the current high hand player is sitting in front of you in the 5 seat and there's 1 minute left?

If a jackpot I was gonna win gets voided because the dealer said something, there's gonna be hell to pay.

If I *knew* the current leader was at this table...then the other players at this table know it, too, and don't need to be advised about the current promo. It's fresh on everyone's mind.

Heh....also, if the current leader is at this table, then he probably heard me give the same speech when he made HIS high hand. If he didn't object then, I don't want to hear him object now.

If you really want to tip the player off, you can say "I thought for sure I was going to have to fall the floor over to verify the high hand" or something while you're scratching your back with the hand you'd normally be pulling his cards into the muck with. Or maybe pause and look up toward the board/screen or where ever they keep track of that stuff and ask the table if they know what the current high hand is because you haven't been paying attention or whatever. If someone is going to come at you for that one, at least you can plausibly pawn it off as bad judgment like "Aw, I wasn't thinking, sorry Phil."


I personally don't do these things because I wouldn't want it to be done to me if I had the high hand.

So this afternoon I dropped my casino I work in to grab a free buffet I had for lunch.

On my way out, I've got a $20 in my pocket, put in buffalo machine. Hit the super jackpot for $1800. Crowd of like 20 people around me. I get paid out, there's $11 and change leftover in the machine from the $20. I spin, bonus round. I spin one more time, another bonus round back to back. Made an extra like $300. Then cashed out and sprinted the hell outta there!

Take the money and run!

Well done .. Many a session I've seen Players 'getting their hours in' and wasting away some run good. GL

How are we handling cell phones these days? My local ...

1) No touching of a phone with a live hand
2) Must push back from table if you are 'in conversation'

One of the most common issues is if someone is also playing poker on their phone. Typically a whale/action Player in a higher stake game .. Management? GL

Our policy: "Players 'on the phone' will be dealt out"

I'm sure you can see how this is open to interpretation, which makes it challenging to enforce because everyone sees "on the phone" differently. Is that talking? Texting? Looking at the phone? What if I put the phone down while you physically pitch me cards, but then pick the phone back up and continue talking? All of the above? Some of the above?

I have confirmed with management that dealing them out when having a phone conversation is good enough. That said, I try to read the situation and if they're winding down their call and I think they will be off in the next 5-15 seconds, I'm dealing them in as well.

Is it perfect? Not at all.

My first gig back in the day was a strict "No Electronics at the table, period" room (this was pre-smartphone but cellphones were pretty common), and I can't even remember what dealing to a table like that was like.

I do think it's funny that many rooms still have the antiquated rules in their rulebook on whether books or newspapers at the table is allowed, as if THAT would be a problem.

It's 2019. Cell phones are life now. The only rules I have about cell phone use at the table is that I will ask you to stop if you are holding up the game because of it and English only still applies if you are on the phone.

Worked in a terrible room once that would reply to every player complaint by adding a rule. Cry to the manager that "that guy reading a magazine is slowing down the game!", and magazines would be insta-banned.

On the day of the magazine ban (we still kept racks of free poker magazines in the poker room), I asked when the tvs would be removed. They looked at me like I was the goofy one.