Not defending the other dealers action just looking at it from another perspective.

You said you are newer and the guy who won is a regular, correct?? Maybe the dealer who came and racked up his chips is in the friend zone with the guy. There were plenty of players I did and still have dinners or drinks with regularly. Maybe the guy tipped the other dealer like that because they are friends. Just a thought.

When these situations happen it makes the dealer feel like an idiot....go play at one table and the next table over a dealer is sitting on a dead spread throw that dealer a red bird bet my life it steams the dealer dealing ur game!!!!

Disclaimer: I've never seen or experienced a situation like this. So my advice may be way off base.


If I'm the brush, and a game is breaking, I'll bring racks over for the players. Nothing unusual there. But I've never racked up a player's chips FOR THEM, unless they asked me to. I DO NOT WANT TO TOUCH A PLAYER'S CHIPS. So much can go wrong there.

I'm also not sure why that dealer would split the white chips 20/17 with you. I know he was told to share, but why didn't he give you more of them (if not all of them)? If I were him, you would have gotten all the white chips, and also a couple of the greens. That's assuming I thought you had already been well taken care of by the big winner. If I knew the big winner hadn't given you nearly the amount he gave me, I would have shared at least 50/50. Probably 70/30, in your favor.

Now, if you know for a fact the other dealer is hustling, then this is a tough one, you being so new. I'd probably take him aside and say "Dude, I know the player tipped you well, and that's great, but it doesn't look good when you get tipped so much just for bringing racks to the table. Other people have noticed you doing this and I just don't feel good about it." (This may not be true, but he doesn't know that).

I'd hope that this comment would make him think twice about hustling for tips. Or at the very least, if he continues, hopefully he will share the wealth a little more evenly, since he knows he's being 'watched'.

Maybe it'll help if you think of it not so much as the guy taking chips out of your pocket, but rather creating another tipping opportunity that pulled many more chips from the player. If the dealer hadn't started helping the guy rack chips, the player might have just thrown all the chips in the racks and left without tipping a thing, or you might have gotten a few stray singles. But here the player was presented with someone going out of his way to provide great customer service and it inspired him to be super generous, and as a result everybody profited. Maybe.

Bleh. It's Monday.

Up side: Vacation on normal person Monday!

Dealing a tourney tonight, Seat 4 puts out a call, 5-7 turbo-muck. 8-10 are empty, as it's late in the tourney (but not final table). Seat 1 calls.

Seat 4 looks up and loudly exclaims, "I said raise!"

I tell him I'm sorry, but I didn't hear him, and there's been too much action behind.

Seat 5 says she heard him say raise, and that's why she folded. I would not be surprised at all if she was lying, as she'd want others to bust each other. Besides, she's already acting out of turn. If she heard raise, she shouldn't fold until the raise is out there. She's a semi-reg, and kind of a grump. So I ignore her.

Seat 4 is a little upset, and tells me loudly and clearly that he said raise. I bust out the psandman, with "Sir, if you had said raise with the same volume you're using now, you wouldn't have a problem. I didn't hear you, and there's been too much action behind. I'm sorry."

He then rants at me in French, and says that his English isn't so good, and he's not comfortable with it, which is why he talks quietly. I mention that he's talking loudly now, and explain again that if he can't say "raise" loudly, then he needs to put out his entire bet at once.

He won the hand with a bet on the flop.

However, he busted shortly thereafter, and darted away from the table. I felt a little bad about my snarkiness. I don't like to be the reason people leave feeling poorly about their experience, so I'll try to handle it better next time. I was just so charged to use a psandman classic.

If you really wanted to get his goat, you could have told him "English only at the table, please" while he was ranting.

I have never seen psandman post that, but he may have. He has worked with the first person I heard say it more recently than either youtalkfunny or myself.

Just now I had a player that has been playing for hours come up and ask how often the dealer switches from red to blue. He hadn't noticed the dealer pushes the button every hand.

I think that particular line is YTF's not mine. Not that i don't agree with it.

This particular behavior irritates me to no end because the player always blames me.

Here is a hint. If you spend 2 minutes at my table you will notice that i LOUDLY announce bets and raises. So if you say "Raise" or "1000" or whatever it is you now claim you said .... I will repeat it. If I didn't hear you I will not repeat it.

If I don't announce it SPEAK UP IMMEDIATELY and we can easily fix the problem

I'm the same way, of course.

However, I don't do it until the player has completed the raise. The cascade of folds is difficult enough. I only speak after a bet is complete, or if I need to stop out of turn action (and even then I try mime first, as not to draw attention).

But yeah, if I'm not even looking at you, then clearly I didn't hear you. I hear a lot, and I'm good with the body language. Still, I didn't realize at first that he was a stranger in a strange land, otherwise I may have approached it a bit differently.

And sorry, thought psand had posted that here. Regardless, it's a fun line.

Ha!

The other day we had a player repeatedly ask how long until the 11pm tournament.

There's one regular who loves to razz me for giving him bad luck. And while I've delivered a beat or two his way, the real problem is that he's VPP 90 and PFR 5.

The other day, as I was pitching, he asked if I was ready to hear some complaining. I said I wouldn't have it any other way. He got AIPF against two others, his AQ vs both of their AK.

A King hit the flop and he started losing it. "I can't believe you'd do that. Always gotta be like that, bro." etc etc. Um, sorry it killed your pair chance, but you do realize you were behind to begin with, right? The Kings don't cancel each other out or anything.

Just goes to show the "coinflip" mentality. This guy never wins his flips when I deal.

He got up and milled around a bit, then did a driveby ranting at me again. I muttered something about, "Yeah, it's rough when AQ can't even beat AK." He didn't hear me, but the table had a chuckle.

I actually thought about that.

No, I got it from the co-worker that RR mentioned, only he used to add a little more flourish to it:

"If you had announced your action HALF as loudly as you're speaking right now, then there wouldn't be a problem."

I'll confess that my hearing isn't that good, but I tell the players, "Just meet me half way, that's all I ask. Set your volume half way between 'zero' and 'normal conversation', and I can hear you just fine." Of course, that doesn't seem reasonable to anybody who plays poker.

I'm sure I have mentioned this before but the room I work in uses both English and French at the tables, adding to the confusion on things occasionally.

One that happens quite often to me is a player in the 50/100 level will throw in a 500 chip while saying (what I hear as) "call" only to have them correct me (usually in time to clarify the action but occasionally not) that they said "Trois" as in 3 - hundred...

A thought hit me tonight that was at least 10 years overdue. At first I thought it was profound, as I've never heard anyone else speak it--but then it occurred to me that maybe that's because it's so self-evident. Any way, I've got nowhere else to put it, so I'm dumping it here:

The reason Texas Hold'em became so wildly popular this past decade is very similar to the reasons why blackjack became so popular in the early 60's.

--Simple, easy to learn rules.

--Simple, easy to learn "basic strategy" (play tight preflop, play aggressive if you flop top pair or better, that's all there is to it).

--It's common knowledge that unlike other casino games, people have gotten rich by doing this, and you can, too!

This is why it's so hard to get up a non-hold'em game. Starting hand strategy is too complicated for most folks when you get more than two cards, you have to, like, think and stuff.

Just a few minutes ago:

1/2 game (of course), UTG calls PF, it folds around to the BB who is telling a story. I gesture to the BB and he looks down and points at the 2 chips in front of the UTG player.

BB "Why does he have $2 out there?"

DG "You're the BB and he called you."

"Oh..."

Those are all good point YTF but don't you think Moneymaker winning the 2003 WSOP ME and the WPT use of hole card cameras had something to do with it?

I think his point was that if the WSOP ME had been Pot Limit Badacey when Moneymaker won it ...... Pot Limit Badacey would not be the game of choice now.

Every now and again I get a CO who throws out a SB. "We play clockwise in this casino, sir."

Or to the UTG player who asks if it's on him every orbit. "Yes. Button, Small Blind, Big Blind. Action's here."

Look, he thinks he's people.

Agreed, I think that has a great deal to do with it. It's also the fastest-paced of any game I've dealt, with the most amount of "shared" information. We're all on the same team, buddy! Just hanging out, chasing the jackpot! When we hit, we hit together!

Just like table games. Exposed info, winning together, fast(er) paced, simple rules.

Mumble/bark the following words in a crowded and noisy casino, with the "poker quiet" crack in the voice that afflicts a great many people, and tell me how easy it is to tell the difference between the following words:

Fold
Call
All'n
Twelve

Your mouth moves almost exactly the same with each word, especially if you mumble.

And of course, as a dealer, I don't want to give the appearance of guiding play, so I don't like saying "Did you fold?" when someone mutters something and then sits there looking dejected, not releasing either cards or chips.

"What's your action?"

"*mubmlAAAabmlb*"

"Uh... what's that again?"

Besides, even if I ask a direct question, "yeah" and "nah" look and sound the same, too. Poker players aren't known for emoting very accurately, and they're often grumpy or angry anyway, leading to more mumbling.

If something keeps happening around you, the problem is probably you. If I keep asking you what the hell you're saying, change it up!

^^^this **** kills me. I once got in huge trouble because after asking about multiple times every day if someone checked and they yell " course I did jesus" and are getting angry (they not speaking or gesturing clearly; Im not an idiot) So some dude mumbles (arrin, check, allin, I like cheese yehaaaa, who knows), looks dejected and bounces his hand around and looks to the TV I consider that a check and burn and turn.. Floor hates me for a week too :S

Partially my fault for not asking (or fully). But when you just annoy players 99% of the time even when u ask them to speak clearly . . .

Ha! Well, it does say in the rules that any gesture may be interpreted as a check. If you grunt and twitch and look away... that's a check, at least if you're a grumpy dbag.

Of course, the best is the guy who looks spaced out no matter what he's doing. If I remind him it's his turn, he's angry because he knows it is. If I stare at him and wait for him to act, then when he comes to he's angry because I didn't tell him it's his turn. And even if I know it's his turn and try to stop a cascade of people acting behind him because he's not giving anybody any indication that he's participating in the hand, he gets angry because he knows it's on him.

Yeah, buddy, I get that. You're not the only person at the table. Work with me here, sheesh.

I would add to YTF's points that the additional factor is the life or death situation of the "all in" especially in the tournament setting. That is what drives the gambler to the game. It is the high of risking everything. While a knowledgeable player knows that pot limit drives the pot size higher than NL, that's not what the casual player thinks. In the friendly home games I play (socializing), I can never convince people that playing a 100BB game is more exciting than playing a 20BB game, even though the BI is exactly the same. They just can't believe that anyone can get the pot to an AI situation with the blinds that low.