Think we partly are in it for that unpredictable drama, trying to smoothen it out some with skill. Dealer remains absolutely unguilty though, the poker gods maybe too

When I opened a new room we had one 2/5 (or 5/10 when it ran) reg who absolutely crushed the game for the first year and a half. I never once saw him even have to rebuy a single time. Once he got down to about $100 and of course built that back up. He was not a nit either, so his winning sessions were big wins.

Then suddenly it was like a switch was flipped and nothing went right. He was getting sucked out on, his bluffs were getting called but his value bets weren't. Not that I'm a great judge of player abilities, but it didn't seem like he was playing any worse or anyone else playing better against him. A couple of months of this and he moved on to another room.

Good and bad runs can last for a really long time.

I just had my best down I have ever had monetarily as well as professionally from a satisfaction aspect.

It was a Forrest Gump situation though because I will admit I was an idiot and took a huge unnecessary risk. I was dumb. Absolutely no doubt.

We have been running some higher limit games than we normally do. Great. They are generally auto toked which means a decent but not great down, but lots of potential. If I deal lots of crazy hands I can make a lot of money.

So there are a couple of players who I know in the game because they always play in our highest game. What I mean by "know" is that I have regularly dealt to them before. They know they are getting a halfway decent dealer and they appreciate it, but other than that they really don't care about me.

In this situation my job is just "shut up and deal". No encouragement of action, no talking at all. Just get out the cards and let them run the game and dominate the conversation.

I am perfectly OK with this. In fact oftentimes this is my best game. I really don't want to talk. Great, just shut up and deal.

So as my down progresses there is not much of note, theybare all watching the WSOP on TV and the action there dominates the discussion. I am just shutting up and dealing. It has been a good down for me. In addition to the auto toke, I have gotten quite a few redbirds. I have no complaint.

The player in seat two has been taken a little bit of a beating. It is clear it started well before I ever sat down. Anyway, he starts to attribute his bad run to my dealing. Not aggressively and he never crosses any line. He never says anything that every dealer hasn't heard at some point. Furthermore, it is fairly clear that he is half joking. He is getting frustrated at the cards he is getting and expressing it, but it isn't personal. I know it. I am 99% sure he recognizes I am not controlling the cards.

A couple of the other player pick up on his frustration. Of course they are going to start needling him over it. Why not? Again, I want to make it clear that it was clear he wasn't really blaming me. He knew better, but just needed to express his frustration.

So it goes on for a few more minutes and the othe players start encouraging it. There are comments about me cold decking him, etc. It culminates with him losing a pot where he misses a flush draw or such. He says something to me like "Why do you keep teasing me?" as he disgustingly throws his cards forward.

I hesitate a second or two, then decide what the hell.

I loudly say in response to his question "I just don't like you....".

There was a really long pause. Uncomfortably long. I thought that I really messed up.

Then the whole table explodes in laughter. Everyone is laughing uncontrollably. One player then throws me a $25 green chip. Everyone follows at the table and throws me either a green or black chip. They all love my burn.

I was still nervous about the target. He could go to the floor and get me in trouble. I looked at him. As I looked at him I pretty much decided that if he escalated, I would admit to what I did. I was out of bounds. No doubt. I thought (hoped???) that he would take it in the playful manner it was intended, but I was wrong.

He sat there and after a few seconds he smiled and threw me a $500 chip. As he did it he said "That was good, just don't fuc%ing do it again". I knew that deep down he wasn't really blaming me for his crappy cards. It was clear at least to me, but I may have read far too much into the situation.

I made about $1k that down. Good for me. It will never happen again.

I also risked my job.

Now I am fairly (99%?!?!?) sure that I wouldn't be fired. I have no doubt that if he made a big deal out if it that I would suffer. I know inwould have been reprimanded. I would have pissed some people above me off. I like to think I have built up enough goodwill that I would survive, but you never really know. I will fully admit that it was utterly stupid of me to speak up. No amount of (reasonable) amount of money is worth it.

I literally could not help myself. I was really sure he was half joking and I was in a playful mood, so I spoke up. I was stupid, but lucky.

To be fair, I actually think this helped the player. I think he was falling into a victim mentality. He was letting his bad run of cards affect him even though he should know better. I think my comment woke him up or reset him to look beyond the bad run of cards and just continue to play well.

It was still a really stupid gamble on my part though.

Any 'personal' comments from a Dealer can be taken both ways. Some Players don't want you to 'help' a tilted Player .. they want them to continue tilting.

One thing that I find can be effective is to ask this Player "Thick or Thin cut?" a couple of times. But even that can torque over another Player who insists that you 'changed the deck' in favor of one Player. GL

Had a strange one.

Cash game. $2/$5. Button in seat nine. Small blind seat 1. Big blind seat 2.

While pushing the pot and collecting the cards between hands I tell seat 2 that he is the big blind. He doesn't hear me. He is deep in conversation with seat 3. Furthermore the cocktail waitress is there. She has his drink.

I pull the next deck out of the shuffler, cut it and start to deal. As i pass seat two with the first pre-flop card, I again tell him that he is the big blind. It falls upon deaf ears. As I pass the second card out, I again try to get his attention to let him know it is his blind. I continue for the rest of the table.

By this time, the waitress has moved over to seat 8 and is trying to drop off his drink. As I finish dealing the preflop cards ending on seat 9. Seat 8 has picked up his cards and started to look at them. He is wearing earbuds so he cannot hear the waitress behind him.

So as I deal the last card to seat 9, I look at him (seat 8) and nod towards the waitress behind him. I am trying to indicate that that someone is waiting behind him waiting on him. He semi-panicks and thinks the action is on him. He briefly glances at his cards and slightly pushes them forward. I stop him and verbalize that the action isn't on him, I was just trying to let him know the waitress is behind him. I push his cards back to him despite the fact they haven't even crossed the line and his hand had never lost contact with the cards. He pulls them back and turns and deals with the waitress.

I turn to seat two (who still hasn't posted his big blind and is lost in conversation with seat three). I pound on the table in front of seat two and again tell him it is his big blind. I look at seat 3 and tell him that the action is on him.

It takes them a minute to gather their wits. With me repeating what I said a couple of times, they finally figure it out. It takes a while though. Seat two finally posts. Seat three thinks a while and then limps. Another player or two limp with a fold or two mixes in. It gets to seat 8. He limps.

Seat 9 goes off.

He says that seat 8 was folding out of turn earlier, now he is calling. He insists that it should be a fold. There is some discussion and I call over a floor.

Floor comes over. Seat 9 rightly complains that seat 8 folded out of turn earlier and now he is limping. I explain to the floor that earlier I tried to tell him that the waitress was behind him but that he panicked and thought the action was on him so he tried to panic fold.

Seat 8 finally speaks to the floor and acknowledges what happened earlier. He said that he panicked and was going to fold, but that after he realized the action wasn't on him he re-evaluated his hand and was calling. He also commentd that it didnt even occur to him that it was the same hand. He was just acting in turn on his hand and wanted to call. To be fair to seat 8, he told the floor that he would accept if he ruled that he folded. He wasn't trying to act maliciously. He just re-evaluated his hand not in a panic.

The floor discusses the hand with me, and I clearly explain to him that there was confusion between seat 8 and myself about action, but that he was panicking and that it was a while ago. Without controversy, I would have forgotten about it. Ibbarely realized that it was the same hand.

Floor rules that seat 8's hand is still live and he he can either call or fold. No raise. Seat 8 calls. Seat 9 grumbles then folds.

Flop comes, someone bets, seat 8 folds. No more controversy.

Later, seat 8 admitted that he had a mid-mediocre borderline hand. In a panic he was going to fold it not knowing anything about the action. However after seeing multiple limps, he wanted to play it. He wasn’t trying to angle, if fact there was so much time between him panicking and when he was actually supposed to act that he didn't even realize it was the same hand.

Seat 8 was a semi -reg. I am 100% sure he wasn't angling. I have seen him in other past confusing instances pass up an opportunity to take advantage of his oppenent and clarify any action.

Furthermore, is limping behind a bunch of other limps really an angle?

What kind of a-hole must seat 9 be? He must have been folding regardless; can't imagine he decided to fold because seat 8 limped in with an obviously mediocre hand.
I'm even kind of a rules nit about some things, but I can't understand people who would act like this.

I have a simple procedure that eliminates delayed blind-posting issues. After telling the offending party repeatedly that they're in the blind as I'm dealing the first cards (and being ignored as usual), I stop dealing when I get to him on the second card and tell him again. No blind, no hand. If he's still oblivious, at this point the other players are annoyed that he's now affecting their lives, as they can't get their second cards either. So, more often than not, several of them will now join me in the struggle to get an otherwise functioning adult to somehow find a way to push a damn poker chip forward. This eventually gets the job done, especially since they have no requirements to be polite in their attention-getting methods.

For the record, I don't do this to be petty. I've seen way too many hands get screwed up from the get-go because of this issue, and this procedure prohibits those problems from ever arising. It's especially helpful in our cash games, which often have someone straddling the button. Starting a hand without blinds correctly posted with a button straddle pretty much guarantees a mess right from the get-go. No ticket, no laundry. No blind, no hand...

this sounds like a routine occurrence in most card rooms. Players don't/can't pay attention to the action or the blinds, on their phone, eating, reading the menu, etc. pretty annoying but that's part of the price we pay for playing cards.

I've run into players who flat out refuse to post their blind before they get their second card. Some think they're helping by leaving a clear path, others have motivations I can't figure out.

If someone looks at their cards and pushes them forward, I'm stopping the action then mucking them. I don't care if it's not on them yet.

I used to do something similar. The problem is that you are just hurting yourself by slowing the game down.

What has helped me is that the management where I work has put much of the burden on the players. If a players who is supposed to be in the BB looks at their cards and folds to an unraised bet, that is on them. Especially if the dealer has openly announced to them that they are the blind. Every floor at my casino will make a BB post after he folded. It is up to them to pay attention.

If I told a floor that I tried 3 times to get a player to post the BB they will fully support making him deal with the consequences of his negligence. Therefore there is no reason to slow the game down. Other players prefer keeping the game moving, the house prefers more hands dealt, and the dealer benefits from more hands as well.

I don't disagree with what you said. I pretty much do the same (depending......).

In this instance there were three factors that made a difference. 1. He barely pushed his cards forward. They clearly went forward, but they also didn't completely cross the line (though they might have touched it). 2. His hands never broke contact with his cards. I stopped him before they did. 3. I felt partly responsible for the confusion. I was trying to be helpful and point out the waitress, but it is clear that it looked like I was indicating action was on him. I don't want to kill a hand based off of miscommunication that I was partly responsible for.

That said, if he had released the cards completely, I would have mucked them just out of habit (on the other hand, there was no muck yet so they would have been easily retrievable....)

Seat 9 can only be best described as a professional a-hole. Everytime I encounter him and see some of his shenanigans I always think to post about him but then it seems so insignificant later that I don't. It is always just little stuff like this so it seems silly, it is just the quantity of the stuff that makes him a professional a-hole.

One of his favorite things to do is always ask for the seat change button when he sits down. Annoying but whatever. I won't get mad at someone who is looking to get their favorite seat or is looking for an advantage by sitting to the right of a maniac. Good for them. That is not why he wants the seat change button though. He just wants to annoy people with it. He will always take the next seat that opens up. Always. He just waits to do it. So if a seat opens up, he won't take it right away. He will wait. If another player at the table asks to move he will suddenly say he wants the seat and flash the button. He only wants it after someone else is thinking about moving. Or if a new player shows up for the empty seat, he will wait as long as possible to claim the empty seat so the new player has to wait for him to move.

He used to wait until the player got settled (but hadn't yet been dealt a hand) before asserting he should get the seat, but our management quickly caught on to what he was doing and stated he waited too long and the new player got the seat. So now he waits as long as he thinks he can get away with it.

Who does this?

Just an a-hole.

This whole situation could’ve been avoided if you were less concerned with seat 8s drink order and more concerned with running your game.

Pitching before blinds are posted is fine imo as long as you get BB and UTGs attention asap. But when you finish your pitch and the first thing you do is have an interaction with a player on the opposite side of the table, you’re just asking for problems.

Now you have to make a floor call that was completely avoidable, and whatever time you saved by pitching before the blinds were posted has been completely wiped out and then some.

This reminds me countless times a big blind not paying attention will (in turn) fold when there were no preflop raises. What do all of you do when this happens (and I know it happens a lot)?

I usually give it back, the guy usually gets a look like "whoops, yeah I'll keep these then," and the hand goes on without any controversy.
Sometimes the guy insists that it's a fold. I admire that actually, like this hand is so crap I won't even play it for free.

(As an aside, I cannot recall a single case where someone who tried to fold but I gave them the cards back won the pot, certainly nothing substantial. It's like garbage hands rarely win. I wind up saying "You were right the first time" when they fold to a bet.)

Have I just been lucky all these years? Is it possible that someone will start screaming at me that the player folded and I should just muck the cards and how dare I give the player the cards back? (If I were a floor person and that was brought to me, I would tell the guy if he wanted the BB to fold he should have raised.)

Give me stories and make me change my mind about giving the hand back to the player when this happens!

I will muck it 99% of the time, with the only exception being they are money behind and don't have the ability to put the blind out.

I have seen this blow up before. I'm not rewarding oblivious players anymore. I say it before I deal, as I pass with card one, and as I pass with card two. Three strikes, you're out.

Thanks, but I don't mean when players don't put the blinds out. The situation with the guy folding out of turn because he wasn't paying attention reminded me of the scenario of a big blind folding in turn when nobody raised.

Fair point!

I don't then either, though. It's not really different to me. Not trying to instamuck, but it's going at regular speed. Their priority may not be the action, but it is usually everyone else's.

Pay attention or pay money.

Whenever I accidentally do that, I grab my hand back and point at it saying "not Aces".

Often I even say that when someone else does it, but only if it's a friendly game.

Dealers at most casinos are more than just poker dealers. The casino will say they are in the customer service business. Maybe at something like the WSOP they might just be considered card dealers and nothing more, but most casinos want their dealers acknowledging and helping out customers when they see an issue. That is simply good customer service. When I nod to seat 8, I don't think it is going to be any bigger deal than a simple nod and moving on.

That isn't just good customer service, that is just being a nice person. Who wouldn't help get the attention of someone who was distracted? That is just being a nice person.

Finally, my helping seat 8 didn't affect anything with the blinds. They were distracted until I pounded on the table in front of them. The floor was called only because seat 9 was a professional a-hole looking to irritate others whenever he could.

This is a big depends.

The casino I currently work at considers themselves to be very newbie friendly so as a dealer I might put some effort into letting the big blind know he can play for free instead of folding. The way of doing this can vary greatly.

Sometimes it can be as simple as finding something to distract me for a few seconds to give the BB time to realize they can pull their cards back and check. Other times I might even openly ask the big blind if they are folding when they can check. It depends upon the player and the table. If it is clearly a new player, I will give them much more leeway.

Obviously tournaments are different. There is a different standard there.

That said, while I can understand mucking a big blind who folds when not facing a raise, there is also some stuff in the TDA about giving players warnings when they fold facing no action. Do dealers who insta muck big blind hands who fold also call over the floor to give them a warning? Seems way overly harsh.

I ask this because it caused some problems in our casino a few months back.

For whatever reason in our daily tournaments there was a rash of players who would fold when facing no action post flop. Six players to a limped flop, the small blind would open fold on a 9 Q A board when holding 54 offsuit. They wanted to get back to their phone.

Management wanted to crack down on this (rightly so since it was happening far too much in tournaments). The problem was they didn't restrict their crackdown to just tournaments.

They wanted to enforce warnings and penalties to players who folded when not facing a raise in cash games as well. As a reminder, we consider ourselves a newbie friendly poker room. As a result, we had more then a few instances of newbie players get double embarrassed. Not only would they fold their big blind to no raise and be embarrassed when other players would explain they could have checked, they would also have to suffer the embarrassment of having the floor come over and warn them not to do it again or there would be penalties. It was stupid.

Luckily it was short lived. The crackdown was emphasized in tournaments and cash games (especially with newbies) was loosened to understand that it would happen.

Here is my all-time favorite story regarding the big blind folding when they could have checked.

The Sahara used to have a weird mixed game that ran on Friday nights ( I think...). It was $3/$6 limit and it was all sorts of crazy mixed games. One night I was playing in it just getting exposure to crazy games. There was a 5 card draw game (I don't remember which one but it wasn't important) there was a couple of limps, the small blind folds and them the big blind throws his cards forward (folding) despite being able to check.

The dealer hesitates, everyone at the table us buzzing because they think the big blind folded. After a second or two of thinking, the dealer pulls all of the money in and tosses 5 new cards to the big blind. Everyone at the table starts to raise their voice to complain and the dealer immediately speaks up and says the big blind couldn't fold so clearly he was looking to draw 5 new cards. Everyone thinks for a second and nods and shuts up. Great response by the dealer. 100% legal and accurate.

Great story by itself but here is where it gets better.

Just a few weeks later I am dealing a $100/$200 mixed game. I was an experienced dealer overall, but at the time I had very little mixed game experience (that is why I was playing in the crappy Sahara game, i needed to learn). So I would make lots of mistakes. Most were small mistakes that I caught myself as I was making them, but still. I wasn't a good mixed game dealer yet at all. Far too many mistakes.

So anyway, it is Triple Draw. There are two limps and it folds to the big blind who is engrossed in watching something on his phone. I tap the table in front of him and say action is on him. He tosses his cards forward. I let them sit and bring in the money. The other two players then declare how many they are drawing. I toss the first five cards to the big blind. Everyone starts to complain that I am messing up ( as usual since I was messing up a lot).

I stop them and explain that the big blind can't fold to no raise so obviously he is drawing 5 cards. They all stop and think for a second. Everyone collectively nods and I finish dealing the draws.

For 10 seconds I felt like the smartest person in the world.

I am sure I effed up a burn card or a something shortly after that, but it was a good 10 seconds.

Main Event .. PokerGo stream .. folds to Blinds .. SB (who probably wanted to raise) 'Calls' with a single silent over-sized chip .. Dealer says 'call'

BB looks at cards and tosses forward .. UTG says 'Wait, he thought it was a raise' .. Dealer holds cards and calls Floor

Floor gives cards back .. SB bets Flop and gets raised .. SB folds



58: Non-Standard Folds
Any time before the end of the final betting round, folding in turn if there’s no bet to you (ex: facing a check or first to act post-flop) or folding out of turn are binding folds subject to penalty. See also 15-B.


I have a long standing track record of approving the use of Rule #1 .. but WSOP ME, on stream with OPTAH interference .. not so sure I push the cards back. GL

I commented on this when you added it to another thread, but thought I'd give a little more detail here.

I'd be okay with it if the dealer had simply mucked the cards and shipped the pot to sb. And that's probably what should have happened, and why I say the dealer should be coached on procedures following their down.

But, since the dealer didn't muck them and they're 100% identifiable when the floor arrives, mucking them at that point would be a terrible decision. The floors hands are tied, imo, the cards have to be returned to the player. Warn or penalize player after the hand if it's deemed necessary.