As a side note .. I do encourage Dealers to leave the Antes for a Bomb Pot out in front of the Players to make sure they don't misdeal a Player not participating into the Deal. Then pull in the Antes before putting out the Board(s).


I would rule that it's a 5k 'bet' (raise). Players in PLO are constantly holding up green chips and saying 'Bet' or just assuming that waving the chip around before putting/tossing onto the felt is an obvious intention to bet the full amount. Dealers can certainly step in and get a clarification with 'education' if necessary. GL

Agree with the bomb pot procedure, I have no idea why dealers want to risk forgetting who's in or out, especially when it's more than one abstainer. Also, when I'm playing, I can't comprehend why some dealers don't stack the pot. Bomb pots are a split pot game, no different than a hi/lo variant. Stack the damn chips!

As for that 5k chip thing, I would be totally fine calling it a raise (with clarification) had the player made a physical indication like waving the chip, doing a thumbs-up, whatever. For that matter, the dealer could have interrupted when he was chanting "bet bet bet" (for whatever strange reason ) and asked if he was intending to raise. But once that chip is pushed in without uttering the word "raise", by TDA rules it's a call.

The place I work at this is a big no-no. I am fairly sure it is the pet peeve of the poker manager. So I don't do it.

That said, if it was up to me I would do it regularly. Like you mention it saves a little bit of time and most experienced dealers should be able to handle any confusion. The time savings though is miniscule. So I am kind of indifferent to it.

I have no problem with experienced dealers doing it, but I also think that any time savings is not thay much and can often be offset by confusion.

TDLR, I personally agree, but not enough to care. The room I deal in frowns upon it so I don't do it.

All of that said, if dealers are going to leave bets out and deal the next card, they should then start to bring the bets in with the player first to act so it avoids any confusion of bets. So many times I see dealers leave bets out and then collect them backwards collecting the bet of the first player to act last. It is rare, but occasionally this means the first player to act hesitates before betting.

Dealers miss bomb pot antes a lot

Not gonna lie, some days if I was bored I would leave the bets out and see if I could scoop them in backwards like you’re describing and try and do it fast enough so that even if the first player to act bet quickly he wouldn’t be waiting on me.

Some dealers don't stack bomb pots because they aren't used to dealing split pot games. Even if they're otherwise comfortable doing it, they might simply forget in the moment. Stacking makes a big difference if every hand is split pot, but once per down or less it's probably excusable to skip.

As for putting out the next card before pulling in bets, I only do it occasionally and only in cases where I know I can snatch them before players start acting on the street. This means no change to give, first couple of bets in easy reach. I'm normally all about doing anything I can to save a second or two but I don't like doing things that cause confusion or doubt about whether the pot is right.

If the bomb pot's paying for time, I think the bomb bets should be pulled in while the time bets stay out out. Pull the time bets in after all cards are dealt and then put out the flop. Even if not a time pot, I think they should still be pulled in; too much traffic otherwise which can caused flipped cards.

Dealer procedures are for the sake of surveillance and to prevent player confusion. A confused player necessitates a floor call which costs 4-5 hands. Doing it right gets out more hands per hour.

I actually respect that and I could totally see myself doing that for just the reason you stated.

That said, you are describing why it doesn't save that much time. A dealer who is good enough to leave the bets out and deal the next card without having issues is probably operating faster than the players anyway. When the dealer is operating faster than the players, it doesn't matter if he leaves the bets out or brings them in. There is no real time savings.

Have any of you actually filed an SAR? I'm doing the annoying training and it occurred to me that not only have I never filled one out, I've never even heard a fellow dealer say they have.

Nope. No SARs. No SACs. But I have mentioned Sus related actions to suits.

We had a textbook SAR situation in a room that no longer has poker that I worked in - whale gets up from the table, asks about cashing out, literally says aloud how he is going to only cash out some of the chips so he won't have to deal with getting his time wasted.

So I dutifully told my supervisor who... shrugged and said "Sounds like something he would do."

As long as I did my job, I thought I would be fine. And I never heard about it again in any way.

What are SAR and SAC?

An SAR is a suspicious activity report. A CTR is a currency transaction report. There are anti money laundering reporting requirements that casinos and all financial institutions need to follow.

I dunno what an SAC is.

Reminder : this is the breakroom thread, not a thread for non employees to ask questions in. I will move this post and the one asks it when I'm not on my phone.

Thank you. We've been getting this an awful lot lately from the same repeat offenders.

To all: This is not the "Come here to ask questions about casinos" thread. Please see Post 1.

Come on guys, asking what an abbreviation means is hardly an "offense", I didn't come here to ask a random question.

To answer my own question...

I was a fairly new dealer, hired on for 2 weeks during a tournament series. They told us at orientation that cash game players need to show their players card if they buy in for $500 or more at the table. We have no computers or even pen and paper at the table so we aren't actually recording any information, I guess we were just supposed to make sure they had one or something.

A player puts down $800 and asks for chips, so I ask him for his card. He starts going off on how terrible the room is and how bad the rules are, no way is he doing that. The player next to him has a bunch of black chips in his pocket and sells them to the guy. So by refusing to flash a players card he's now getting an SAR on his record. Or should, anyway, but I was 12 hours into my shift and too fried to spend my break trying to chase down a floor and figure the process out.

Dealing $2-5 in a different room, the players start talking about how they lowered the amount where they require a player's card and manager approval. One of the players says Bob, (fake name) who is a dealer in the room who had a habit of screwing me over at every opportunity, told him that all he has to do was cash out for $2k at the poker room cashier then cash out for the rest at the main cage.

A dealer coaching players on how to structure. I was so damn tempted to rat Bob out, but my past attempts at reporting things he'd done had backfired so I didn't do it.

Another reason I realized why you don't pull in bets late is because you don't want the dealer touching the pot when the players aren't paying attention.

I probably do 1-2/year. Most are as described above, textbook kind of situations.


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I was playing (not dealing), but the following still involved a dealer ruling that I still cannot wrap my head around.

It was at the Horseshoe in Vegas, middle of the day. There is myself, 5 players (3 men, 2 women) who were in town for a pool tournament and all played in the same home game. They were..... not very good. The best of them were perhaps ok, but still played very ABC with their hands face up. The worst of them just called too much and chased too much. The other two players were husband and wife from somewhere in Europe. They were not terrible players (actually pretty decent, relatively), but they had probably never played live poker. They struggled with chips and the nuances of live poker.

Anyway, the dealer deals a hand. I am in seat 8 (8 handed), and the button is in seat 2 (the decent European woman). As the dealer deals the first card to the button, it hits her hands and turns sideways and flashes most of the table. The only people who can't see it are myself in seat 8 and seat 1. It flashes everyone else.

Seat 6 immediately speaks up and says " I saw that card. It was a red king". The dealer never stops and continues to deal, including a 2nd card to the button who proceeds to mix up the two cards.

Seat 6 repeats that he saw the card.

The dealer then tells the woman to flip over the red king and she will get a replacement. The woman completely freezes. A deer in the headlights. She doesn't know what to do. The dealer repeats to her to flip over the red king. She freezes again. Finally the dealer tells her to pass her cards over. The dealer looks at them and announces that there is no red king and gives them back.

Seat 6 then says that if it wasn't a red king it was red paint, probably a queen. Dealer tells him that he was wrong with his one guess so the player can keep her cards.

Wut?

I am going to fold my crap so I am indifferent, and no one else seems to care. So the hand plays on. There is a raise and the button reraises. I am 90% certain she has queens and 10% she has jacks. It is obvious.

I consider calling the floor, but I realize that it is highly likely that no one else at the table realizes what she has. No one is angling and there is no shady play here so I shut up. The spirit of poker lives.

The hand plays out and gets to showdown, sure enough she has a black queen and a red queen. Her opponent (not seat 6 BTW) has two pair. She loses the pot which is fairly small.

As the dealer collects the cards and pushes the pot, since I am right next to her I casually lean towards her and say that once the card flashed, she should have stopped and made her show it no matter what. I don't know why I said that. I was in training mode or something.

The dealer then starts to argue with me saying that clearly no one saw the card. I say that seat 6 clearly saw red paint. She says so what? He couldn't identify the card. He thought it was a King. I said that just the fact that he clearly identified paint makes the whole situation crazy. She says that just identifying paint is not enough. That would negate 3 out of 13 cards and she is not ruining her hand on a guess.

Double wut?

I realized that nothing I said was going to make a difference here. The dealer was clueless and adamant about it so whatever. I tried to be nice, it was not wanted so I am not pushing.

The dealer made numerous mistakes here:

1. If a card potentially flashes, immediately stop dealing. Figure out if it really flashed or not. Don't deal the player in question a 2nd card and let them mix up the cards. The dealer got hung up on the player having a strong hand and not wanting to ruin it. Stop before it ever gets to that point.

2. It does matter if another player sees paint but cannot perfectly call out the card. It probably isn't a huge advantage, but it is an advantage. The card needs to be replaced. If there is any question about a card being seen by other players, the card needs to be replaced. No argument.

3. The dealer looking at the players hand and then announcing that there was no red king and thrn giving it back is the height of absurdity. Saying "X is not in a players hand" can be very valuable information. What if the flop comes out Ks Kc X. Oppenents know she does not have a king.

I still am shaking my head at the dealer in this situation, especially since she was kind of arrogant about the whole thing.

I can't really sit in poker games any more with a poor dealer. I'd rather just walk or pick up.

I would much rather have an inexperienced or awkward dealer than one who knows better and still refuses to stop and fix a problem.

I remember playing at the Rio many years ago and there was one dealer who would regularly fall asleep at the table. I mostly found that amusing. What wasn't funny was he would make mistakes and just rush and try to cover it up. One time he made a mistake with the preflop change and multiple players spoke up immediately. It wasn't a simple matter of forgetting to give change to one person, we're talking multiple players getting the wrong change in different ways. He just kept charging ahead and once the flop bet/calls were pulled in he just said it's too late to try and re-construct the pot now.

Another time there were two drunk friends who were barely paying attention and just wanted to toss money in. Eventually they get into a hand with a side pot and they both had the same winning hand. One had a lot more chips to start and should have gotten the side pot, but the dealer just pulled everything together and chopped it evenly. I spoke up as soon as I saw him start chopping it evenly and he just said "It doesn't matter" I assume because the drunks weren't paying attention and likely wouldn't have noticed. I selfishly wanted one of them to remain short because I thought he was likely to get it in light then rebuy, so I didn't let it go. He eventually caved and estimated the side pot amount.

It had absolutely nothing to do with poker, but one of the earliest and best lessons I ever learned from someone else was when to recognize that you might not know better. There is nothing wrong with admiting you possibly made a mistake and learning from it.

In fact, you will find that in most walks of life, people who are willing to accept that they might possibly be wrong and show a willingness to learn from it will end up better in the long run than people who are decent but not willing to learn.

People don't realize that being wrong is really just an opportunity to learn and get better.

If you ever want to see some interesting reactions, walk over to where your buddy is about to start overseeing auditions and ask if we need to get out a left handed setup for anyone.

The last audition I did, I started off by asking for a left handed setup since I am a lefty. Only got one chuckle.


On the topic of auditions, I am possibly getting back in the box. I have an audition next week and depending on the shift they offer I might go back, haven't dealt since the room I worked in shut down after covid. I've been helping out at the dealer school a former co-worker runs as a fill-in instructor for a few months now and have been mulling the idea of going back into the casino world since the beginning of the year.