Poker dealers wore no apron at my previous gig. They do at my current gig.

Personally I think they're pointless for poker dealers and would rather not have to wear one.

Fellow dealers, whats your average hands per down? Im right around 24 dealing 2-8 spread

Oh I hate the focus on quantity over quality. I get out about 6 hands .... but they are high quality hands ......


To be honest I never count.

Tell a player that you have a problem with what he's doing, he'll say STFU, dealer.

Tell a player that the other players have a problem with what he's doing, and he'll WANT to fall in line.

It also helps if you let the offending player know that you're on his side, that you're not the enemy.

See? Now it's me and him against the nitty jerks of the world. He's not going to tell his only friend to STFU, dealer.

Same thing goes for the guy folding way out of turn. Tell him you have a problem with that, he sees you as a weak subservient service employee, and he'll pick a fight. Tell him the other players have a problem with it, he backs down.

until they start saying that they don't see a problem with it........

Oh, and as far as supervisors actually supervising: I've worked in good rooms and lousy rooms. In the good rooms, the supervisors supervise. In the lousy rooms, they don't.

My current room is incredible in this regard. My first month or two there, I was constantly being counseled--"counseled" is too strong a word, they were very informal, very brief chats--about doing the little things their way, instead of the way I was accustomed to. But once I got into the habit of doing these things their way, they've left me alone. Fortunately, they tend to leave all of us alone, but not because they're not watching us any more--but because the focus was so detail-oriented early on, nobody NEEDS correcting!

Every room I've worked in has had at least one or two dealers who were constantly calling the floor over to straighten out a mess. This one always burn-and-turns, that one is a hothead who gets into shouting matches with players, this one lost track of the action because he was watching tv while he was dealing, etc. I don't work with anybody like that currently, it's unheard of to me to not have a single incompetent dealer on a shift, but I can't name one on my shift right now, let alone a dealer who makes you think, "Oh no, not this guy," as he pushes into a game. I've got a pretty sweet gig right now.

(BTW, I recall working in one room with RR as supervisor, and the dealers were all shocked to see him on the floor, watching them deal, and talking about how they performed. Some of them had worked there since the place had opened, and no supervisor had ever actually supervised them before, and they took exception to the very idea of a supervisor discussing their job performance with them.)

ME: Yes sir, but you understand how other people might have a problem with it. Best advice I can give you is what they told me in the army: Just look around, and do what everyone else is doing.

(Again, I'm not singling him out, putting a spotlight on his bad behavior and giving ultimatums; I'm inviting him to join The Club of the Rest of Us. If he still wants to fight with a guy who is ON HIS SIDE and using humor, then he's beyond redemption, and you bring the floor in on it--but that result has been extremely rare for me when I use this approach. In fact, the only times it has ever fallen to that involves players who are drunk and want to fight, no matter how unreasonable it would be to do so.)

EDIT: Then again, the fact that I'm a huge man might also enter into their unwillingness to fight me.

Had an interesting interaction with a young O/8 newb yesterday. Or at least, I found it interesting, it may not be, but since this is a LC thread, here it goes:

He was in the 10-seat, and had a huge stack of chips which he kept slightly to his left. When he got his four cards, he would pull them close to the rail and bend down to read them. This wasn't a problem preflop, but post flop, the players in Seats 1 or 2 would act out of turn because they couldn't see that he had cards. This isn't an LOLow-limit O/8 game, where everybody is holding their cards up around their face (I've dealt plenty of those). This is $6-12 with a $10-20 kill, and even though it's the lowest O/8 game we spread, you don't see many newbs in this game.

When I asked him to keep his cards out in front of his chips, he replied, "But I've got to look at my cards!" I urged him to do so in a way that doesn't confuse the other players about whether or not he is still involved in the hand.

Next hand, he tried, but blurted in frustration, "I can't do it!" Fortunately, he folded early, and since he was sitting right next to me, I offered some coaching while the hand played out. "The trick is to look at your cards when you get 'em, make yourself remember what they are, and you don't need to look back at 'em the rest of the hand." The kid looked skeptical, but I assured him, "That's what these other guys are doing." He looked around, and saw that all the active players had their cards facedown on the table, protected by a chip.

It still seemed mind-boggling to him. By now there were two players left in the hand on the turn. I pointed to one at random and assured the kid, "This guy knows exactly what his four hole cards are. He looked at them once, and hasn't looked at them since." The kid looked like he didn't believe me, but didn't want to insult me by suggesting I was fos.

About that time, the guy I had pointed out bet the river, and his lone opponent folded. Now that the hand was over, he told the kid, "AJ of club, a 4 and a 7 of different suits, I think they were red," and he turned up exactly that.

The kid's jaw dropped. I assured him as I started pitching the next hand that it's nothing unusual, that "all these guys can do it."

Now the kid was too skeptical to remain polite, and expressed his skepticism of that last comment.

"You wanna bet?", I asked. "I'll even let you pick the guy."

His eyes twinkled. "Really? I can pick the guy?"

Oops. Now I may have gone too far. Out of the current lineup, I'd say five his eight opponents would be a lock for me, but one or two would only be strong non-lock favorites, and the other 1-2 might be 50-50. Luckily, the push came, and I wasn't forced to put my money where my mouth was.

But as I was leaving, the guy AJ74 guy was telling the kid, "the trick is to look at your cards two at a time," and the kid was nodding, so there was hope for him. He seemed like a very smart kid, and he wasn't the worst player at the table, so I'm sure he'll be fine. I just found the whole thing interesting.

Oh, btw, I was playing the other night, a rare thing for me nowadays, and I did something that I'd never done before, and I'm pretty sure none of you have ever done it, either--I deliberately mucked the best hand at showdown in a cash game.

How many of you read that twice and said "WTF?" each time?

We were playing $2-4 limit HE, and I was the SB. Everyone folded, and it's super-standard to chop the blind in this spot, in this game.

This would be my second chop of the night. The first time, I sadly threw in my JJ faceup, the first decent hand I had been dealt all night. My opponent showed his QQ, and we had a good laugh, until we realized that the BBJ is close to $100k, a rare thing for these parts, and we started kicking ourselves for not looking at the board, and made our plans for checking it down next time we were left alone in the blinds with hands that had any hope of hitting a BBJ.

So that was the story of my first chop of the night. At my second opportunity, my new co-conspirator was away from the table and dealt out, and when it folded to me, the BB (who was way over in Seat 1, and hadn't heard our previous check-it-down plans) smiled broadly and asked for confirmation that we were chopping as she held her cards towards the muck.

The auto-pilot part of my brain said, "Of course," and I took a look at my cards before tossing them in, and saw AJs, my second-best hand of the night. "No! Wait! No, I don't want to chop, I call!", and threw in my dollar. She had already thrown her cards in, they were lying next to the muck. "Give her her cards back, I call!" She scrunched up her face, not liking what I was doing, but didn't say anything, as if she was hoping I had a reason for this. When I dark-checked every street, the reason became clear, and she relaxed, and checked it down with me.

On the river, the board showed Jxxxx. I checked, she checked and table a J and some other random card. My AJ was good. But I felt so bad about the way I had conducted myself and made her face scrunch, I decided to show the J and muck the A facedown, and let her have the $4 pot. It was the least I could do.

What are they protecting your pants from?

You misunderstand. I mean the other players at the table say they don;t see anything wrong with it. Because it seems to me that a large number of players at the tables don't see anything wrong with it and don;t see how anybody can object to it.

I'm seeing exactly this in one room where they have a new(ish) manager who actually cares about things. Some of the dealers are delighted, but many are pretty annoyed that there are new rules and new procedures and worst of all, the poker room manager actually walks around watching them work and putting his nose into pretty much every activity in the room.

From what I've seen myself and heard from the dealers, the manager is completely fair, very nice, but fairly unyielding in his demand that employees have the right attitude and follow basic procedures. When I've seen the manager correct a dealer at the table it was very gently, like "Jake, don't match up the chip stacks, count them out" (and Jake turns red and mumbles "I WOULD do that just as he's walking by"). And yeah, some of the employees that had gotten soft and complacent and jaded are having troubles with him.

But I do have a question... In the world I'm used to, people get pay raises which are roughly based on their performance. If you suck, you'll get a 1% raise (or 0% if you really suck). If you're average, you'll see 3%, if you're good you can get 6%, and if you blow the doors off 10% or more in a year is easy. Plus stock options or RSS's and annual bonuses. Which means employees have serious incentive to perform well.

So... how do you incentivize dealers who know they aren't getting pay raises, ever, for any reason? The only thing management has to motivate the dealers is the threat of termination or reduction of hours worked for the part timers. Which means there is a big trend toward mediocrity (at best). Seems like a rough sorta environment to manage.

Well, hopefully with inflation stakes will go up a some point and the smallest chip on the table would be $2. But I won't hold my breath.

But to seriously answer your question (without knowing all the ins and outs) there is more than money. Who gets to take an EO (or is forced to), who gets the better hours, perhaps there could be some recognition, or for a potentially more forward thinking floor, allow the dealers to have some say in the rotation--allowing someone to avoid a certain limit because of worse tippers (hopefully that doesn't throw this post into the containment thread).

Sure, that last thing might screw up the rotation, but if you've got a few dealers rotating into a dead spread you could take one of those dealers and swap the dead spread now for a dead spread later (that is, if dealer A wants to avoid the table he's going to and dealers B, C and D have dead spreads, have C deal for A, and then when A is supposed to have a dead spread later, swap A and C again).

Rubbing up against the side of the table.

Also gremlins.

It is definitely tough, but IME it is possible to motivate most (not all) people with positive reinforcement, open communications, modelling right behavior, and encouraging them to take pride in themselves and the job they do. This isn't easy, it takes time and effort, and it doesn't work on everyone, but it can be done and it does work to a surprising degree. (And it feels really good when it does work.) I know this may sound idealistic or Pollyanna-ish, but I have seen it, and it is doable. And the alternative, as you say, is indeed "guaranteed mediocrity (at best)".

Well, if they don't have a problem with it, then I don't, either!

This depends on the manager. If the manager is actually good he can teach the dealers to be more efficient and deal more hands. Beyond that, there isn't much.

For a while I worked in a room with competitive scheduling and this kept dealers very motivated. The dealers were ranked from high to low and picked schedules by rank. I don't remember if it was every 6 months or every 12 months.

In a big room with multiple rotations dealers can be motivated to get into a better rotation, or not sent to a worse rotation.

I'll confirm that the dealers and floors and brushes are all terrific where you work. To the point that when I travel to other card rooms, they all really seem to suck in comparison and it affects my level of enjoyment.

I have a theory as to why this is but it would reveal where you are to the world.

Ah, go ahead, most of them know, any way. But thanks for the consideration.

Have worked with a guy who worked in YTF's room and he confirmed that it's a great place to work.

<-----off work and working the word work into a post as many times as possible.

Speaking of... YTF any news on that thing I PMed you about awhile back? I'm guessing no.

PM on the way.

Dealers: Would you rather be part of a union or not? Why or why not?

Absolutely not, been there it's awful. I told my union rep "I don't need you, all you do is take money from me." He said "how do you know I dont need you."
"I show up to work, that's why."

Kills everything, tips get pooled, everyone gets lazy the rooms make less money. Need a good example? Look at detroit.

Not always the case Sir!

In our room we used to pool tips before Union, now we keep our own.

Absolutely. We need a collective bargaining agreement. To many times management just takes and takes and takes and the dealers without a contract can't do anything to protect themselves.

As far as Jeff's claim that a union means pooled tips it just isn't so. Many of the cocktail waitresses in town are union and they pool tips so the claim that a union means pooled tips is BS.

IN past years I have had the following things happen to me or friends that would not happen this way if we had a contract.

New manager comes in and stops scheduling me and some other dealers as were at the bottom of the extra board (Keep in mind that while I was at the bottom I was a 4 year employee) and gives dealing shifts to the woman hired as a cashier (she had no dealing experience and had less seniority as well)

New manager comes in and decides that all on-call-dealers are on call 24/7 on an hours notice.

Manager decides that no dealer (even extra board dealers getting only a few hours of work each week) can work in any other poker room.

Fulltime day one dealers walk into poker room to be met by manager and told effective today you are all part-time there is no more fulltime.

I was let go from a Fulltime position because of a business slowdown with NO NOTICE (our employee handbook tells us we are supposed to give them 2 weeks notice when we quit) no severance.

Fulltime dealers get fired for minor infractions with no progressive discipline, while part time dealers doing the same thing or worse get progressive discipline. Full Time position doesn't get filled ... figure out what is happening.

Tip pooling policies get changed to the detriment of dealers with no dealer input.

scheduling policies get changed to dealer detriment with no input from dealers.

management scheduling mandatory meetings outside of normal working hours on little or no notice.

Management changing dealer schedulers after posting them NO NOTICE.

Management changing rules regarding seniority.

Throughout town rooms are filling positions almost entirely with on call or extra board dealers.

Employers unilaterlly alter employee benefits including 401k match and health insurance.