Once I did 18 downs in a shift. I worked 9 hours straight. I could hardly move the next day. (They did let me run to the restroom once!)

I hate breaks. Would rather EO after working 6 straight hours than work 8 with breaks in between.

breaks are tilting. apparently someone in my department complained about pushes being longer than 3 tables. Thanks a lot buddy!

A couple of dealers I work with complain if they have to push more than two tables.

I bitch if I have to push more than 3............. Tournament tables that is

Some of my dealers go straight to HR if they get locked in for more than a 6-ball. In the pit they do hour-20's max. Any longer and to HR they go. SMH.

I say let me keep my own tokes and lock me in for the shift with one break in the middle please.

Tournament chop situations... What does your room allow for these scenarios?

A) paying top 5. at 6-handed they all agree to take $20 off of each of the top 5 spots to be used to pay the bubble $100. Do you take this money out for them and pay a 6th spot or do you leave it up to them to pull the $20 each out of their pocket on the honor system and pay the top 5 as normal?

B) all remaining players are in the money. They request to take $XXX off the top of the prize pool and split it and then play it out the rest of the way and give 1st place the remainder of the prize pool.

Does your answer for B change if it is obvious that they are chopping it up this way to avoid winning a "taxable amount"?

My room had this rule... Once a deal/chop is agreed on, the tourney is over. "Playing it out for the rest" is not allowed and any deals to pay the bubble must be handled by the players out of their own pocket.

New management says they should be able to make any deal they want cuz that's just how its done.

Thoughts? How does your room handle A and B?

In the case of A I have heard the TD suggest to the players that the easiest way to handle it is to have them each put up $20. The casino will do it either way .... but will encourage the players to do by themselves.

In the case of B I have not seen the TD ever not accept a deal by the players and something like this should not be a problem ..... though I was dealing once when a deal like this was proposed and the tournament director pointed out that the particular deal they proposed would affect the the way that POY (cardplayer I think) points were handled since there was a player involved concerned about POY points. I don;t recall the exact details (because i couldn't care less about POY) but I think the problem was that based on the proposed chop it was possible that the player who finished in first place may not win the most money.


One issue is the paperwork. Generally there is paperwork required to show how the money was paid out. Some rooms do the correct thing by adjusting their paperwork to reflect the actual payouts.

Some rooms find that to be to much work so they handle it one of two ways......

They allow deals but have prepare the paperwork as if there was not a deal. or

They don't allow deals.

This. Players do appreciate rooms and TD's that help in doing deals while not actively interfering in the process.

"Interfere" means saying something like "we're dealing hand-for-hand now on the bubble--does everybody want to take $100 off first place and pay the bubble?" Or "it's down to heads-up and you both have about the same number of chips--want to just chop it up?" It's not your place to suggest it.

"Help" would meaning answering questions like "can you tell us what an even chop would be per player?" Or allowing most any not-insanely-complicated readjustment of payouts--"Let's take $60 off first, $30 off second, and $10 off third and pay the bubble $100", say. If you let deals get too complicated you run the risk of confusing players who think they are agreeing to one thing and then learning after all the chips are in a jumble in the middle that they thought they were agreeing to something else entirely. And it is HUGELY important to be sure you get 100% agreement from every player. Do not accept deals negotiated while one player is in the restroom. Do not just assume when one player tells you "we're agreeing to X" and another player nods that the other 7 players also agree. You really do need to poll or demand some affirmative show of hands.

And players ..... it shouldn't be that difficult to answer when you are asked. When I was running tournaments I got tons of attitude when I asked players if they were in agreement with the proposed deal..... It was like I was just supposed to know that they agreed.... and the mere fact that I would ask them was a great insult upon them.

If I were running a room...... every change to the payout would need to be in writing and signed by every remaining player. If the players didn't want to sign it them the room wouldn't chop it......

One of the ugliest incidents I ever saw involved a table discussing a chop of the tournament. They were talking about chopping it by chip count like 9 ways. One player (who was drunk) did seem reluctant and was asking for actual figures...... The table then spent 20 minutes counting chips and trying to calculate each players share ..... when they told the drunk guy what his share was he said no...... They all went ballistic and started claiming that he had agreed to the split (I know he didn't agree to it because i was listening..... He kind of sort agreed along the lines of "yeah I'm willing to chop if the I get enough money .... how much am I going to get"). A great production was had and the shift manager ultimately ruled that the player had agreed to the chop and enforced it .......... It was ugly ..... gaming was called....... just not a pleasant situation.........

And totally avoidable if the room makes it clear that there is no deal until its written and signed. Yes once in a while this will cause a problem ..... but the problem its causes is far less ugly then casual chopping .......

Personally as a TD I like this
because it makes my life easier and it's less confusing for the players.

As a player I would prefer to have the room allow any chop request for obvious reasons. Ultimately it makes no difference to me as long as it's one way or the other and all our TD's do it the same. Just curious how other rooms do it.

I always make sure everyone understands the proposed chop and my statement to them is simple... "If any of you don't agree to the chop or want more time to think about it you need to tell me now".

I don't like the bold at all. Each player needs to be polled and agree to the deal. Making them speak up to object allows the "chop bullies" to bully the timid.

Another point I haven't seen addressed is the TD has to agree to the deal. There are only two deals I have seen that were objectionable and I did not allow (and both of these were over ten years ago). One of them a dealer in the room was playing tournament (it was 2+2er youtalkfunny) and the two remaining players offered him greater than first place money in a deal. There are times when a player might be permitted to make a deal for more than first place money, but a small daily tournament in the room they work in isn't one of them. The other was when a hotel guest got heads up in a satellite for a WSOP seat. The hotel guest had about 90% of the chips heads up; second place was worth about 10% the vale of the seat. The hotel guest didn't understand what she was signing up for when she entered the tournament and didn't know that WSOP seats could be sold. The other player says "since you won't be able to play in the tournament, how about if I take the seat and you take the cash." the other player then tries to mix their chips together before I get over to hear they have made a deal. I explained to the hotel guest what the seat was worth and that she could sell it (there were people in the room right then that would buy it). They played on.

I don't see anything wrong with getting more than first place money if that is what they players want to give the dealer.

Obviously you did the right thing in the second case.

One other thing I've seen go wrong is from language issues. 6 players discuss a chop, everybody seems to agree, TD comes over and is told what we want, he asks the table "is everybody ok with this" and he does it right, and basically makes sure he sees nods from 6 heads.

30 seconds later the chips are pushed forward, money is on the table being split and the guy who speaks 12 words of English is looking really confused and angry. He apparently had NO idea what was happening, didn't know there was an agreement, and was just nodding along because everybody else was.

Well... some things are nearly impossible to prevent. You do the best you can. PS's suggestion to put it in writing and ask 'em to initial it would probably provide solid legal CYA and hopefully a person who doesn't speak the language won't just blindly initial an agreement he doesn't understand just because everybody else is.

The problem with it is they are hotel guests and if they realize an hour later what happened they will feel cheated. This was long ago (pre-boom) so players were very unsophisticated. In a larger buy-in event with more sophisticated players there is no problem with a player negotiating more than first place.

Its not just foreigners who have "language" issues. I can't tell you how many times I have seen players agree to chop it....... and each player honestly believes that they have all agreed to the same thing. But to some of them chop it means chop it evenly and to others chop it means chop it proportionally to chip stack.

Most of the time this issue would come to light before any damage was done ..... but it was pretty common this misunderstanding would arise.

I should've been more specific. I explain the chop as i understand it, then ask if everyone agrees, make sure I get a yes from each player, THEN I say "If any of you don't agree to the chop or want more time to think about it you need to tell me now". I say that to try to let anyone that may be a noob or is just shy have a chance to realize that they can object. If when i am getting the yes from each player and i see someone that seems unsure i will tell them that they do not have to agree if they don't want to. That happens all the time.

There's a word for this type of dealer: "Smoker." It's heartbreaking to see the withdrawal suffered by a hardcore smoker who has been "locked in" for more than an hour. They're no less agitated than the heroin junkies you see on tv who are willing to perform oral in exchange for "a little taste".

I've said it before: that's why when I'm hiring, I make an effort to weed out the smokers in the interview process. The nonsmokers almost NEVER need to abandon their post hourly. They're the ones I want working for me.

"Avoiding" taxes is legal. "Evading" taxes isn't. If you enter any transaction primarily "for tax purposes", perfectly legal. That's not "evasion", which includes things like failing to report income, etc.

Hey, you're lucky I snap-called their offer! They were so "unsophisticated" that I could have held out for more...and GOTTEN it!

If anyone wonders, I never held it against RR when he took money out of my pocket that night. I saw his point, and LOL'd at the absurdity of it all. How could I object to getting "only" first-place money?

BTW, there were three of us left, and I had about 90% of the chips. Both players agreed to take slightly more than 3rd place, give me the rest, then asked me if I'd be OK with that. Um...yeah, that would be fine!

Some chops still make me SMH even tho I've seen it enough that it shouldn't. Just yesterday they were 3 handed. One guy had ~40% of the chips and the other two were about even. They agreed to give the leader 1st and chop the rest.

You just played 6 hours to get into the money and NOW you are afraid to play it out when one double up makes you chip leader?

I've seen players chop 7 handed and give the chip leader 1st place money.

I say nothing and in my head thank them for freeing up my dealer and table. The dealers thanks them for jacking up the Toke-Rate.

Smoker discrimination? I smell a lawsuit.

I smell stale tobacco. 29 states have laws to prohibit discrimination against smokers. The others... well... employers can do some pretty gnarly stuff, like force you to take drug tests and include nicotine among the products you better not have in your system. There was a 60 Minutes segment on the practice a few years ago, I think I vaguely recall. Boss has a heart attack, suddenly decides he needs to get healthy, and further decides he wants all his employees to follow his lead. Legal in many states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoker_Protection_Law

Smokers are not a protected class.

Hollywood Casino in Columbus tested all new hires for nicotine and won't hire anyone who failed the test.

I know one smoker who was hired. So either your information is incorrect or the test somehow missed it.

I didn't think so, either, but Bav says they are in 29 states. I had no idea.

All I know is, if a fattie like me had to run outside every hour to have a cupcake, bosses wouldn't stand for it.

I had a warehouse job once. They told me that because of the chemicals stored in the building, smoking inside was prohibited, but it was no big deal if I stepped outside for a minute or two for a smoke every now and then. At least once a day, I'd look around and discover that I was the only one working! Everyone else was outside on a smoke break. I'd go outside and hang out with them, and the boss would get upset with ME. "What, I should be the only one working?" He had no answer for that, but it didn't stop him from being upset with me. F smokers.