Last night dealing a single table tournament getting to the money one of the players showing frustration that he wasn't getting pocket Aces every hand announced to me that if he won he would give me a big tip (with the intent of encouraging me to start giving him those aces).

Immediately I looked up and said "well then I certainly hope you start playing better"

Yeah, it seems the players who least respect our role are those who need the most help.

Hah!

I think each room that allows mucked hands to be live if the winner asks to see them will have their own way of handling it which is why the question was asked in the first place. I'm not a fan of how my room handles some of those issues, but making those decisions is above my pay grade so I do as told.

In the SOSA scenario I can agree with you, but I'm with steamraise, the player better have made it damn clear that he was requesting to see it because he showed another player. Not worth the risk IMO. Ever.

You guys are poker dealers. Here's a question for you: Why is Omaha 8 or better such a hassle to deal? I find it astonishing that most dealers are horrendous at dealing this game. If this game is your weakness, then why not practice it with the upmost intent of becoming better?

I'm a craps dealer and I am always looking for ways to improve (different press moves, chip management, etc.) so I just wonder why these dealers are not only slow, expose cards, can't read a board or even a counterfeit low hand, but are even employed? And many still struggle to get 15 hands in a down!

I've played at many O8 heavy casinos and the dealers there are very good and don't have many problems. (Casino AZ, Commerce, Venetian)

Is it just because the dealers don't care or are just content on being bad? Maybe you guys can answer this. I'd like to know if there's any chat in the breakroom like there is in ours.

I think you answered your own question...

Places that regularly spread O8 are going to have better O8 dealers since they deal it more often.

In my room we may get an O8 game once a week or once in 2 months. Never know. I agree that it isn't that difficult to deal, but for dealers that don't play the game and only learned it once in training and dealt it only a handful of times, they struggle.

On the other hand if... ... then they shouldn't be allowed to deal the game. Poor management to not know their dealers enough to know not to push them into a game they can't handle.

It's not like it runs only once a week! O8 runs 3 days a week in one casino and 3 days a week in the other in my area (STL, MO). I guess if you're only dealing it a handful of times a night, you should be able to become much better at it over time and not listen to the players on a consistent basis over who has the high/low.

I don't know. Like I said, is there any talk in the EDR over Omaha? Do break-ins deal out hands? Talk w experienced dealers?

About Omaha hi/lo players, yes.

The prevailing opinion is that you could push in to an Omaha hi/lo game, hand every player a ten dollar bill, and the very first words out of someone's mouth would be "How come it's not a 20?"

Lol. I know O8 players have a history of being jags, but seeing as I'm like 30 years younger than the avg O8 player, I just wonder about dealers and their practices. It's just a question I had.

Tbh it's kinda hard to "practice" O8 without dealing O8.

I've dealt very little of it, but I feel like I'm above average if only slightly. My main problem though is from reading a counterfeited low though. I struggle with it but if you give me 2 seconds I'll get it. It's frustrating when it happens, and when hesitate slightly I have 3 different people telling me he has 3 different lows.

"He has a 7-6"
"No he has a live 7!"
"No it's a live 6!"

That's pretty much it.

1. We almost never deal it. My room has an O/8 game running every day, but rarely more than one table, and our room is big enough I might work a whole shift and never get to that table. Like you, I also take pride in appearing competent, but as you know, most people in the service industry do not care, so they're not going to spend a single minute practicing a game that they're almost never going to deal.

2. I've made a theme around here recently that OCD sufferers seem to be attracted to poker. Well, the worst of them are attracted to O/8. As anti-social as most hold'em players are, the O/8 players make them look like Dale Carnegie disciples. If your most abrasive customers are the ones demanding extra effort, most folks find it natural to not feel motivated to GIVE that extra effort. As QS points out above, what good does it do you? I happen to have spent a lot of time playing the game, I have no trouble with the dealing issues you describe--you think the players treat me any better because of it? NCAA (No Chance At All).

3. The reason nobody has mentioned it yet: it's hard! Most folks, even most poker dealers, can't do it! Not everyone is as smart as a 2+2 poster.

To answer why floors do rotate the bad dealers around it:

1) it's a pain to do when you only have 1 Omaha game once a week

2) it's more of a punishment to the good dealers. O8 games are slow, the players (usually) tip worse than your normal 1/2 Holdem game. So re-routing the bad dealers does them a favor.

Exactly. It's one thing to deal out boards and pull out random four cards from the deck, but it's quite another to do it while everybody's staring at you and yelling things out. Also, hands that are shown down are more likely to work with the board somehow than just random hands from the deck, so they're trickier to read. As with anything, it's easier to do something on your own than it is while people are watching and talking over your thought process and getting impatient with how stupid you're being.

I'll echo what others have said, and add some of my own reasons...

* When I worked in a room with a regular 24/7 O8 game, I saw it maybe twice a week.

* Dealing Hold'em, I don't even look at the board unless there's a showdown. I forget to break that habit in Omaha, and often find myself at showdown going "crap..."

* For an O8 game, each player has twelve hand combinations. That's a lot to take in at once, especially on a 4-low board where someone's been counterfeited, and someone else is just showing his losing hand because he wants sympathy, and someone else is yelling out the wrong hand. The players usually know what they have and have had the entire hand to learn it, and know what they're afraid will beat them. We're going into this cold.

* In a FL game, we're spending time stacking the pot, and players aren't exactly helpful in this regard, so there's not even time to study the board while we're stacking the pot and also following the action on the current street. In a PL game, we're calculating the pot size and tracking what a pot-sized raise will be, and then verifying those numbers. This is pretty easy in a game with quarters, but a redbird game can get a bit tricky if you're not used to it.

But really what it comes down to is I just don't get to practice it very often.

For those that have been to the STL area, you realize that O8 runs early in the AM. Those that deal this early are dealing either a 3/6 HE game or a 5/10 or 4/8 O8 game. So there are maybe only two games running. As the day progresses and other dealers come in, there may be 2 more games running for a total of 4 so for them the excuse isn't that they don't get to deal the game often. So IMO that can be eliminated.

I think it's just as hard to just set up a board of 26/27 across and pretend like your pressing numbers up, but when you actually have someone there just throwing checks at you and yelling "press my 4, hard 4 comes back for $4" while i'm paying out my first place bet and still have 3 customers to go before him is hard to do at first, but I put in the time to become better, why shouldn't they? Just this last week I had a gentleman who kept throwing me $6 saying "press it up." Press what up? the 6? the 8? your odds on the 5/9? I think in the end its about effort. What you put in is what you get out- like anything in life.

Who's to say you couldn't take 20 cards and put them face down and deal out a flop, turn, river and then flip them over 1 by one and be able to distinguish between the high and low and muck their cards accordingly? Is this a common practice? Learning baccarat, we did this. 3 8 special, 4 2-7, 5 4-7, 6 6-7. Keep dealing out hands and pump every combo you can until you got it.

Like I have said, I'm not sure. You guys say you don't get the practice often, but for the dealers that deal this game, get pushed to 3/6 then go back, there shouldn't be an excuse, right?

I believe you guys all take pride and strive to be the best dealer you can be otherwise, you wouldn't be on here, right? To me, dealing hold em, especially limit HE is like dealing blackjack. It's a repetitive game that over time can become second nature and monotonous. So for those that get the opportunity to deal a game like O8 or any other game differet than HE, you would THINK most would want to step up their game and become better. Then again maybe not. I don't know. That's why I asked those questions.

There are good craps dealers and bad ones. Hell, there are even some I deal with that can't drop cut and have been dealing for 20 years. Glad to see we all strive to become better!

You might want to check your math.

Six for high, six for low?

My response to that would be, "no bet." Especially on a busy game. No time to be asking questions.

As far as your comment about people wanting to get better, there are dealers out there that are just bad. There are dealers out there (both in table games and poker) who take no pride in their work. They will never get better.

Umm, there are six combinations of hole cards. The board cards also are considered. There are 60 combinations, or if you count high and low as separate events 60 for high and 60 for low.

Unlike some of these posters I deal Omaha 8/b on an almost daily basis. Typically I'll deal 2 downs in a shift though sometimes it feels like I'm dealing 10.

One thing you complained about was the speed of the game. Limit Omaha 8/6 is a slow game at the lower limits. Its not about the dealers .... Its about the game and the players. First ..... because its limit and because its H/L you generally have more players in the pot for more streets than you do in other games. And hands go all the way to the river more often then not (This gets progressively less true as you go up in limits...and those games go much faster). And my experience is that low limit omaha players are the slowest poker players. I play Omaha. I get four cards. I look at them and I remember what they are. It is rare for there to be two players at a game who do that. Instead every time it is their turn they have to look at their cards, (often by holding them up at eye level) stare at the board, look back at their cards, stare at the board, look back at their cards, stare at the board .... repeat.

Craps is a difficult game to deal. I was a craps player ...... I understand the procedures of the game. Years ago I took a dealing class for craps. From the outset I could quickly call out payouts with no problem. I knew what was supposed to be paid and in what order ..... but I would not be a good craps dealer ..... I will never have the hands for it. Its challenging ..... but so is dealing Omaha. But they are challenging in different ways.

One thing that is hugely different is that if we put 10 players around your craps table ..... and ask them is they could deal the game it is very likely that all 10 of them will say "No". If you come to my Omaha table its likely that 9 of my players will claim they can deal Omaha.

Aren't we glad we all strive to be the best in the industry?

Totally and completely disagree here on the bolded. Hell, a couple months ago I had 6 all-ins, 2-5 PLO, from 150bb deep, to 700bb deep on a hugely wet board.

Now you can spend the next 5 mins just making side pots, then finally getting the board finished, to only have to split 2 or more side pots, which means further counting/stacking for another 3-6 mins or you can leave all the chips in front of each player and "sort it out in the end" in a much more timely manner. Dealers that can do this, efficiently, are far more appreciated by the players and floor staff (that likely couldnt ever sort it out anyways).

When my hand was finished, I saw where the splits were going, I announced each one so everyone knew and understood, and I moved amounts accordingly. All the players complimented me on it and the floor staff looking on told me after my down, "I'm sure glad you had that handled because I had no clue and didnt want to even have to think about it".

Also, whilst I've never had more than maybe 4 all-ins in a large split pot game (O8 for example) of say $100-$200 or larger, those players in some cases will prefer you to leave the bets out in front. So long as all the action is complete, no further betting rounds to muck it up.

As long as all the betting is complete and none further can be made, it doesn't matter about side pots until the end if the chips are in front of the players. They don't even all have to be out there, just a chip and the declaration they are all in. *Get the short stacks chips forward, as the first visual though imo.

I LOL'd at this. How true!

I am by no means claiming I can deal the game, I just had questions you guys may be able to answer. It seems all of us here try to do our best no matter what and there are those that are content with how they deal a game. Unfortunately, those are the most inadequate dealers out there!

Thanks guys.

So, the Latin Grammy awards are in town. I drool over hot Latina women at my tables. But today, all I could do was pray I could eo. For two days, every down was under $10, one was $1, except for one $17 down.

I'm not saying a specific class of people are stiffs, far from it. Just that the games are filled with people from other countries and tipping a dealer isn't a thought or part of their culture I guess. It was less than 50/50 on them tipping cocktail waitresses too. It's tough when it's a larger influx of people concentrated to x number of tables.

While you may have pulled it off ..... its still a bad idea ..... not just because it makes it more likely for the dealer to screw up .... it makes it more likely for the players to screw up. They don;t realize which sidepots are which, they throw away a hand thinking they lost not realizing they won a sidepot. Even when I do make the sidepots I still have had to call players back to the table because they walkaway not realizing they have won ... It only gets worse if the sidepots aren;t made. And if you have some stacks of similar sizes where it is not apparent who has who covered until you actually break them down and count them ... you end up either not catching the player before he walks away .... or worse calling him back only to later tell him he doesn't have any chips left.

Are there times I let it happen sure ..... the stack sizes are vastly different and its very obvious, the big stack is the tightest player at the table and he only gets it in when he is likely the winner .....

But as a general rule .... setting the pots out right is a better way

Totally disagree psandman. We're talking about pots that can have up to $8-10k in them and they're all redbirds! Just moving that many chips around to side pots is looking for problems. Let alone pushing the pots.

These players aint folding until they know they have no parts of any pot. Taking control, as a dealer, you're asking for only then hands in the last pot to be shown first. Then moving on down the line with each side pot accordingly.

With inexperienced or just plain bad dealers, any way you try to do it will be a clusterfluck. They got no shot at getting it right.

Edit: on that original hand I mentioned above, at the end where one of the players was not winning any part, I saw him pull out money to rebuy. I ask him how much he's got there (cash), and I push back an equal amount in chips from the side pot he was in, while letting the winning player(s) know exactly what I'm doing, whom totally understands. Split accordingly and we dont have less confusion possibilities for the next hand and amounts in action or waiting on chips to be put in the pot, etc.

Edit II: Oh and in plo, it doesnt matter about the tightest guy at the table. They all think they have 40% equity, even though it's 6 all-ins and all the outs are tied up.

I've never dealt craps, but I have dealt baccarat. I learned it in an afternoon, then it took one time on the table to feel comfortable with it. It's a much smaller set of possible outcomes. 38-Special, 42, 54, 66. That's it, now you know baccarat.

The hands that get to showdown aren't random 4 cards from the deck on a random board. The hands that get to showdown have connected boards and connected hands. The ones that are disconnected don't make it to showdown. Now, I consider myself decent at Omaha, and I've done the method you described. It's helpful, but it's not really the same thing.

We also have a vicious cycle. LLO8 players are grouchy and stingy and slow, so dealers don't want to deal them. The dealers that come in are bad, so LLO8 players get grouchy and stingy. It's like teenagers and Denny's waitresses. They're obnoxious, so they get crappy service, which makes them obnoxious.

For us, yes. That's why were on here. But for most dealers, it's just a job. It's better than digging ditches. They don't really know or care about poker.

Deal a fast game with friendly players and make more tips, or deal a difficult game with grouchy players and make fewer tips... most dealers aren't in it for love of the game, they're in it for love of eating and paying rent.

This doesn't apply to me. My favorite game is high stakes PLO or mix game. But most dealers just want to get paid and go home, man.

Yes, thank you. I meant individual hand combinations. 120 possible final hand combos.