As a dealer or a floor?

I once had a floor tell atable of players "This is an adult establishment, if your not going to act like an adult you can't be here."

Depends on what the issue is, but usually I just treat them like a 5 year old and I'm the parent. "You're gonna have to chill out. Let's move on and play poker." Usually its when they won't let something go from a previous hand and you have to say "that hand is over guys, we are moving on with or without you". I will jokingly tell players "c'mon man, you know how much I hate kicking people out, too much paperwork." They usually can take it as a joke yet still get the hint. As a dealer you gotta be more careful so as not to affect your tips. You guys have to put up with so much more of the childish behavior. I don't miss that part.

I've had some success with the following internal dialogue.

"Is this person a complete ****ing moron?"
Yes.
"Would it be unfortunate to let a complete ****ing moron affect your mood?"
Yes.
"Then don't worry about this complete ****ing moron."
Okay.

That's good for about twice a shift.

Player not wanting to play at a Must Move can stay at the top of the list but loses their spot 'in line' to any other Player subsequently sitting at the Must Move. If they refuse the last open seat at the Must Move then they get rolled to the bottom of the list. GL

So when you say they can stay at the top 9f the list you mean the bottom of the list?

One of my go-to moves is to stop dealing. I'll just sit there, frozen, holding the deck in my hand, and will stare at the offender until he gets the hint. This has the added benefit of getting the rest of the table to try to get him to cut out the nonsense so that they can play cards.

When a player is argumentative and continues to interrupt without letting me get a word in I'll do this. And if I happen to be pitching cards, I'll pitch right up to the 5 year old and won't give him a card, until he notices that I've stopped dealing. Then when I ask if he's ready to listen to me, he's usually more cooperative.

If this doesn't work, my go to is...

As someone who's been on the wrong side of letting emotions get to me (as a customer/player/guest, not just in poker), hopefully improving, I can probably offer something helpful here. Let me think more about it.




The biggest thing, and it's tough, is to separate the problematic person's emotional needs from the substantive issue. So, for example, let's say they're primarily motivated by being right (about a rule, a procedure, whatever). Their self-esteem is bound up in having people know how right they are. But, sadly, today they in fact are wrong, which they kinda know deep down, but they're suffering a loss of face to admit it. Now, too boot, they're probably also embarrassed that it's making them angry when they know it shouldn't.

It's in everyone's interest to defuse this so they're not feeling the full impact of loss of face. Your reaction could be, "Dammit, I'm not letting a dumbass player show me up! I'll humiliate him so he gets what's coming to him." So you escalate it. You may "win" but what has really been accomplished? You've won the battle (being right, making them look foolish) but lost the war (keeping things running smoothly). Even if they end up 86ed, the whole situation has made the game uncomfortable which is bad for business.

So the perfect answer, and it's tough, is to help them retain some dignity while giving them an out to "compromise" on the substance, which really means you win on the substance since you were right in the first place. And all without enabling their behavior and encouraging more of it. Easy, right?


I could probably suggest some specific words or even write a script in response to a specific situation, but it is very situation-specific. Getting the floor is usually going to be essential since they're (I guess?) trained in defusing but knowing what's going on in the other person's mind is helpful.

Hope this helps. Feel free to PM if I can help more.



Wow, that's really good, especially if you can deliver it with a smile. Saw it after I wrote the above. Covers a lot of bases. You're joking rather than implying this is a fight to the death so they have ground to back down and still make some mildly smart-assed retort and they still feel OK about backing down. Yet the joke is also serious in that you're setting a very real boundary. And, maybe most important of all, you're building a bridge of empathy that suggests you want to collaborate. Hey, kicking people out is bad for you, it's bad for me, so how can we work together to make it not happen?

You're good at this.

My advice to you would be learn to feel your emotions without showing them.

Depends on which list ... They stay at the top of the waiting list until only one seat remains at the must move. If they don't take that, then they are rolled to the bottom of the waiting list.

Each person who sits at the must move before they do is ahead of them when it comes to moving to the main game, so the bottom of that list, yes. GL

But you wrote they "loses their spot 'in line' to any other Player subsequently sitting at the Must Move.”. so it sounds like they are after anybody in the mm before them or after them.

I call that a regular day at work.

Arguing will never work with these people. They're probably losing and want to blame someone other than themselves. Smile and brush it off. Or let the floor deal with them.

They would be ahead of anyone else that came after them and also doesn't want to play, and behind everyone willing to play. Sounds pretty good to me.

More gruel, please?

Hard to imagine all the dealers in the country had nothing to say for a week!

ytf must be on vacation.

Well, I wouldn't call it a vacation...but yeah, been away a few weeks, on the road back home now.

(Nice to be missed, tho. Thanks!)

Interesting word coming from the new casino by me ...
1) You apply
2) You get tested and show your skills
3) You get your gaming license, if not already in pocket
4) You go through some sort of 'orientation' with one of the new Floors
5) You get called into a meeting and ... draw a 'bingo' ball from the spinner. Could be a number anywhere from 1 to 70.

You are now told that the number on the ball will determine the order that you will pick your own schedule from for the opening of the room!!

These details are a little sketchy but fairly accurate.

So you may have the best skills, application history, personality and what not ... and a lottery determines your hours for the next 3-6 months (until the cream rises and you can pick up the openings created by the fallout).

I can see where this 'hands off' approach keeps the blood off the casino a bit by not 'asking' a great Dealer to start off on graveyard. But if I were opening a new company I would probably want my best workers in the chairs when I've got the most exposure with the customers. GL

PS .. Sorry if I already posted this ...

And maybe the hiring process could fairly identify that some dealers are better than others but do you really think it can accurately and fairly distinguish the 9th best dealer from the 10th best dealer?

I like the random approach in some ways. Essentially they are saying everyone hired at the same time will be randomly assigned seniority within the group. It might make sense to hire in multiple groups so that you could distinguish between the staff you absolutely want to hire and the staff you find as adequate to fill necessary positions.

I remember being at a meeting once where the on call dealers complained about seniority being the way dealers got full time. And I certainly objected when I saw incompetent dealers getting full time before I did. So the HR person asked .... Ok suppose we were going to evaluate and rank all of you .... Think about who is going to do that and are you sure you want us to do that and suddenly the rooms mood changed as everybody realized that we could all be subjected to getting screwed over at the whim of whichever supervisors/managers we had doing the ranking.

So let's talk about schedules... anyone who's not a dealer assumes that Friday and Saturday nights are the best. Maybe they are for the house, but not necessarily for the dealers.

What would your ideal schedule be if all you cared about was making the most money and things like a normal sleep schedule or a semblance of a social life weren't factors?

I'd probably go with Monday thru Friday, beginning my shift at 8 PM. Saturdays are garbage.

It would depend on the market, the room and the way they staffed. Things like tournaments can make a big difference....

I have had jobs where grave was the best money shift. I have had jobs where you couldnt make enough on grave to cover the tip compliance agreement.

To add onto this a bit ... The premise of the advertising for these positions included some normal enticements about hours and so forth.

What I fear is that some of the Dealers who are leaving the local charity scene and then end up with a late pick will be handcuffed into the pits or part time. And now they can't, either by gaming law or casino employee handbook, continue to work part time in the charity rooms to make up for the lost income.

Just another unexpected side issue to opening a new room in our area .. GL

Where I currently work best dealing shift would be Sunday-Thursday 3 or 4pm start


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I'd follow FIFA's lead. Place the balls in different pots according to the "seeding" (broad assessment of the hired dealer's experience) and draw at random from the different pots.

It's probably better to hire in groups then to tell some players they we're the worst.... Just hire them last.

It's typical for shift choice to be by seniority. My room also had a drawing to determine our starting position since we all started at the same time.

Most people got their shift of choice either right away or within the first few months. The people most affected were those who couldn't start right away due to delays in the gaming license process.

In some rooms seniority matters a lot - one place I worked every day you'd be put into the rotation based on your position. Those of us at the end pretty much always got break or brush the first half hour of our shift while the old timers were put right at the top of strings.

The only days that suck in my room are tournament days because the down rate is half what we make dealing cash. Grave is best for money but hours are inconsistent, you could be working 5 hours or 12. I don't think anyone is trying to get on that shift. Swing is next, then days.

Had something interesting happen to me.

I was sitting at a dead spread at a tournament series when a player who had just busted out of day two of another event came by. He was foreign, not sure from where only that he had an accent. He was a serious player, I thought a very good one based on how I saw him play.

He thanked me.

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was more concerned it was me forgetting something, the problem of approaching 50 and dealing to hundreds of players a night. I didn't recall bailing him out from getting it in bad and I didn't think he was the type who would thank me for that anyway.

I politely said he'd have to me more specific and he recalled how he had a very big decision for 60% of his stack and he was about to make what he later determined would have been a terrible call. He said that while he tanked he looked over at me and as he put it, I put my finger to my head as in "think," and he immediately mucked.

I was actually a little aghast because I would never want to influence action. I told him that I think he gave me more credit that I deserved - he probably knew the right play and would have taken anything, even the dealer resting his head on his arm what he put his elbow on the table, as a sign to pull the trigger.

Although I feel this was likely what happened or at least was a big part of it - certainly I was not trying to communicate anything to him and I didn't even recall this situation as he described it - it did make me uneasy that something I might do could inadvertently cause a player to make a certain decision. Although the more I think about it, I am not sure how I can change this since if my theory was correct, any player can see any action I take - scratching my nose because it had an itch - and attribute it to any meaning they want.

Anyone have anything like this ever happen to them? Can I take anything from this conversation to become a better dealer?