1. Places that model themselves after Nevada (ie, the smart places) allow the dealers to play, on or off the clock. Places that think they know more about gambling than Nevada (ie, the dumb places) might put restrictions on such things, even without good reason to do so.

Speaking of dumb places, NH has maybe the dumbest policy of all, that I've ever heard of, governing this issue: dealers may only play in the room where they work on their days off. So if you're clocked out, done for the day, and changed into street clothes, sorry, you can't play, you worked today, this isn't your day off. Madonn'!

2. I've seen some dealers who are trained to point at every player as the action gets to them. I hate this. I don't mean, "I hate when they point at me." I mean, "I hate this," no matter who they're pointing to. It's not polite to point! We learn that when we're children. "You point with your eyes, not with your hands."

OK, you used the words "gesture at" instead of "point", but my sentiment is the same. I've seen dealers "gesture" to every single player every single time the action gets to them. I've seen players voice annoyance about this. And I've seen these dealers say defensively, "Sorry, that's how I was taught."

Here's an article that appeared in my hometown paper about a charity poker room's opening. Click on the photo next to the article to enlarge. It's a photo of several employees sitting around the table playing poker. Since nobody's stack has more than six chips in it, I'll call this photo "hastily staged", but that's besides the point. The point is, the young lady in the box is pointing at a player who clearly knows it's on him--and I happen to know that "the young lady in the box" was in charge of dealer training at this place!

So, to answer your question, if you find your hands are CONSTANTLY "gesturing" in this manner, you should know that many, many people find this annoying/offensive...or at least me and the guy in your story, but I guess it's possible that we're the only two.

Just try to catch their eyes with your eyes. For some reason, people seem to sense when someone is looking at them (ask any sniper--they won't even look at their target through a scope from 100's of yards away, because it seems like the target is "getting the funny feeling that I'm being watched!", and suddenly acts cautiously instead of unguarded). When the player sees I'm trying to catch his eye, he instantly knows why. I don't have to point, tap, or say a word, the 90+% of the time this works.

My favorite craps cliche: on the comeout roll a 2, 3 or 12 rolls.
"Every good day starts with a crap."

In the Netherlands dealers can't play any game in any casino in the country.

our first time in a casino, my friend and I went straight to the craps table. They offered him the dice. He picked out two, and immediately cupped them in both his hands and started shaking. Everyone gasped. The dealers and boxman all went bananas. "One hand on the dice!", shouted everyone, in a tone of voice usually reserved for those times when a drunk is waving a pistol.

As the initial wave of shock died down, the stickman cracked, "This ain't Yahtzee, pal!"

It's not 95%. It's Vegas as far as I know and maybe other areas of Nevada. In New Jersey you can play in state but not your own room. In Pennsylvania, you cannot even play in-state. Which sucks. I have done all I could to change it and hope it will be changed sometime before a WPT event happens at another local room. We will see. Bureaucracy is a slow process.

I have had a few players at say to me that they "know action is on them," sometimes a little angrily. I tend to run a fast game. Even though I like to be personable, I also want to churn out hands and attempt to do so without making mistakes. I don't make a lot of mistakes but some people don't like to feel rushed. I am a lot better about customizing how I run a game now to the players and table dynamics than I was earlier so it happens less often now.

That said, I do my best to get quick action at low limit games and make no apologies for it. Even if I do run into someone who wants to ponder a $4 bet on 4th street in a three-way unraised pot at a 2/4 game, the other 9 players at the table generally are happy to have hands go faster than not. Which isn't to say that I act impatient, but I will gesture to all players and make sure that they know action is on them, things I won't necessarily do at a NL game or one with higher stakes.

[QUOTE=Dealer-Guy;30713136]...1. "I don't understand why dealers can't play here when 95% of the casinos in the rest of the world let dealers play where they work."

How many casinos let their dealers play where they work? This isn't a discussion about if dealers should play where they work but how prevalent is the practice? 95% seems way high. ...QUOTE]

In Connecticut, dealers can play but not at their own casino (so Foxwoods dealers play at Mohegan Sun and vice versa).

in Arizona, state law allows for dealers to play at their own place but the ultimate decision is made by the property at which they are employed.
At CAZ we can play on shift or off shift, the only restrictions i recall off hand is that there can never be more than 2 card room employees( on shift) in any single game at one time, and if we are playing we have to be gone from the room 8 hours before our scheduled shift starts.

I believe at Gila River properties they are not allowed to play in their own room, not sure about Fort Mcdowell.

I sometimes get players that get irritated when I gesture or remind them that action is on them. It's worth it to me because most often, someone has mentally checked out of the hand or isn't following the action and has no clue that its their turn to act.

My favorite is Headphone Guy: 4 way action on the turn, seat 3 bets, HPG tanks, 30 seconds go by, I gesture to him, he removes headphones: "Is it on me?"

Me: "Yes sir $20 to call"

HPG: "Who bet?"

I try not to to gesture at the players but sometimes you have to. There are some players who just will not follow the game. And most of the time if I am pointing at you .... its not to tell you its your turn. Its to tell the idiot after you that it isn't on him yet.

The thing is I don't care if a dealer points. Quite hinestly i wasn't brought up to believe that pointing is rude. I think thats a silly idea. Pointing is a great and easy way to convey information.

Then why do you "try not to gesture at the players"?

Some dealers look like they're conducting an orchestra.

About 98% of Vegas casinos let dealers play in their own room. Last I asked a couple years ago, Luxor had removed this privilege because they had a few "issues" with one or two dealers who didn't know how to behave when playing, so rather than fixing the individuals causing the issue, they just told 'em all they couldn't play.

I was playing at Wynn one day when a regular having a bad day about went ballistic over the dealer leading the action. Dealer would ask for blinds to be posted and the player would snap at him to wait until it was obvious the players had forgotten. Dealer would gesture to start the action and the player would snarl at him to knock it off and let us run our own game. Dealer kept ignoring the guy and doing things his way, and in about 10 minutes the player stood up, yelled at the dealer, pulled at his own hair, and stormed away.

(The above regular was a "professional NL1/2 and NL1/3 player" who had a two month stretch of "bad luck" after holding his own for a year and was down to his last $600ish and was horrified at the prospect of having to find a real job. He was stressing about everything.)

Two reasons. One when i learned to deal I was told not to do it (and I understand that apparently some people consider pointing to be rude .... but I don't understand why they feel this way) ..... Second ..... I'm lazy and don't want to make excess motions......


Actually a third reason ..... I think it would slow down a game that was moving at a decent speed.... as players who otherwise would act may wait for me to point to them (we have all had to deal woth that new player who absolutely will not act until he is sure the dealer is looking at him)

That's a fairly common response to problems. However the Luxor dealers now can play in their room and they can play on the clock.

As someone who has a penchant for spacing out at the tail end of a longish session. I appreciate the reminder. It's usually a signal for me to wrap up my time and go home because I'm not mentally in the game.

I do realize I might be in the minority...

haha, this happens all the time. Also, while less ridiculous, this one happens all the time dealing tournaments:

Blinds are 100/200. Guy two seats to right of HPG throws out oversized chip and says "call," I loudly announce "CALL," two folds, HPG tanks. I say "Two hundred to call." He pulls off one headphone and says "did he raise?"

First time for this one.

Yesterday, a player complained that the guy sitting in seat 1 was giving him bad "feng shui" because every time seat 1 would bet he would place his card protector, a small metal guitar, on his cards with the end pointing toward the complaining player (who was sitting in seat 2).

Didn't really know how to respond, so I offered him a table change.

"its bad luck to be superstitious"

I'm writing tickets in the sportsbook, it's day shift mid week, we only have one window open, mine. A player walks in, approaches the window, sees me, then goes over the racebook side to find the supervisor (who supervises both race and sports, but this time of day race keeps him busier). The player and the supervisor both approach my window. The supervisor asks me if I wouldn't mind standing aside while he wrote a ticket for this player.

When the ticket was written, the supervisor then stepped aside and let me collect the money for the ticket (he wisely didn't dare to put his hands into my cash drawer). The player paid, took the ticket, and left.

The supervisor explained, "He says he never wins when you write the ticket, and since this is our only open window, he asked if there was something we could do."

"I know what *he* can do," I replied. "He can stop betting six-team parlays, and blaming things besides 'basic math' for why he never wins."

I'm guilty of too much gesturing, but I try to be aware of what the table needs. I've decided there's no good way to calm someone who feels personally offended by it, so I just muttter something like, "no worries, just making sure," and leave it at that.

The thing is, I'm not always doing it for their benefit. It's also so the table knows where the action is. It's also so the table knows where *I* think the action is. Often if I'm distracted briefly by a floor question or player request, I might miss a subtle pinky check or two.

But of course, the ideal is to know when it's needed. To the guy who needs to be reminded, I've tried to explain that the guy who's deep in thought and the guy who has no clue what's going on often look exactly alike, but there's no smooth way to pull that off, at least not if you're me.

Ha!

The other day in a tourney, a player started accusing me of stacking the deck. I'm not sure if he was serious, but he also made some muttered comments about my shuffling. Then he won a couple of big pots in a row. His response: "What, you forget to do it that time?"

Gotta love the people who are angry when they lose, angry when they win. Thankfully the rest of the table was stifling laughter at how ridiculous he was being.

After a while he relaxed a bit, and I had smiled and laughed at his attempts at humor on the subject. On one big hand later he got all in with 55 vs 33. He hit his 5 on the flop. I joked, "watch, running threes," and immediately regretted it, because not only is it tacky, but the super rare time I joke about anything like that, whatever it is happens. Turn 3. Thankfully, brick river, otherwise I think my head would've been squished like grape.

In tourney the other night a player (not involved) called for running 9-10 to crack flopped set of Aces all-in against 88 on an A-6-7 flop... Turn was a 9 which brought ooohs and ahhhhs from half the table and dagger-eyes-of-death from the set of Aces.

River was a boring blank but Mr. Big-Mouth sweated a bit I think. LOL

Heh, yeah, I deal running suck outs frequently. As a player, if I see any backdoor possibility that can beat me if I'm all in on the flop, I fully expect to see it. Helps me avoid tilt.

When they're grumbling as I push them the pot, my standard line is, "I'm sorry, sir, but you just have to take the money."

Oh man, that's gold. Happily we don't have enough consistently grouchy regulars for me to keep that on the ready, but I'll try to have it in mind next time it happens.

In a tournament a few weeks ago, I guy I had never seen was upset that I mucked his hand, since he was clearly on his way back from across the room. I just shrugged and didn't care and gave him his hand back (his tantrum effectively froze action), which he promptly mucked.

He then proceded to complain and criticize me, talking about how this is no way to treat customers, I don't know how to do my job, etc. Gee, sir, if I had known you'd be so angry at me for bending the rules in your favor, I never would have done it. I suspect that was part of it: he lost respect for me because I gave him what he wanted.

People are funny.