Hi guys!

Im online and live player (online NL 50 and live 2/5), im trying to play early because im getting old and i feel bad when i stay awake late, so i try a new casino a month ago. Dealers shuffle manually. i start notice a very bad and passive reg always cooler other players specially at SB and win a 100-300bb, only when specific guy deal (bad reg dont bet thin value, dont get enought value of his hands). I talk to another players and all notice than guy wins a lot.

So i decided to see carefully the shuffle of the dealer and search how is a correct shuffle procedure, and i find that:

Wash the cards — Washing the deck refers to the process of spreading the cards out and mixing them across the poker table before gathering them. Every card face should touch the felt at least once in a wash (you should wash it for about seven seconds).
Scoop all the cards together — Once you get the cards in close enough, you take one card off the top and put it in the bottom of the deck. Now you can hold all the cards.
Turn the cards away from you — The dealer shouldn’t be able to see the cards so that he can’t manipulate them.
Drop the cards — You must drop the cards to align them and give yourself a flat edge to work with.
Rifle — Grab the top edge of the deck with your middle finger and your ring finger (your thumb should be opposite it), and the other hand should mirror this movement. The pinky finger goes outside of the deck.

But that specific dealer when take the cards before the drop see the cards (have in front of him not back ), only 2 dealers shuffle that way, all other dealers do correctly ...

So im not an expert, but i think he can be cheating (passive reg are friend of all dealers because he has months ago a home game when covid close casinos).

Should i report to the manager? or leave complete that casino or maybe im wrong with the supspect, advices please (all other casinos on my country only have night games)..

Sorry for my bad english im not a native english speaker

so whats the sample size here? How many times has this particular player coolered people from the blinds with that dealer and over what period of time?

I'd like to know what "always" means to you. Is that every orbit, once a night, etc.

A card mechanic doesn't have to wait until someone is in the SB. They can set the deck for any position and are fast enough you'd never see it. Not to mention that the dealer is risking his job and being blacklisted for cheating. Finally, Bobby Baldwin pointed out years ago that the fish suck out more often than good players because they are getting their money in bad far more often.

While it is possible they are cheating if this happening multiple times a night, if this has 2-3 times over the last couple of months, it can just be random. You're going to need some strong evidence if you plan to accuse a dealer or cheating like this.

So you are suggesting that the Dealer can set the deck after a wash while this guy is in the small blind by simply viewing the cards as he aligns them?

I'm no mechanic expert, but I would think that it takes a lot more than that to set up one hand of poker.

I'm thinking that this guy plays a loose range from the blinds, thinking that he can check-raise/trap opponents from those positions and is currently being paid off due to his image.

Although each hand is one to itself, we have all seen or felt that we have a 'connection' with a certain Dealer and perhaps this gives us some extra confidence to play slightly differently which our opponents don't adjust to or even pick up on.

I was really thinking that this Dealer somehow pitches the cards so that a certain seat can see some of them .. not setting the deck, which is extremely rare and almost a lost 'skill' due to auto-shufflers. GL

It seems to me that you started with the premise that there is something fishy going on, then looked for a deviation from correct procedure that might enable cheating. And good on you, you found one!

It also seems to me that it is vastly easier to have the floor remind dealers about correct wash procedure than to prove cheating by what must be a talented mechanic.

This. Making accusations of cheating is a big deal, and you better have some pretty strong evidence. Asking the floor, without naming names, to emphasize correct shuffling technique, as it has a few players seeing ghosts and feeling uncomfortable is not nearly as big an accusation and a perfectly legitimate comment. Floors would much rather nip this in the bud than deal with developing the reputation of being a shady room.

Second part guys, on the past i play at this casino summer of 2019 and report the bad procedure to another floor manager and he didnt do anything. Last month i return to live play and all the same.

Thanks for the advices, if i decide return to that casino im going to follow your advice:

" It also seems to me that it is vastly easier to have the floor remind dealers about correct wash procedure than to prove cheating by what must be a talented mechanic"

But for now im going to another casino playing at night, good games, some fish rich people (i live on 3d world country so its rare) , but ending sessions 3 am or more , with baggy eyes and tired all the time during day...

I wish i could return to 2007 and say to me dont leave your job for play poker...

1) Dealer is probably not rigging the deck, but it is possible.

2) Turning the deck towards them is very bad and needs to stop. Talk to the room manager if you can but don't bring up the bad reg. Just say that it's very bad habit they've developed and you won't be playing while those dealers are in the box until it is corrected.

Does he cut the deck? Is there a specific card that always shows up when the SB tables his hand?

Semi-pro player for decades, former dealer, and I worked with another dealer who was an EXPERT mechanic. He could do things with cards you wouldn't believe, and you'd never spot it.

The cameras, however, would. And I guarantee the dealer you're talking about is on camera A LOT.

He's not cheating; he's just a poorly trained or lazy dealer. During the wash, gather, and riffle, the cards should never leave the felt. In fact until they are picked up off the table, with the plastic "blinder" card underneath, they should never be able to be seen in any way.

To spot an actual card mechanic, the first step is to look for the grip. The "mechanic's grip" is unnatural looking, with an odd tilt to the wrist. You'd notice it right away in comparison to other, non-mechanic dealers. If you see this dealer looking particularly odd in the way he holds the cards, he might be manipulating. But if you can see that, the cameras already have and he's likely to either be gone, or under heavy scrutiny already.

As for the particular player you're describing, others have given the likely scenario. He's just foolishly increasing his range (as bad players will do) out of position. Because his range is increased, he's playing more cards and likely just catching lucky once in awhile with cards he shouldn't have even played. You're probably seeing this happen now and then (as it will) and confirmation bias is convincing you that it's "all the time". Happens to everyone.

Tell a floor manager that you're not happy with how he's exposing the cards on the wash and gather, and that he needs to be retrained. Emphasize the unhappy customer part; that will get their attention. But I'd worry less about the possibility of cheating, and more about finding ways to exploit that player's foolishly-expanded-range tendency in bad position.

Taking a single card off the top and putting on the bottom sounds more like an invitation to cheat rather than a good procedure. Washing the cards every hand is wasting time; bad for both players and the room.

As others have pointed out, if there are procedure violations during the deal it's likely just a lazy/bad dealer. The most likely way to get cheated by a dealer in poker is by overraking. People with the kind of skills to pull off cleanly setting decks aren't generally working in a legal low limit poker room.

You are supposed to pick the deck up after washing in order to quickly align them. However, you use a cut card to pick up the cards, not another card.

I have never seen/heard of this. The cut card is on top of the stub when all the dealing is finished and to the side of the deck while being shuffled (so you can do your one handed cut). On the bottom of the deck while you're dealing.

I'm actually having a difficult time trying to imagine how to pick up the washed deck with a cut card to square them. Surely you need to use both hands? The most practical way to square the deck is to bunc them up and face them towards the players with cards perpendicular to the felt.

Gather up the cards quickly after the wash, and then use your cut card to scoop up the deck. It’s really not that hard once you get the hang of it.

Sure it isn't hard to use the cut card to scoop up the washed deck, but what is the point?

1. Since the deck has just been washed the cards are not all aligned, some are at different angles so the cut card will not cover the faces of all of the cards as the dealer lines them up.

2. After the deck is washed it still needs to be shuffled so since the deck is in a pre-shuffled state, why do we care if the bottom card is exposed? The bottom card is going to change after a proper shuffling anyway.

3. You will then have to remove the cut card from the bottom of the deck in order to shuffle and riffle the deck. That is just an extra step in the deal.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, but using the cut card to scoop up the washed cards just seems to add extra steps to a shuffle without providing any real extra security.

Many years ago (maybe early 2000's???) when The Majestic Star was the premiere poker room in Northwest Indiana, a dealer was fired from the room for setting a deck for his player friend. Whenever the dealer would see two aces and two kings (or two queens) from the board/showdown cards of the previous hand, he would hand shuffle and set the deck so that next hand his friend would get aces and another player would get kings (or queens). Obviously they would get it all in pre with his friend being a big favorite.

I never heard how the dealer did it, but it shouldn't be that difficult since only 4 cards need to be set and then let probability do the rest. Even if only done once a day, it would be a huge boost to the long term win rate of his friend.

They were caught because they usually did this on the early morning shift when there were only a couple of tables open so the player pool was small and mostly regs so it was noticeable when one player was always cold decking other players ("Jeez Bob, you got me aces versus kings today, yesterday you got Walter, and the day before you got Tony. You are one lucky guy.) If the dealer worked swing when the player pool was much larger and they restricted themselves to only doing every few days, they might have never been caught.

Just like counting cards for BJ .. Folks get a little too into the scheme and open themselves up to exposure.

IMO an extreme talent that I've no clue how it would be done in front of a bunch of Regs with a cut card and all. Setting a deck based on where the 'friend' is in relation to the Button and then some other random Player getting two other cards ..

I did have some experience with a Dealer that somehow shuffled cards from the Showdown hands from the previous hand into the next hand's Board. It wasn't perfect, but I made some decisions anticipating that it could happen from time to time. It certainly wasn't being done on purpose, but it was as if the shuffle was somewhat predictable. GL

we caught a hanger sarge

what are the mechanics of this? would he just leave the kk/qq at the bottom and deal from the bottom to those 2 players?

This is what I was referring to. Like, sure I could do it.. but there's only downsides to doing it, so why would you want it to be policy? It'll be harder to see me manipulating the cards behind a cut card, heck it's hard enough to see it without one!

Using the cut card to gather up cards at the end of the hand isn't, as far as I know, about preventing the dealer from setting the deck. Some dealers have developed a habit of grabbing the last mucked cards and using them to gather the rest. This means those cards are on the bottom and someone in seat 5 can see what you had when you just bet him off the hand. If they get in the habit of using the cut card instead it's less likely mucked hands will be at the bottom and it will be harder to see them.

I've never worked in a room where it's policy to use the cut card like this but I know some exist. I always make a point of shoving hands into the middle of the muck rather than do it this way.

It’s moreso for when you’re about to hand shuffle and you don’t want people to track (or try to track) the position of the bottom card (like on a set up). I don’t think it matters much anyway if you are sufficiently good at shuffling.

Hmmm... Now I'm wondering how many of the chronic wash request players I know are actually riggies.

Gathering and aligning the cards on the felt from a wash is not only not difficult or time consuming, it's basically rote after the first hundred times you do it; I could do it in my sleep and never expose a single card, and I could be riffled and dealing within twenty seconds, every time...and I was no more than an average dealer. Lifting the cards off the felt for any reason in any way is just bad form. As for a wash between every hand, I suppose not every room requires it, but it's so simple and (for a dealer who deals hundreds of hands per night) really not that time consuming. I can't see the downside to it from either a player or house perspective, except that it perhaps costs a rake or two per hour. That's not much to "pay" for the extra security of a properly mixed deck.

BTW, did you know that statistically speaking, if one 52-card deck was shuffled every second, on one planet orbiting every known star in the universe, from the big bang until today, it would still take BILLIONS of years for any single shuffle to be repeated? Please don't ask me the actual math; I just remember that from having talked with people who DO know the actual math. In other words, no two shuffles of the cards has ever been or will ever be repeated, statistically speaking. Kinda cool.

It's because 52! is a really, really, really big number: 8e67. A new shuffle every second would mean it would take 9e62 days to exhaust, or 2e60 years. The probability of duplicating is a different calc, but... it's a huge number. The story I remember is that there are more permutations of a deck than there are atoms in the universe.

As an aside, doing a wash is fairly meaningless when you put the deck into a shuffler that then does a totally random shuffle anyway. As a player, I would certainly rather you not waste time doing it.

If you're hand shuffling, that is a different story. Wash away. 7 shuffles is generally thought of as enough to randomize the deck, but in my experience most dealers will only do 3-4, with a strip/box in the middle, when the shuffler is broken or if there was a chop and it's not ready yet.