If I make a mistake I apologize..... but sometimes players believe I made a mistake when I do not believe I have done so.

This dealer may fell his muck was exactly where it was suppued to be and that the player was the one who caused the problem.

We have only heard the OP's account.

I wish!!!

That's how YOU learned to protect your hand, and that's how I learned, as well. But in my considerable experience, over 99% of players who lost a hand because they didn't protect it, learned absolutely nothing from the experience, because poker players tend to be far more self-centered than GenPop, and their egos won't let them take responsibility for a failure when they have a chance to scapegoat someone else.

Wanna make a bet? Next time you see someone lose an unprotected hand, I'll bet they don't learn anything! The very next hand they play, the cards will lie there just as unprotected.

Now, I'm a dealer. I have an agenda here, and that is, "Make My Job EASIER". If these folks will protect their cards, then I'll never have to call the floor for this; never have a player get upset by this; and never have to listen to all of you who are now adding me to their "I'm Not Tipping That Dealer" lists.

Because I know I have years of dealing still ahead of me, which means I'm going to make a ton of mistakes in that time. I'm not looking to hold you responsible for my mistakes--I just want you to do the ABSOLUTE MINIMUM to mitigate--hell, totally avoid!--the damage caused by common mistakes.

Now, fast-forward to OP:

PLAYER: you fouled my hand!

DEALER: I'm very sorry.

PLAYER: That doesn't help me at all! What are you going to DO about it?

See? The player has learned nothing about protecting his hand--but now he has an idea that the dealer is taking some responsibility for this, and he wants compensation. He wants to be made whole, by the person he perceives as the one who made him less-than-whole.

As long as he can blame someone else, he will never change his behavior. He will never protect his cards. He will never take a SHRED of responsibility for when it happens again--and it will! Every time this happens, other players share the memories of the time they "got screwed" this way...and many of these players have MULTIPLE stories! It is THESE players who keep me from apologizing in this spot.

As long as the players think all this is the dealer's fault, they won't learn from this the way you and i did a long time ago--and my job will never get any easier.

Let me be clear, I'm not against ALL apologies. I was only speaking about this specific scenario, the unprotected cards thing.

Why, just last night I apologized to a player when I wasn't wrong, rather than argue with him:

(sidetrack story, has nothing to do with this thread, skip the rest of this post if you like)

In our room, you have to post a BB to get a hand. A new player is called to the game. He is standing behind his chair. He is UTG+2, and almost nobody at these stakes posts-in in this spot...but I'll ask him any way, of course.

As I gather the cards to start the next hand, he steps away from the table to speak to someone. Clearly, he's going to wait for his BB, like everyone else in this spot would do.

He returns to the table as I finish pitching, and he's terribly upset. "Why didn't you deal me in?"

"I had no idea you wanted a hand," I replied innocently.

That just made him madder. "Why *wouldn't* I want a hand?", he demanded.

Rather than hitting him with Shakespeare's "Let me count the ways....", I instead replied, "I apologize for the misunderstanding."

It wasn't EASY to say that. I really wanted to blast the guy, the way he was blasting me. But whatevs. It defused this situation, he calmed down and shut up.

(When he started talking again, we learned he was fresh from busting out of the daily tournament, due to what he felt was an extreme bad beat. I wasn't listening to the details, they didn't matter, but at least I now knew I was dealing with a pre-frustrated person.)

So don't think I'm anti-apology. I can apologize to this guy, because he won't take it as, "Good, now that dealer OWES me something!"

I agree. It's the horseshoe in council bluffs, ia (omaha) a WSOP circuit stop.

YTF, I think the mistake here is that you are saying that stupid people don't learn to protect their hands if the dealer apologizes, when actually those stupid people won't learn to protect their hands even if the dealer doesn't apologize. Nothing at all will make them learn.

If an apology makes them seek compensation that is a separate issue.

I understand how you can take that as my meaning, which means I failed to make myself clear:

The only way to change his behavior to is to make him realize this is his responsibility. Apologizing, or taking some responsibility off of him, defeats that purpose.

It is not a separate issue. I can't apologize and convince him it's his job to protect his hand, not mine. That sends a contradictory message, which is no way to get someone to change.

You apologize because you ****ed up. That’s it. Message balancing does not play a factor.

Here, I will help out. The dealer shouldn't apologize for mucking unprotected cards because that is what dealers do. We often tell players to protect their hand without being clear who or what we are protecting it from; protect your hand from the dealer. Of course that doesn't appear to be quite what happened in the OP.

The whole attitude of "I'm not apologizing if the player won't learn anything" is baffling.

That's a fundamental aspect of customer service jobs. You're going to be apologizing to a lot of ungrateful people.

This is an area the casino people always get wrong about poker. Obviously poker is a customer service job, but at the same time the players are competing against each other, so you can't adopt "the guest is always right" as that can appear to be favoring one player over another. Ideally the dealer should observe a player not protecting his cards an teach him how to protect his hand prior to it getting mucked.

This sort of thing can be mitigated by "I'm sorry that happened, here is what you can do to prevent it in the future." If the casino (or the dealer) says "that was my fault", the next thing out of the player's mouth will be "make it right" and that isn't going to happen because the player is at fault.

The dealer should've apologised.

The same line of reasoning that says "I'm scared to apologise in case the player doesn't learn their lesson" should cause the player to say "I'm scared to apologise in case the dealer doesn't learn his lesson!"

Both the player and dealer are at fault here and both owe the other person an apology. If the player protected their hand then this would never have happened, but at the same time, if the dealer was cautious about the muck pile, then this also would never have happened, so both the player and the dealer are equally responsible.

Also, the player has lost far more than the dealer here, so the player has more right to be frustrated than the dealer does. What does the dealer lose when he makes a mistake? He gets told not to do it again? The player has lost 200 dollars. How would you feel, as a dealer, if each time you made a mistake, you had $200 deducted from your pay? You should apologise not only for your mistake, but also out of sympathy for the damage caused.

Here's how the conversation could play out:
Dealer: "Unfortunately, your hand is irretrievable, so we have to muck it"
Player: "That's not fair! I was going to win a $200 pot"
Dealer: "I understand that sir, and I am very sorry about that."
Player: "Can we call the floor?"
*Floor confirms ruling*
Player: "I just think I've been hard done by. This cost me 200 dollars. Can you comp me?"
Floor: "Sorry sir, but we can't comp you, since this was partially your fault. This is why it's extremely important to protect your cards. Put a chip on top of your cards at all times whilst you're in a hand. We only comp players when the fault is solely the dealers, not when the player is also at fault. Let this be a lesson for everyone."
Player: "I understand. Thank you."

A conversation like that could solve everyone's problems.

In the future there are not only going to be predatory mucks, they will kill anything they touch.

Next thread will be "dealer screws up, attempts to kill player".

The players competing against one another is totally irrelevant.

The dealer is not saying who is right, the dealer is speaking up when they know they are wrong.

And let's be clear - this whole "protect your hand" thing is really a smokescreen. It was the dealer who moved cards into the player's hand. The OP doesn't say that the player's hand was unprotected, it says the dealer told the player to protect his hand. For all we know the player had a chip on it (as 90% of players do and is considered reasonably well protected) and dealer still somehow jammed a card in there.

The dealer is in the wrong and should apologize. The player may also be in the wrong, but that doesn't make the dealer less wrong.

You guys are all nuts.

While I agree IN MOST CASES with the poster who wrote that rarely is anything the fault of just one person, this is not one of those cases.

"It is the responsibility of the player to protect his hand." Period. Don't say, "Yeah, but...", because in this particular case, there is no but!

When you walk into a house of mirrors, you agree ahead of time, "If I break my nose on one of these mirrors, it's nobody's fault but mine, I should have kept my hands out in front of me." This is the same thing. Noses are GOING to be broken in this game. Sure, in this game, sometimes the mirrors come at you when you're not looking--but again, you agreed when you sat down that if it happens, it's nobody's fault but your own. you knew, going in, that the mirrors come at you sometimes.

I need everyone ITT to stop pretending they didn't know that cards sometimes land on the hand of the guy who sits in the 1-seat. We ALL know that. And the only way we can run this game, is if we all agree that no one else is responsible when this happens, because ONLY *YOU* CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES!

(And protecting yourself is SO SIMPLE, takes NO EFFORT AT ALL. I cannot believe you guys want to argue this.)

I want to be sure here: You read your house of mirrors analogy back to yourself and genuinely thought "this is honest and apt"? Because I doubt anyone here would expect the mirrors to be pushed into us.

What you are suggesting is more like if you were to negligently hit a bicyclist with your car and withheld an apology out of concern that he might not learn to wear a helmet.

The player is responsible, or more correctly he is accountable.

But the dealer is at fault, at least mostly, at least in this case.

Both can be, and in this case are, true.

His hand wasn't protected. Simply placing a chip on it is not protecting it. If someone is able to get a card in there, it wasn't adequately protected.

No. I rushed that one.

How about, the guy in the front row of a Gallagher show, who refuses to wear his poncho?

By that definition, a hand is almost never protected. Even if you have your right/left hands on your cards with your pinkie touching the felt, all it takes is enough force by the dealer’s predatory muck to get there anywhere.

RR: I said get a guard dog. You got a Chihuahua? That's inadequate. He can brushed aside like he's not even there.

MADLEX: By that definition, no dog would be sufficient! A Doberman can be shot! Stabbed! Poisoned!

There is because it's not expected that the player should have to protect themselves against a predatory muck pile. It's also the dealer's fault here, it's not 100% on the player and the dealer should apologise like any normal human being would. If the player then chooses to make an issue of it, well it's what it is.

If that isn't protected, I'd like to see your definition of protected.

If the player chooses to make a proportionate amount of fuss, that's life.

If the player chooses to make a disproportionate amount of fuss, that's life in the customer service industry. That's why we have breakrooms and The Breakroom Thread, so dealers can plaster a smile on their face while undeservedly taking **** from customers and have a place to vent and scream into pillows.

Ultimately why the dealer should apologize is that if he doesn't I will call over the Floor and have him written up for his complete incompetence. And I won't give a **** if that causes him to get fired.

Why should the player not apologize for failing to protect his hand? Because he is the one paying the price for his failure to predict the dealer's incompetence.

Other than OP has anyone ever seen a dealer move the muck into the area a player should be keeping his cards? I know I never have seen that.

A hand is protected when a player places an object on his cards and actively guards the area around them. A single chip is never enough to place on the cards. I would place a stack on them and then watch for projectiles being thrown at them.