Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Rick
If the dealer apologizes and the player's hand is killed anyway then the player does learn that he has to protect his hand.
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by callipygian
Dealers should absolutely apologize for their role (even if partial) in a gigantic cluster**** because that's what human beings need to do to co-exist.
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!"