I was simply talking of them playing slow. I have lots of regular players who move at the speed of molasses and tank on every por.

It's 15 in PLO.

15 per half hour i assume u mean for plo

In my experience the fastest dealers shut all the action down. It goes check, check, check, chop. The dealers are pounding and pointing and any beginner is just checking out of fear. A dealer has to be able to deal to the table, not the table play to the dealer.

I agree that the 'spastic' dealers do press the game quite a bit. They have to be able to adjust to the table dynamic. If some goofball (like me) is telling a story in the middle of the hand then I have no issue with them reigning in the players in the hand to keep the action moving.

Trying to get 'max' hands (max tips) in per down is one thing, but pressing folks who are pretty much there to relax is another ... always looking for the happy medium. GL

I tracked this a while back over 30 hours and counted 1074 hands. This was at 9-max 2/5 500 cap with auto-shufflers. Our 5/10 plays much slower.

The data included breaks so the actual hands/hr was a little higher than 35.8/hr.

I actually timed a few hands at a live 1/2 nl game in a casino and they were mostly around a min and half a hand....so I would say 35 an hour is very very close to the average

15 per hour.

Also depends on the game. In my games, I'd be ecstatic to get 20. And, it also depends on the players cooperation, too. There are many slowmoving players out there.

Timing hands is a terrible way to count. 60/1.6 = 37, 60/1.5 = 40, 60/1.4 = 43. Unless you very accurately count a hand, you face very large errors in your hands/hr calculation. Rare but costly delays like the autoshuffler jamming add significant time.

Instead, you should count how long an orbit takes, and do that several times. At a full 10-handed table, 20 minutes per orbit equals 30 hands/hr.

I would say an average plo dealer should be able to get 25 hands per hour in PLO. 15 would be a dealer in super slow motion.

My experience is that it is somewhere between 35-40+ per hour depending on if the dealer needs a fill, etc.

It's between 40 and 45 with an auto shuffler and a fast dealer ($1 per hand makes him fast, $5 makes him slow). With hand shuffling good dealers can get up to 35 (and earn their hourly by their skills alone) while most other dealers are around 30+ per hour.

I realized why my 30HPH sounds low: I was basing it on the total time open vs the 'typical hour' where nothing happens. If you discount fills, rake box clearing, floor calls, that ******* who constantly tanks, buyins at the table, setup changes, etc on a 24h period 35-40 is easy for a random hour. Our float/cash buyin at the table procedures might slow things a bit down a bit over the course of a day, but I seriously doubt 35-40 is common for every hour any game is running.

in 1/2 on an average game after not dealing for 4 years i got 19 hands out in 30 mins. By Atlantic City standards i am average, by Vegas standards I am fast.

Ive counted for enough hours now where I play that Im calling it 40. Not only is the complete avg 41, but each individual day has been between 38-42.

Your skills , Which I am not questioning, are 1/2 of the equation on hands per hour. The players experience levels, attitudes, and random events combine to either help you maintain your high HPH rate or cut it back drastically. I think it is hard to get an "average number of HPH" because of so many variables.

I feel you might be cherrypicking your results. Did you never have a floor call? A fill? Tanking players? Players who are trying to make the game all about them? NEW players? Setup changes? Shuffler jams? A floor asking a player in a hand if he wants to move stakes/tables? A waitress interrupting a player? Sticky (yay humidity) cards? Are you only dealing mid/high stakes LHE?

19+ 'average' if you pick only your best downs, sure. I (and you too, I'm sure) have had plenty of 20+ downs but that is absolutely nowhere near average.

i said it was an average 1/2 table. I had a fill, (but our fills are very small we only keep 500 in the rack and it is a small rack) and we have very sticky cards. And my room is mostly tourists, some new to casino poker. My pitch was a little on the slow side as well. limit games u should be easily getting 20+ a down. 4/8 in a room that spreads 2/4 was where i used to get the most amount of hands in.

sounds right to me

Does anyone have a sense of how the number of players at a table affects the number of hands per hour?

Is a 9-handed table 10% faster than a 10-handed one? Is 5-handed twice as fast as 10?

My hunch is that it’s not a linear progression... That five-handed might only be 15-20% faster than 10. That’s just a hunch.

Part of the reason I ask is that it seems like casinos want to cram in as many players per table as possible, on the assumption that this is more profitable. Maybe it is. But I’m not certain.

If you had 15 tables of six players instead of 10 tables of nine players, the room would have to pay more dealers. But they might get a lot more hands in, and therefore rake more pots.

Has this been studied? Or is there another thread where this has been discussed?

If players are tipping $5 a hand, I am dealing as many hands per hour as I can. Of course, I can usually deal faster at a table tipping $1 per hand because it's filled with nits, but the average will not be $1 per hand because those $1 per hand regs only tip if they are up and if the pot was large enough.

Dealers live dreaming of tables where they make $5 a hand, or sometimes more. Just remember those tables are full of people who are laughing, having fun, drinking, and just generally slowing the game down. At those tables, it's better to strike a balance between moving the action and letting the players enjoy themselves.

BS. You do it to try to show how smart you are.

Players usually have more effect on the speed of the game than the dealer.

Yes. The limiting factor for HPH is the players. Whether it takes you 3 seconds or 4 seconds to pitch the cards (which is an observable difference) it won't change the pace the players set for the table.

VERY nice to see someone reopen an old thread rather than start a new one ...

As with most of poker .. it depends. IMO there are a lot less Showdowns the shorter the table. That would allow for more hands per hour.

The $1 v $5 point was about rake, not tips, I think. Which creates another factor which is Player driven. One could argue that since pots are 'raise and take it' the rake may actually decrease even though there are more hands per hour.

Whereas if you have a crazy 70 VPIP Player (like me) at a 1/2 table, you will see an increase in rake since it's generally pushing $30 before the Flop. There was a time when I had a few Players convinced that a room was paying me to play this way to generate rake!

Obv with the influence of PLO/mixed games you now have another factor influencing all the stats.

When I was first playing PLO I was pissed when I had a table break due to one Player taking 'forever' to make decisions. Three of the 'Nit-Regs' got upset that we weren't getting any hands in and called it a night. Why was I upset? The drunk was a whale and had already dumped chips into the game ... whilst showing us the wad of bills he had 'available' for each rebuy. The guy wins one 3-way all-in and the Players want to take off!

The point being .. make sure the stats you're looking at fit the information you're trying to gather. I would much rather play less hands per hour if there's way more chips available per hand. Yes, poker is a long journey. But I'm just saying that there is a quality over quantity factor that shouldn't be ignored. GL