Quote:
Originally Posted by BDHarrison
I am uncomfortable with the idea of encouraging dealers to bend the rules in favor of fun players.
There is a line - perhaps a fine one - between allowing something and encouraging something.
Let's take the "mandatory" straddle. It's something that the dealer can't enforce, but in every game I've played, I've never seen a serious problem with the players agreeing to a mandatory straddle and when people join the game ask them to wait until a certain orbit is complete if they don't want to participate. They can't forbid someone from joining and a few times people have said the equivalent of "**** you all I'm joining anyway and not straddling" in which case typically we just wait for them to lobby (because of course people who do this lobby a lot) and remember that Seats 3-5 owe a straddle and finish off the orbit.
Nothing enforced outside of social pressure. And if Seat 5 welches, that's fine, we eat the loss and next time we agree to a round of straddles wr exclude him.
The house doesn't need to encourage this, it just needs to not actively discourage it.
Like with the language issue in the OP, the dealer's job is to remind people they have to speak English. The dealer doesn't need to call the floor - they can simply remind the players every hand to speak English and wait for someone to complain further. Or, at a card table, anonymous voting is super simple, hust deal a red card and a black card to every player, they pitch a red card forward if they vote call the floor and a black card to look the other way. If anyone pitches a red card then the floor gets called.
Dealer is way out of line for threatening the players directly. Dealer has no authority to kick people out.