New poker room opened in Sept .. They are still not happy with their choice of lighting and felt tones when talking about card contrast for the cameras.

There has to be a happy medium for ceiling height, eh? This room has about 24' ceilings I believe, seems excessive. GL

In my career of dealing poker for 10 years now, I have found cards missing (and also added) from the deck exactly twice.

One night at a room in Vegas I work for, I was setting up a table for a tournament. I grab the setup (chips, deck, down card, etc) and head to the table. I construct all of the chips and then take the two decks out of the deck box. When I get to the 2nd deck, I notice that a card is missing (can't remember which one). I call the floor over, tell him the deck is missing whatever card it was, and he got me the card to add to the deck. The tournament hadn't started yet, no hands had been played so it was no big deal. It had to have happened the previous time that deck was used (no idea how, when the tournament decks get suited manually).

Another time, dealing a private underground game in New York, the table decided to introduce a new setup into the game. The host tosses me a *sealed* box of Copag cards. Plastic still on, everything brand new. I open it up, take out the 1st deck, and it has 4 extra cards in it, all different cards. Most of us in the room are pretty shocked, having never seen this before. Then one player says, "Ah it's no big deal, factory error, I've seen it happen before." Another guy chimes in, "Yeah me too.. it happens, rarely, but I've seen it before too."

The wallet/player's card thing is a new concept to me. Never seen that happen before, but it makes total sense. I'll look like a wizard now (like the other poster) when this does inevitably happen again one day.

You'd have to be a real dummy to do this in a game that uses automatic shufflers. It'll get noticed immediately.

Routinely, automatic shufflers do sometimes report false positives of cards missing. So, I'll just stick the offending deck back into the machine and hand shuffle the deck I just used while the machine is reshuffling. By the time the machine is done shuffling, I'll have already pitched the players their hands. So again, it'll get noticed right away. If the machine reports again of missing cards (which it has a couple of times), I'll cut the deck a few times and run it through the machine again while the hand is still in progress. Almost always by this point, I'll get a greenlight. A couple of times I've had to count the deck after the hand was finished to find that the deck is not short at all. Sometimes it was a case where the deck was just in such bad shape that the shuffler couldn't handle it, other times it was the machine itself that needed maintenance done on it.

in every room and every dealer should after the hand is over spread the stub of the deck on the table so he and everyone can see the amount of cards left. at a full table it is real easy to fan whats left for a count. they used to do it in california but i dont know if they still do with the shufflers.

I always do this, however you can't really tell how many cards are leftover by looking at them if the game is holdem.

In 10-handed Omaha, however, it's only 4 cards left which should be something the dealer should notice if it's not correct.

a dealer can spread them and break them into groups of 5 in seconds. easy to see

or at the very least count the stub a couple times a down.

the primary job of a dealer is to protect the players. if he isnt doing that then he isnt doing his job.

If it's a table without automatic shufflers, I will count the stub.

If it does have an automatic shuffler, then this does that for me.

good on you dealer. i wish we had more like you around.

Every room should have a policy in place that says the dealer is required to count the stub at least once per down on a table without a shuffler. If you are playing at a table without a shuffler and never see a dealer count it, then either you just missed the count or maybe you should say something.