Just sat down at a table and rolled my eyes when I saw the dealer. She is new and was hired recently when the poker room reopened a few months ago. Supposedly working in casinos for 15+ years and was a blackjack dealer or something. Anyways, reason I don't like this dealer very much is she repeatedly makes mistakes with pots, miscounting bets and giving incorrect change. Several occasions pushed the pot to the wrong person before taking it back, taking forever to both count the chip well when sitting down and killing hands at showdown.

I was astonished to see that this dealer did something that I had never even considered possible. 2 players are heads up against each other, seat 5 and 9. The flop comes and each bet ~$15. The turn card comes and the seat 5 player bets another $15. Out of nowhere, the dealer then mucks the entire board thinking that nobody else had cards. The seat 9 had built a "great wall of china" with his chips and had been using it to block his cards while reading them. Everyone at the table is in disbelief, the floor is called over, and the ruling is that each player will split the pot minus the $15 that seat 5 just bet.

I figured the ruling should have been just retrieve the cards from the muck and continue the hand, since it could be easily verified by the cameras. Anyways, has anyone ever seen this happen before? Clearly this dealer has some sort of short term memory issue going on. The dealer actually had the nerve to ask seat 9 to shift his chips to the right side of his space so she could see his cards and he refused LOL

Had the nerve to ask??????????????????

refused LOL ????????????

I know it's my fault for not properly following the action but I've several times acted out of turn because some seat has built a wall around his/her cards and they are not visible to the entire table.

It's player 9 showing a lot of nerve by not keeping his/her hand visible.

If I was the floor I would have at least considered declaring the dude’s hand dead for hiding his cards.

Nah not really but I think you’re being too hard on her. I fail to see how a slow dealer could completely muck the board without someone saying anything. I think the floor made an alright decision to not deal with the bullshit of reconstructing everything.

TDA, Rule 25 C:
"Players must keep live hands in plain view at all times."
https://www.pokertda.com/view-poker-tda-rules/

Yea, I know, these are tourney rules, you're playing cash, yada yada, whatever. Seat 9 is an ass, and also the root cause of the problem.

If we go by tda rules it seems it would be possible, given we know all the board cards, to completely reassemble the board, mix all the remaining dead cards together, and either replace the two burns or simply burn and deal out the river card. If the stub is still together, you can simply replace two cards from the muck and either reshuffle the stub if order is not maintained or deal the true river if it has been. I see no problem with chopping the pot if both players agree though. And a stern warning to seat 9 who was instructed to keep his cards visible but did not.

Do you think that's helpful in any way? Would you like to have people roll their eyes at you when they see you at your place of work?

Your cards have to be clearly visible at all times. That's a very basic rule to ensure no funny business is going on. Hiding your cards behind your chips is against the rules.

In this situation the floor should probably ask the dealer if she thought that player 9 was hiding his cards on purpose. In that case I'd be OK with declaring his hand dead and awarding the pot to the other player. Otherwise splitting up the pot seems fine. Stopping the game for ages to go to the cameras in a pretty small pot seems unreasonable to the other players at the table.

The floor should be called over immediately whenever a player refuses a request to follow the rules. This situation is pretty simple. Floor will tell the player to keep his cards where the dealer can see them at all times or rack up and leave.

To those saying hopping the pot is ok since the pot is small, when does the pot get large enough? Just do it right cameras may not even be required. If table and dealer can state the board with no objections and the floor finds all those cards in the muck then just put it back. If required use the cameras. This should not take that long.

If you don’t want to do it really right just declare everything dead and unwind all the action and start over. Just splitting the pot could be used as collusion to protect or help a player.

If 9 is hiding his cards (not what I suspect is happening) that needs to be addressed. Cards need to remain visible. But if he is only pulling the cards back behind the “wall” to look at them then the dealer needs to improve her skills. It sounds like she may need this anyway

She probably doesn't like you either for rolling your eyes when you see her push in. New dealers do make mistakes, just like you probably did when starting a new job. But if that's all it takes for you to not like someone, I can imagine how much you might not like other players who are better than you, beat you in a hand, or even if you were in this hand. Give new dealers some slack because I've had dealers tell me, after helping them correct mistakes when they're brand new, "That was the most nervous day in my life, thank you for helping me get through it", etc.

/r

I don't mind the ruling as long as the players didn't have a problem with it so everyone can move on instead of sitting there for 15 min waiting on surveillance.

The OP reads like parody written by a dealer who is fed up with misplaced blame from players.

When one of the players involved objects to chopping it up.

So it is ok for two players to raise out the rest of the table and then chop the pot between them? Just need to have the dealer muck the board.

Or how about P1 and P2 are in a pot. P1 bets or raises more than P2 really wants to call so P2 has the dealer muck/foul the board. Now we chop.

Not saying either of these happened or even woul happen frequently. But certainly possible and unfair to some or all of the rest of the table. Why not just either make the board right (which won’t be that hard) or void the entire hand, refund all monies and start over.

If the dealer colludes with two players to rob a game then you call law enforcement.

This.

I have no issue with voiding the hand and refunding everyone. And if the players want to continue with the hand I have no issue with reconstructing the board even if that involves going to the tape. But it didn’t sound like anyone objected. Not the two players in the hand not anyone who put money in the pot preflop.

Why make a big deal of a minor issue that nobody seems to really care about? Just deal the next hand..

The problem with collusion is collusion, not chopping up pots. It seems from OP that the players are heads up— they’re basically just chopping their own money. No collusion to be found here.

I would go so far as to say that chopping up the pot is fine so long as every single player at the table is fine with it, not just those in the pot. It seemed like everyone was fine with it except for OP, and if they spoke up about it then they should probably do things the right way.

I wanted to go down that path since they are heads up but no preflop info was provided. Is the blind against blind or is this some kind of odd six bet preflop hand where these two are now chopping up significant dead monies? I suspect blind on blind or something close to that but the OP doesn’t contain that info.

Also agree that if we are going the chop pot path everyone in the hand, not just those who put in money, must be ok with it. But these ‘all players agree’ situations always have the concern of coercion. If any one person does have an issue it might be uncomfortable for them to voice their concern without looking like a d*ck or upsetting others at the table. Too often they will just bite their tongue to go along to get along which isn’t the right thing.

Dunno how this isn't just put the board back out and go from there.

Has my first four card flip rolling the other day.

One of the rio dealers whose decent did bring up she doesn't love players trashing dealers, which is obviously fair, but at the same time it's hard to talk about when there is no dealer around if it's something like "I won't play big O because the dealers are bad".

Had this happen at the Rio during a WSOP deep stack tournament. Dealer just scooped up the board on the turn. Fortunately he didn't mix the cards from the remaining deck together with the muck prior to the players stopping him so he was able to put the board back out and continue with the hand.

Had a dealer do this but he managed to drop the deck and mix it with the muck as well pretty quickly so hand was totally fouled. They refunded the blinds/anyone who put money in instead of chopping. My issue is dealer wasn’t really taught to do anything better (drop the deck as the last thing you do) or pulled from the box and they just kinda moved on like it was normal.

What do you believe the proper response from the dealer should have been?

In the big game they’re usually pulled from the box after that unless it’s like the rio where this happens every down. I mean I’d at least remind the dealer the order he’s supposed to do things (drop the deck last) during the down and talk to him on break about things. Wasn’t the only mistake the guy made obviously was undertrained/prepared.