How would you feel about this trend if it were your regular poker room?

My room has started "promoting" the worst and slowest dealers to floor managers. It has happened 3 times so far.

It's better for these dealers because, being the worst and slowest, they received the least tips and their new fixed hourly without tips is higher. As a regular player, initially it seems good (if they aren't going to just get canned obviously...but apparently they're short on floor staff) since it keeps the best and fastest dealers in the box and keeps the worst out. But I wouldn't trust these new floors to make a correct ruling on even the simplest of issues.

What would be your level of concern?

There are only two reasons I can imagine a good dealer taking a "promotion" to floor:

1) it's the only way to get FT w/benefits, often with a much more predictable schedule, and that works better for them

2) they're aging or have some sort of injury that makes the physical aspect of the work difficult

Flooring and dealing are very different skillsets. I've known plenty of ****ty dealers that were good floors and vice versa. But if they weren't just ****ty dealers, just rude and lazy or something they're probably not going to change.

It's just one of those fields where the "workers" can earn more money than "management", and thus you much less frequently attract the most skilled workers that are good at their job when you promote from within. I work at a job that is similar (not a casino). The full time workers that have been there for a long period of time and are the most experienced make upwards of double what supervisors make. So when promoting from within they attract the younger employees who are still fairly new at the job, as they're just happy to be moving into a full time position with benefits.

What about rooms where floors are allowed to accept tips?

I’m pretty sure floor >>> dealer in almost every aspect at Bellagio back in the day where players had to tip $5-25 to get the seat they wanted and another green chip would get you the poker room rate without actually having to play 6+ hours a day.

There are rooms where dealers are required to give supervisors a percentage of their tips, in those rooms the floors can make good money. In my room they can't take tips of any kind and apart from the two main guys running the room, the full time floors make significantly less than I do as a dealer. We have an opening right now but I only know of one dealer who expressed an interest and he's not our best. We have dealers who came here with ambitions to move into management but changed their minds when they found out what the pay and hours would be.

First question ... In what way are they the worst Dealers?

I can deal with 'bad' Floors since a Player's interaction with them can be pretty limited and a reg should know how to work his own room's system ... except for that very important time, a ruling.

#1 priority for me in a room is consistency in all aspects of the operation. Starting with lists all the way through rulings.

It would not surprise me that management might suggest that an employee take a look at a different position. There are plenty of tactics that could be involved with losing seniority and opening up someone to be more 'fire-able' since some Dealers are in unions.

But if someone just isn't a very good employee then putting them in a spotlight position doesn't seem to be a good approach ... On the flip side, I'm all for letting someone try to find themselves rather than going to the outside and starting fresh. GL

It is totally possible that somebody who is not a top dealer due to physical problems like Eyesight , coordination , or personality problems , could actually do OK as a floor making occasional situation descisions from a position of authority.

some of the worst borgata dealers become floors-and it's exactly for the reason you mentioned.
the good dealers make more in tips dealing, the bad dealers make more flooring.

We also have some of our best (and some of the fastest) dealers flooring, so it's not just that.

The ones who are slow but not bad at the rules, I'm happy to see them floor. Anybody who's actually bad at the game, I don't want them in either position.

To answer your question, they were the worst dealers on staff due to being slow (like 4-5 hands per down slow), not being able to calculate the math involved when splitting pots, making a large number of mistakes in the box (like pre-exposed board cards), needing players to point out the winning hand at showdown often, not good at managing the table, etc. Some, but not all, had a vibe of just not caring enough about doing a good job.

They are generally friendly floors, but I've seen them make multiple bad rulings already (I wasn't involved with any yet thankfully), which is where the concern would arise.

I was just curious on others' thoughts on the tradeoff of having a floor manager you cannot count on to make a correct ruling when needed, and whether this happened in other rooms. My inital thought was that I'd rather have the limited interaction with them as floors, than see them in the box a couple of times per night, which seems to be the consensus here as well.

Peter Principle in action.

3. they've been dealing for years & they're burned out but they'd rather stay in poker than leave the industry altogether.

4. they have aspirations of moving up to shift manager or room manager one day.

I prefer Dilbert principle since they were never competent.

Unless they're making horrible floor decisions, it's probably good for everyone.

If floors and dealers require different skills, one should not "promote" one to another, they should be parallel tracks.

People with good floor skills should be encouraged to apply for open floor positions - whether they are good or bad dealers. Bad dealers should not be dealers, whether they have good floor skills (and get a lateral transfer to the floor track) or not (and get terminated).

Not a simple question. There are different levels of bad dealer and bad floor. Guess it depends on how bad. The bad dealer probably lowers your win rate by slowing down the game/making you pay more attention to them. The bad floor can lower your winrate by making a bad ruling and it being a must bigger/faster loss.

Extreme example, but 2/5 game probably 700 in pot after flop of 754 with 500 each behind. Turn is 5x. Oop player flips 66 before any action happens. Bad floor is called over and tries to rule to chop the pot before the table erupts at him. (Other player had 77. 66 is massive station and never folding). Bad floor comes back with good floor and action continues, call station gets stacked.

In my room, pay is roughly the same. In fact, new floor people have to try really hard just to negotiate a rate of pay that allows them to take home the same hourly rate they were making as dealers.

Pay and promotion are separate.

It's not uncommon for people in positions with seniority-based pay to make less when they get promoted - they start their new position with zero seniority.

Promotion, if done right, means you're using the same skills. The Peter Principle exists because people don't do it right - they take the person with the best sales skills and "promote" them into a managerial position that requires minimal sales and a ton of accounting. Boom, the department goes to ****.

Dealers have a customer service job; I'm not so sure floors do. Floors need to be organized and set schedules; I don't think dealers do. I'm honestly not sure how much of the skills overlap, but if it's not much, I'd fire the terrible dealer regardless of the floor position and hire the best floor regardless of whether they were a terrible dealer, good dealer, or had no dealing experience.

Some dealers move up because they like the responsibility and think they are well suited to it. It does come with status, as well. People treat you differently when you wear a suit and non-poker people are more impressed when you say you're a supervisor than they do when you say you're a dealer. Even if the pay is a little lower this might make it worth it along with less wear and tear on your upper body.

Flooring is definitely a customer service job! There may be fewer interactions but they tend to be more complex. You're being pulled in all different directions and get to hear all of the complaints.

100% customer service job, a good floor can resolve a complaint where a bad one will see it escalate to security getting called.

If people generally agree that good dealers make good floors and bad dealers make bad floors, I won't disagree.

I'm just pointing out that if there's not a lot of correlation between the skills, people shouldn't use words like "promote" or "move up," and also shouldn't be surprised if a bad dealer ends up making a great floor (or vice versa).

All jobs are sales jobs and all jobs are customer service jobs. Sometimes what you are selling and or who the customers are may not be obvious. Identifying those are key to succeeding.

I guess but directly dealing with customers as the most immediately available supervisor is more customer servicey than most jobs.

My first reaction would be relief that they aren't dealing anymore.

The real question is how they are at holding themselves and their employees (dealers) accountable when mistakes are made. I can't stand Floors who do the wrong thing knowingly in order to protect dealers. On the other hand I have enormous respect for Floors who research the rules even after they have made a decision.

Floors have a lot of different responsibilities than dealers do and with proper training and role models can succeed even if they are bad at first. The same can't be said about dealers. Bad dealers tend to stay bad dealers. Though at FW when dealers started keeping their own tips there were a few dealers who went from bad to good overnight. Not that many but still.

Also, management might purge the bad Floors eventually.