He told the floor, what else do you want him to do?

I deal the WSOP (One of the better dealers so I rarely do deepstacks or even the daily NL holdem bracelet events. Usually doing the mixed events and restarts). There are some phenomenal coworkers who are great dealers. Unfortunately, there are also those who are not only inexperienced (Which is ok) but worse, are unwilling to ever improve or correct their mistakes. They are fine with barely getting by in their effort and then blame the players and higher level staff for being too demanding. The WSOP needs bodies to fill the tables though so it takes a very egregious error to get fired.

Phil,

There are definitely some solid dealers in the mix — people that know what they’re doing, control the game, pay attention, and do so while being friendly but not intrusive. But you’re right that the quality is inconsistent.

There was one dealer in the Seniors event who made seven significant mistakes in a down, including not making correct change, not checking that there was an ante from each player, and not counting an all-in stack correctly.

Question: if I’m not in the hand, is it correct for me to call out the counting error? The guy whose stack it was was so busy celebrating that he wasn’t playing attention. I pointed it out politely and the dealer listened and figured it out and apologized. But I was a little uncomfortable making that observation in someone else’s pot.

If you see something wrong you gotta say something man. Only way to improve the situation bc noone else will do it.

I hear you. And that’s my inclination. But I hate giving away the information that I’m paying attention to all the details, as much of the time as I can.

Sorry, when you say she "fake flashed" them, with cute quotation marks, a reader might not understand she "really" flashed them while pretending to only "fake" flash them ..... especially when the same quotation marks are used for "my cards".

So, the first time "" mean that the words are not literal, but the second "" means the words are literal ?

your headphones have as much to do with this as your other comments about her other comments.

Regardless of his minor grammatical mistakes, the OP was entirely clear about what happened. And headphones don’t have a damn thing to do with it.

Not trolling, just have trouble making sense of what OP "really means" when he uses those air quotes in different contexts in the same post.

The dealer "did" or "did not" "fake' or "really" flash his cards.

The other guy "did" or "did not" accurately name the two cards OP had folded.

What do you think the floor did with an "explanation", that maybe included all the remarks the dealer either "made" or "did not make" but were included in the OP.

I took the OP to mean did fake flash, and did accurately name two cards ... which together sounds like a correct read and nothing more.

Play on.

I'm also generally easy-going at the table, but "air quotes" tilt the hell out of me in poker forums.

I’m actually a huge air-quote nit in my law practice. People use it as a replacement for text emphasis, which is in itself a sign of weak writing, and air quotes are almost invariably a double error. But I give all that a pass on poker forums.

Here, I read the OP to say that the dealer tried to pretend to flash cards, but messed up and actually did so, as evidenced by the adverse player correctly identifying the cards. In a low-stakes friendly home game, that’s fine. But in the WSOP? Sorry, give the dealer a gong and get them out of the box.

lol,@ the pass I get for bolding as a means of text emphasis.

Counselor, just because our headphone wearin' OP thinks he heard the adverse player correctly name "his cards", does not mean necessarily that "his cards" had actually been flashed, Our OP may have already had it in for the old lady dealer, based on the string of other remarks he was so eager to relate. Whatever the adverse player may have said, OP heard "his cards" named.

Even if OP's hearing, through his headphones, was accurate, consider also that adverse player may simply have made a correct read or a lucky guess, stated with certainty in order to tilt OP after folding to him.

(I personally believe the dealer quality in the low stakes cash games during the WSOP is so poor that I will play almost anywhere else in town.}

So basically WSOP is just a trashy product now and you can't trust dealers. Good to know.


Pretty sad when this is the most prestigious poker tourney series there is.

because he said "I saw your aces"

In a cash game, an argument can be made for letting it to go (Personally, I’d still say something if I note a mistake). In a tournament, absolutely not! You should always stop a potential error from happening, especially one involving chips. The size of a player’s stack can have an impact not only on a table but future events in a tournament that can impact the field. Ben Keeline won the Colossus after once being down to a single ante chip. What if he should have been out?

Every dealer, even the best, can make a counting mistake. If I happen to do so and a player politely corrects me, I’m grateful for the help. I was taught by one of the best dealers I know that the primary objective of a dealer is to protect the integrity of the game. Some are more worried about their pride than following that way of thinking though.

I don't think WSOP tournaments are a trashy product at all.

It's improving also.... at least they play the ME Final Table in July, instead of waiting to November.

I think WSOP low-stakes cash games however present an inferior service compared to a number of other rooms' offerings in town during the same time-frame, but that too may have changed since the last time I tried them.

Tough crowd here. Never having played the WSOP, I enjoy all of the war stories that get posted every year, including those recounting logistical and other problems that inevitably come from the world's largest annual festival of poker.

I absolutely adore the WSOP even despite the crappy chairs, inconsistent dealers, and resident smell of old carpet in the pavilion. I really do. There’s something mildly magical about having ten thousand poker obsessives all under the same roof at the same time.

The only time I’ve ever expressed any frustration with a dealer was last week. I was down to 36 in the 6000-runner seniors event and a dealer flipped a card on me on the open felt — no blind, no button, just a bad pitch. I was on a short stack and in shove mode. The flipped card was a king, replaced with a 3. Other card naturally a king as well. Pot went three ways to a showdown and I would have quadded up from 11 BB to 40 or so. I gave the dealer a dirty look.

I of course understand how that’s totally random and not causal in any way — but that could easily have been a $50K equity swing for me.

But if you would have lost the hand it's all good, right?

WSOP has some of the best and worst dealers I've ever come across.

I totally get that it’s a results-oriented analysis, which I entirely reject intellectually. In that moment, it was really irritating, as I expect most people could understand.

And no: if KK was a loser in that spot, I’d still have happily jammed it in pre and been okay with the result.

Am I imperfect for feeling karmic frustration while grinding a small stack against an easy field with a ****-ton of money on the line and seeing an unforced error from a dealer vaporize five figures of equity? Yes, guilty as charged.

I did catch up to he dealer when he pushed and apologized for the dirty look. He said he totally understood the frustration and told me he’d simply ****ed up the pitch.

Good post
I'm beyond sick of bad dealers who don't even try

Last week I played PLO in a casino where it never runs
A few dealers had trouble with it which is understandable

But those who did were asking for help to try and learn and one even came out with a pen and paper to ask how to figure out what the pot was using different example when his down was up

It was a very refreshing change

To be fair, bad dealers isn’t a new problem at the WSOP. I don’t think it’s worse today than 9 years ago when I first came to Vegas for the series.

The problem is that there aren’t enough experienced dealers for such a huge tournament series plus cash games and the WSOP is unwilling to spend extra money for additional training to improve the bunch of new dealers who just finished dealing school.

FWIW, I agree with everyone who posted that they can tolerate inexperienced dealers but not the ones that don’t even try.

Sounds to me like OP is bitter cuz he tried to get her number and she turned him down.

This is how I read it, too. It became clearer as the thread went along that the dealer actually flashed the cards. But I'll admit here that I was all ready to "troll" the OP, too.

Every year around this time of spring/summer, we are regaled with stories about dealer incompetence. However, most of them are honest mistakes made by inexperienced dealers – all but an inevitability given how big poker grew in the early 00s. This story isn't about a mere honest mistake, but rather about a dealer who stepped fairly far out of bounds.

OP, what was the response from the floor? Gzesh did ask this question and I'm also curious to know.

My experience has been the newbie/bad/straight outta WSOP dealer school dealers are put into lower buyin events, like mega satellites, daily's, Giant's, etc. My experience has been the higher buyin events generally you get more experienced qualified dealers.

But yea, sometimes playing the mega's, etc, can be pretty tilting dealer wise.

To be fair, I was not really interested in an answer to my question about the floor, by that point I was rhetorically "trolling" I guess. He said he told the floor, but could no bother to post the floor response, only his dealer incompetence complaint.

Whether the floor just shrugged or even gave him a $2500 lammer isn't important to me, I don't play there.