I've played in all of the above and more. Its actually sad how uncoordinated they all are with each other in reference to this specific rule. I very much dislike the ruling that anything that crosses over the line must stay, I also dislike the rule that you can't put out a single chip raise if you have a stack of chips that would indicate a call otherwise.

My point, is that while Gobbo is certainly stating facts it does suck that the guy is A. allowed to keep his highest value chips on the bottom of any stack, and B. to push this tower of chips into the middle and then peel off chips. This type of action should certainly always be done BEHIND THE LINE. Always. There seems to be absolutely no logical explanation for why anyone should have to put more chips than maybe what would be a few left over in his hand out in the middle and across the bet line. Absurd to believe otherwise in my opinion. Swish, you definitely had an argument if I'm reading what you said right especially if he was toying with the stack out in the middle of the pot before pulling back whatever he wasn't betting. Gobbo is also right in saying that anyone who can't wait for the player to complete his action before making your own should perhaps practice a little more patience in regards to "waiting your turn".


Nate--

While you make valid points indeed, they are also very typical themes of playing in a live environment. Everything you stated in your OP is standard b/s that comes with the territory. Is it right? Well, no. But players marking cards and speaking foreign languages for creating an edge vs others has been going on forever. So really you should only be mad at poker itself. Much like I was going over when addressing the bet line issue, until ALL casinos follow 1 international guide for ALL rules pertaining to players, tables, and floormenpeople you can't expect PokerStars to follow this non-existent strict set of rules. Across the States and world different casinos enforce/don't enforce different rules for some odd reason. So, its not entirely Pokerstars fault for hiring floors that are simply used to calling it as they have been told to call it based on their region, supervisor, casino policy or combination of all. If that makes any sense..

I do think it needs to change and that there could be something done about it. But its not like its Pokerstars fault outside, of course, of establishing every ruling and strict stance before the start of any tournament. This is something every major tournament series should do and even attempts but can't seem to get it right. The international guide that every casino follows should be established at some point.

All my mother f****** best,
--uFO

UFO--

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure I've made myself clear. The problem is ~not~ that PokerStars doesn't have a totally exhaustive set of rules; as you say, this would be almost impossible to implement, and might even be of limited utility.

The problem is just how little effort went into doing basic cardroom procedures the right way. You say that these problems simply come along with holding a tournament series, but look for example at the WSOP. Almost everything I described in my OP is much better at the WSOP than at the PCA (and also better than it was at the WSOP four years ago). Grossly understaffing the brush position is one obvious example of this. Just because something only happens once a year doesn't mean you can't hire more than two people to do the job.

The more serious problem, again, is that the floormen--quite apart from being mistaken about this or that rule, or making some isolated mistake--seemed staggeringly unaware of what a floorman is and does. Almost nobody showed any interest in gathering the relevant facts before making a ruling. Almost nobody showed any interest in protecting the security of the games, from major issues down to not flashing cards from decks still in play.

Again, I really don't like being this critical, but it appears that my point is not getting across. The floors were extremely well-behaved and friendly, and seemed very sincere in their desire to have the tournament go well for the players. I wish them all well, and am sure that poker could use more people like them. But they were not performing many of the most essential functions of floorpeople, and this needs to change.

I suspect that this problem comes from the top, and that PokerStars has been so successful in online poker that it has overlooked the challenges and procedures peculiar to live play. I'm hopeful that with PokerStars's general commitment to doing things the right way--and their enormous bankroll--they'll be able to hire some people who can institute the right kind of security and efficiency procedures.

All my best,

--Nate

now i would be saying this was a good thing! this is exactly the same policy stars has on their website. pros always talking in vamo languages and whatnot

Nate,

I don't know about all the issues but I can shed some light on the dealer part of it. Pokerstars has an agreement with whoever about having to have a certain number of Bahamian dealers and that they have to work so many shifts, etc,etc and this has been part of the PCA for w/e reason since they started down there.
Taking note that the dealers only deal poker 2 weeks of the year and w/o sounding racist mentioning that the culture as a whole is pretty damn lazy and you have the makings for a lot of mistakes and they really don't care. Now the floor situation should be totally different but there is only so much they can do. I am not saying this is acceptable because it's not but I don't think it's changing any time soon and these points come up yearly at this time.
I thought Stars would have picked a different locale after only a cpl of tries at Atlantis but I guess Atlantis makes the higher ups a pretty sweet deal.

btw i didnt reraise him when he put all those chips in the middle w/o saying anything, i asked the dealer to call the floor but she refused

lol, are you capable of standing up and yelling floor table XX ?

if you aren't, you shouldn't play live poker.

meh

Swish--

If the dealer won't call the floor, call him yourself. If he doesn't come, hold on to your cards and wait until one does. Get out of the mindset that the floor is a special privilege you might or might not have access to; you are playing for a lot of money and paying a lot of rake, and should expect at least minimal measures of protection. If we don't collectively realize this, the PCA will be overrun with cheats, if it isn't already.

That's if the problem is serious. If it's not, don't bother making a scene.

All my best,

--Nate

BanSooners--

Thanks very much for this information. Obviously there is a ton about the PCA organization that I don't know. FWIW, I had no serious problems with Bahamian dealers, although I don't recall many of them counting the stub or anything.

I seem not to be making myself clear. The problem:

(a) Is not a problem with the dealers nearly as much as with the floors, or perhaps with higher-ups;

(b) Is not really about isolated incidents, but rather about a near-total neglect of game security and procedure;

(c) Is very very serious.

All my best,

--Nate

We had someone not speaking english at our table? I dont remember this incident

uh ok, troll harder

I just got back from the PCA, and have a few reflections upon some of these items.

I think it was bizarre giving out the exact same decks as we would be playing with during the tournaments, but I noticed the opposite of Nate, especially in the ME, the dealer would count down the stub nearly every time the hand got to the river early in the tournament, and every time it got to the river late in day 1.

I only played for a full 3 days of tournaments and 2 partial days of tournaments so likely only about 40 hours of play, and the floor was called a total of 1 time for a clock as far as I can remember. The floors did seem to be overworked IME.

I was actually one of the alternates to get into the $1k/6max that was mentioned earlier, I actually arrived like 6-8 minutes before the start time, and was far back in the line, when they found 6 more dealers and opened 6 more tables and I got pushed to almost the front of the line. Mike Ward then made an announcement that they would attempt to get as many people in as alternates as they could, but that he refused to pull dealers off of cash games unless the game broke on it's own accord, because he felt that was a wrong. He announced they wouldn't be opening any more tables up and that only alternates would be getting in from then on, or people who were registered online through the PokerStars client. It was mentioned that registrations had been open for the tournament for a very long time online, and for a couple days live including from 8AM-4PM that day.

On day 2 of the $1k/6max I had noticed the previous night that the payouts were paying from 1-40, with 7th, 8th getting different amounts and 32 and 33 getting different amounts form each other. I then approached a floor person and asked if they were using an 8 max payout instead of a 6max payout for the tournament(this was about 10 minutes before the start of play on day 2). He verified with the person in charge of cashouts that they were indeed using the incorrect payout structure, and about 2 minutes before the start of play he approached me and said they were fixing the structure. They had it posted after just a few hands into day 2, the floor was very friendly in my experience and was appreciative of me bringing up my concerns.

Mike and Neil were both very friendly and very giving of their time when I approached them a few times randomly when I had small questions about the ME or side events.

My biggest problem of the entire PCA were the tables used in the back of the room. I never once had an issue with the tables closest to the entrance, but my main event table was almost up against the TV stage, and the rail of the table kept eating cards. If the dealer pitched with any force and it wasn't stopped by chips or a player, it would slide underneath the rail. The rails on these tables were very cushiony and taller than the other tables in the room. I would recommend they either stop using these tables, or figure out a way to tighten the rails down farther so cards/chips can't go underneath.

These are the only things I can remember for now, but if I think of others I will post them.

I witnessed a player say all in and flip his bounty chip into the pot to signal it, then place his two cards in between his two stacks against the rail. Then he stands up behind his seat and the dealer grabs his cards and throws them into the muck. (LOL) The floor was called over and they decided to take his whole stack and that his hand was dead as well even though he could tell them the exact two cards in the muck. While this is the right ruling I just found it so lol that the dealer was so ridiculously brain dead to do something like this and was literally smiling as the floor was making their ruling

4ToedStatue--

If the player can identify the two cards in the muck, and can tell before looking at them which cards they are, including suits, then I'm pretty sure that's a horrible decision.

And if the dealer was smiling as the ruling was made, I might attribute the situation to something other than his being "brain-dead."

All my best,

--Nate

JohnFR--

Many thanks for adding your input. I'm glad that your experiences with the dealers re: stub-counting were different from mine. I said in the OP that the dealers were a bright spot, except for some problems that arose insofar as they were working in a badly run room.

There are some questions here about how exactly Stars should handle situations about tournament registration and overflow. I'm hesitant to say anything about this because (a) I don't know a heck of a lot about it, and (b) it's rather different from the main issue of this thread, which is not about the specific issues Stars faces running a particular sort of tournament series but is rather about the problems that arise when the basic infrastructure of a cardroom is not in place.

I'm also glad that you found the staff as friendly as I did. I'll heartily agree that good demeanor and politeness are very strong points of the PCA staff.

All my best,

--Nate

Nate
I think you have identified a common problem, not a PCA problem, you just didn't enumerate what it was. In most poker rooms, making decisions is a very small part of the floor's job. The casino is concerned with seating players, getting chips to the tables etc. Making good decisions is barely on the radar in some casinos. This shouldn't be surprising since there are poker rooms out there (think south and midwest) that open without a single experienced person on staff.

Back to the PCA, where should they get their floorstaff? Most of the good floor people have jobs. They can get people down there, but their costs would go up exponentially to get really experienced floors there. Just to clarify, I am not commenting on specific floors there, just an observation about the state of the industry. I will use myself as an example, I don't know if I would be able to go if they offered me double my normal salary; my room still has to be managed and it is hard for me to take a day off, let alone a couple of weeks.

edit to add: Friendliness is often what poker staff is hired on. Again I don't know about the specifics of the PCA, but friendliness wins out over competence because often the people hiring poker staff lack the expertise to determine if a person is competent to make floor decisions.

No reply from any stars reps yet?...

I'm definitely not the most savvy live player but I do always like to get a clarification of how the betting line works whenever I go to a different casino to play, and I've basically stopped assuming that dealers and floors will try to give a somewhat fair and consistent enforcement of these rules.

RR--

Many thanks. I was hoping you'd show up in this thread.

I suppose I've been comparing the PCA to the WSOP. Whatever the WSOP's problems might be, the floors there have been pretty reasonable the last few years. I'm sure that Harrah's has many more resources for getting staff to the Rio than Stars does getting people to the Bahamas, though.

I was hoping that this was a problem that Stars could go some way toward solving with a bit of work and a pile of money. I suppose that's not necessarily the case (except that there's no excuse for tables having 3 seats stay open for half an hour when there's a list 20 people long).

All my best,

--Nate

I'm just pissed that pokerstars seemed to be directly assisting players in running private games in the poker room and allowing/helping them manipulate the the lists so that only players they wanted (fish) got into the game

whats the point of me sending a ******** of money for cash games if i can't get above 25-50 without blowing someone?

FatalError--

Also, if you're famous enough, it's OK for someone to just give you a deck of cards so that player X can deal some random game to players Y and Z on one end of an unused table on the high side. That's really good for game security.

All my best,

--Nate

All--

Here is a Brick and Mortar thread about some PCA floor decisions.

All my best,

--Nate

nate is the best poster on 2+2

I thought of that too. And if they don't like computers it seems like there are other similar things they could do. For example make a big deck of about 200 small cards and shuffle in aces or paint cards for the bounties. The deck is shuffled and placed on its own on a table. When someone busts out he goes to the table and takes the top card from the deck, and that indicates his bounty.