Bobby's Breakroom - for gaming employee chatter + YTF appreciation. See restrictions in Post #1

Credit to one of our tourney regs who recently came up with this: there was a big hand in which he shoved the flop and his opponent tank folded. The reg said, "Give the dealer $5 and I'll show you." (It was a $25 bounty tourney, so a lot of players had $5 chips from collected bounties.) I got $5, the reg showed, and hopefully a new trend was born. It happened again about 10 minutes later, and everyone was having fun with it. I actually used it myself while playing cash the other day. I 4-bet shoved aces, old guy folded his queens, I showed by (obvious) hand, and the dealer got double tipped. It's a beautiful thing.

Most dealers have given so much change to players in the corner seats that they already know this trick.

Anyone with the most basic curiosity about physics would guess that the trick is to flick the chips with some spin (like tiny frisbees). This is especially helpful and appreciated when you're trying to toss 4 or 5 chips across a craps table to the stick man so that you can place your hardways and horn bets.

Two "helpful" habits that tournament players have that go beyond annoying and cross over to disruptive or problematic and they're both related.

1. Player is facing a bet of 700. He puts out a 1000 chip and two 100 chips to make it easier, but he forgets to verbalize a call. Well, now it's either a reraise to 1200 (depending on prior action) or else I'm making him complete the raise to 1400.

2. Blinds are 300/600. The big blind has no small change so he puts out a 5000 chip. The guy sitting in the cutoff waits until the action is on him and he puts out five 1000 chips.

"Raise to 5000," I announce.

"No!" He protests. "I'm just making change for the big blind."

I tapped into a tournament table (9 handed). The very first hand, seat 6 (who was UTG +2) folds by tossing his cards to the area along the rail between seat 7 and 8. It was literally the farthest point at the table away from me.

It was such a weird motion because he is right handed and therefore hand to toss the cards across his body to do so. It was clearly deliberate.

I think it strange, but I don't think much of it. It was the first toss and there was probably something behind it. Whatever.

Next hand he does the exact same thing.

Ok.

The third hand he plays and actually wins the pot. Since he is the last player left with cards I start pushing him the pot and see where he is going to put his cards. Again he tosses them to the rail between 7 and 8, the farthest place on the felt away from me.

WTF?

This is not normal so now I am actually more curious than annoyed. I want to know why he is doing this.

So whenever it is his turn and he is going to fold, I put my hand on the felt ready to recieve his cards. I give a clear target for him. Make it easy. He continues to toss them between 7 and 8.

I make it obvious that it is a stretch for me. I over-eggagerate the motions it takes for me to retrieve the cards and muck them. Still no change.

Now I am both annoyed and curious. I am like WTF?!?! but I also want to understand his thinking. Most of all I want to know why.

So next time he does it I literally ask him. As he folds and tosses his cards, I say "Why are you throwing your cards all the way over there?" He is a bit confused, and mumbles/stutters something about he is just folding.

Ok.

He does it a couple of more times. So now I make it direct. When he does it I directly ask him why he is making it so I have to reach so far to get his cards? His response is a lot of mumbling and starts and stops. Eventually he mumbles something about me giving him bad cards so I have to reach to muck them.

WTF, but ok...... maybe.

A couple hands later he wins a fairly big pot. As I push it to him and he tosses them to the same spot. I say to him that I just gave him good cards and he won a big pot, why is he discarding all of the way over there. He looks at me and says nothing, just stacks his chips.

I have never dealt to this person in my life. There is no history.

He continues to discard this way. I even explicitly ask him to toss the cards closer to me. He continues doing what he is doing.

Eff it. Time to be a petty a-hole.

So the next hand I deal the 5 seat his first card and I deal the next card right next to the 5 seats first card. As I deal the second card, I put seat 6's second card very close to seat 7.

That wasn't enough. Everything continues. Time to be stupid.

The next round I barely toss the first card to seat 6. It lands right in front of me. It is literally 6 inches from my rack. The second card goes an inch further. He looks at me funny but reaches and claims his cards.

The next deal I go nuclear. The first card for seats 1-5 land perfectly in front of them. The first card for seat 6 ends up between seat 2 and 3. The second card ends up in front of seat 9.

The player in seat 6 gets a bit angry as he stands up and reaches across the table to retrieve his cards. He uses some swear words to ask me what I am doing? I say I am sorry, but I am just learning.

He continues to discard between 7 and 8, so I continue to go nuclear. He is absolutely pissed and starts swearing at me. So I call over the floor. I tell the floor that seat 6 has directed a couple of swear words towards me. Seat six then starts jumping in about me throwing his cards far from him.

The floor looks at me funny. He knows something is going on. He is good, and he also knows I am up to something. He gives seat 6 a warning saying that he cannot swear at me or abuse me. He says that he is skating on thin ice and if he continues to abuse me he will be punished.

Seat 6 then discards by tossing his hand to the same spot on the rail between seat 7 and 8. The floor is hanging around and sees this

So the next hand I do the same. First card between seat 2 and 3, second card in front of 9. I do it very quickly and so effortlessly that I can see the floor notices. He is now very curious. Seat 6 complains while swearing. Floor tells him he gets a one round penalty for swearing.

I get tapped out before the one round penalty expires.

I talk to the floor before tapping into the next table I explain everything. He rolls his eyes but admits I wasn't wrong.

I absolutely know I was being a petty a-hole, but I absolutely know this was a person who was unnecessarily being an a-hole initially. Maybe I overreacted, but I gave him every chance.

And for the record, I am not usually sensitive to stuff like this. I am a player before being a dealer. I understand that players have more to think about than dealer comfort. I have players fling cards at full strength and hit me and not taken it personally because I fully realized that they were frustrated.

Furthermore, I generally encourage players to be aggressive when tossing cards or chips towards the middle. It allows me to show off my reflexes and it can very entertaining. It also generally makes my job easier. So I will never get mad at a player tossing cards or chips a bit too aggressively or have something slip accidentally. If a player makes a mistake I try to make them feel good about it, not bad.

To deliberately make things harder goes too far for me.

We have two regular PLO games in our room that play a double board bomb pot at the start of each down, and the time rake is taken out of that pot. In one game, they calculate the pot including the rake, and in the other game they don't. (These are private games, different stakes and different group of players.) Just out of sheer curiosity, is there a consensus on which way is "standard" in PLO time pots? I've never dealt anywhere else, and the PLO games I've played are smaller with regular drop rake, so I'm just wondering how other rooms do it.

I've never seen the rake considered when calculating pot. It would throw things way off if you're talking about a time pot, and most PLO players just want the pot to be as big as possible. Is UTG pot zero?

I have seen weird rules evolve, though, especially in bigger and private/semi private games. Then they act like you're crazy because you don't know them.

You actually weren't. I dealt to some asshat who did the same thing to me. When he did it at cash games, I just dealt with it. But when he did it in a tournament, he was slowing the game down while blinds are going up which was super unfair to the whole table.

I just told him "what are you doing? why are you slowing the game down for everyone here?"

He shrugged and I just said "if you keep it up, I will call the floor. I take pride in getting as many hands out during tournaments and I think most players appreciate that."

The table all kinda shook their heads in the affirmative and one of them said "can you please quit acting like a child" to the player.

That put a stop to it.

It all ended in cash games when I dealt him a high hand and he gave me a big tip and apologized profusely. Happy ending. At least until I start dealing him bad cards again. 😀

Yikes. I had a happy ending follow up to that episode.

After I left the A-hole who had a one round penalty came back. He had some words with the floor who had given him the penalty. During the heated exchange the floor asked the player multiple times why he was discarding in the manner he was (tossing his cards between seats 7 and 8 from seat 5). He never gave a direct answer. The floor explained that not only was he making things tough on the dealer, he was risking fouling seat 7 and 8's hands.

Words were exchanged. The player was rude and said enough swear words that the floor admitted to me later he should have booted him then and there but didn't. He was trying to be tolerant. The conversation ended with the floor telling the player to stop discarding like he was. Then the floor walked away.

Sure enough, soon thereafter, the floor gets called to the table. Button was in seat 6. A couple limps, then seat 5 discards by tossing his cards directly into the cards of seat 8 (the big blind). Seat 8 had not yet looked at his cards so there was no way for him to tell the floor what he had. Obviously seat 8's hand is dead. The suckage part was that seat 8 had around 10 big blinds. He just posted the big blind and the ante. He would have either been able to play the hand for "free" (a check) or squeeze by shoving and scoop up 3 limps. This hand was really important to his tournament life.

He was obviously pissed. He starts going off on seat 5. Seat 5 fires back (protect your hand, etc, mixed in with some swear words and some threats). Floor immediately tells seat 5 he is booted. He cannot swear at or threaten other players, furthermore he was warned against discarding the way he did and potentially fouling another hand.

He literally tells the floor to eff off, he isn't leaving. I guess he looks at everyone at the table and said that if they had a problem he will kick their asses.

Security is called, level 2 security (the ones with the guns and an eagerness to use them). He is removed from the room. I guess he provoked a fight with security at the entrance to the casino so he is now sitting in jail.

Obviously something is/was wrong mentally with him. He was destined to crash. I am just glad I wasn't there so he could hurt me on his way down.

Crazy.

this is why I have greatly reduced my playing time. I like playing poker, slightly winning on average, get along with the staff and the food is pretty good. Dealing with jerks like above is a big turn off and not how I want to spend my time.

I haven't dealt a Las Vegas summer in a long time and I'm having to adjust to the huge increase in videos and social media posts out there. Every little thing is posted, and so much of it is misleading. It's so hard for me to not reply with "Actually, (high profile player) was being a little bitch. I was there and here's what really happened."

Then there's the risk of making a mistake and having it blow up on every feed like the 4 card flop hand.

Every year; "Why can't they hire better dealers?!?!?!?!?!"

Yeah, why don't competent dealers whom already have jobs with benefits and set schedules leave their loved ones for two months to work crazy hours dealing tournaments in the desert to an abnormally high number of shitregs.

It's a ****ing mystery.

If I ever decide to semi-retire, I might deal in Vegas one summer just for giggles. But it wouldn't be at WSOP.

No more crazy hours. We have the opposite problem now - not enough work to make enough to cover expenses. You can work a little more if you're on the restart crew, but still fewer downs at a lower rate than the other traveling gigs I do. Other rooms have higher pay, but you can't even work full time at many and I don't want to juggle two jobs.

Players are actually a lot more chill than they were back when I started.

I know the dealer who killed overtime for everyone at WSOP. Let's just say I am glad I am not her.

I had a weird conversation with a player about the button. The conversation came about because he kept moving the button. If he, or either of his neighbors were the button, he would move the button slightly to the left of the person it was supposed to be in front of. Usually it wasn't too bad, it was still in front of the player who was supposed to be the button, just off center.

The problem was he was in seat 3 so space could get tight at the end of the table and it could be confusing if he moved it a bit too far.

The first rotation or two I didn't realize he was slightly moving the button, so it caused some confusion on who was the button. I finally saw him move the button and figured it out.

I didn't correct him or say anything because the times I saw him move the button, he barely moved it and it was close enough.

Finally there was a hand where him or his neighbor was the button and the 8 seat won the pot (he was seat 3) and as I was pushing a large pot to 8 and my back turned to him, he moved the button without saying anything. So I push the pot, do my cleanup routine and move the button (after he had already stealthily moved it). Of course this causes confusion. Other players are arguing over who us supposed to be what blind.

We all quickly figure it out as the guy says he already moved the button. I have had enough so I calmly explain to the guy that he needs to either stop moving the button or he needs to clearly let me know it has been moved.

He immediately goes on the offensive. Fairly harshly. He says I am a bad dealer because I do not know where the button is supposed to be. He claims good dealers always know where the button is.

He then claims that if the button randomly disappeared, a good dealer could say exactly where it is at.

I explain that during a hand, I know where the button is, but after a hand, a dealer doesn't know where the button is, they just have a flag in the back of their head reminding them to move the button. Furthermore, there is no need to remember where the button is. There is a big frickin button there to remind everyone where it is.

Don't get me wrong, if the button suddenly disappeared, I would play the action back in my head and there is a pretty good chance I could figure out where the button was, but in general, between hands I never remember where the button is unless I spend the mental energy thinking about it. I never remember because I do not need to. There is a literal, physical button to remind me.

This guy was so insistent though that I am starting to wonder if I am the outlier. Like I said, if I spend the time thinking about it, I can usually reconstruct where the button is, but in general, between hands, my short term memory is blank to the button.

Am I alone in this or are others like this?

As dealers, we have a lot of stuff within a single hand to keep track of & focus on, especially when having to keep track of the pot for rake amounts or it's a PLO game. For me, pretty much everything is forgotten rather quickly shortly after the completion of the hand because it's no longer necessary. Call it the "philosophy of the finished task". Did I give you change pre? I'm not sure if I did or didn't, or even if you were owed change. There was 3 streets of betting and the pot was right the whole time from my POV. That was forever ago to me.

Moving the button out of your sight & not notifying you then getting into a tizzy over the fact that it caused an issue is clearly out of line. Maybe next time he asks if the action is on him, you should say yes, even though you know it isn't. After all, he should know whether the action is on him himself if he's a good player.

My life would be easier if nobody ever moved the button for me. Any effort saved is more than canceled out by the times I don't know it moved, when two players moved it, when a player moves it after me, when they move it into the path I need to push a pot, when they move it to a dead seat in a cash game, or when they move it to the exact wrong spot where it's in the way of my pitch.

Back in the covid plexiglass shield days there was one guy who insisted on "helping" me by moving it out of the way so I could pitch to him easier. The problem was, he was moving it directly into the path of the player on his right. It caused endless confusion because everyone would think the button was back one spot, and caused at least one misdeal because I just sat down. Any efforts to stop him were met with screaming about how he's helping us.

Tucking is certainly annoying because it slows things down. One place I worked had really sticky felt and just having a couple of chips on top of the cards made them shockingly hard to slide over.

I suspect most players don't even know why they're doing it. They just say others do it and figured that was how you push two things forward at once.

I would love to know what you're talking about.

Google Mercer v. Caesars Entertainment, Inc.

Another thing occurred to me about the players moving the button thing. A few years ago I started moving the button before pushing the pot when it made sense. This often cuts players off from doing it themselves.

I had a table today with two button movers. One kept moving it to the exact center of the right side of the table. Equidistant from 4 different players so it could be in front of any of them. I usually had to push it towards him twice because the first time he'd push it back to the middle.

The other guy was in the 3 seat and would put it directly in front of his stack where I couldn't reach it and where he kept covering it with his arms. He'd only move it when it was going to him, obviously, so I kept having to ask him to move it when that hand was over.

Is that.... *the* Mike Brady? Like the Upswing Poker guy?

Just quickly read through the case. The dealers who sued wanted to be paid overtime for their tokes, or the money they make dealing tournament tables. So if they were being paid $20 to deal a tournament table, they wanted $30 instead if they were on overtime. They were making $12.50 an hour and were properly (according to the law) being paid overtime on that. There was also a mention that they attended 7+ hours of training but were only paid for 3.

It looks like it was settled out of court.