Low value angle but still sketchy
$2/$5 table, button is in seat 8. Seat 9 is small blind, seat 1 big blind. Seat 2 straddles for $10. A bunch of limps mixed in with a few folds. Button folds. Small blind limps, big blind throws in an extra $5 to call. Straddle checks. 5 or 6 players to the flop. $50 or $60 in the pot.
I put out the flop.
I start to rearrange my rack (the previous dealer left it a mess), but I am carefully watching the player on seat 9 waiting for him to act first. To the best of my knowledge he hasn't moved. I continue with my rack, while watching him.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I see seat 4 check. I perk up, and say "Stop the action". I ask seat 9 if he has acted yet.? He does not answer me. He continues to look at everyone else to see what they are doing. Meanwhile, every other player in the hand checks (nobody stoppedthe action). Then the player in seat 9 speaks up and says that he hasn't acted yet and throws out $15. I pause for a second, and start to speak up and say that he didn't protect his action and it has checked around. I barely get the first syllable of the first word out of my mouth after the pause but it is already too late. Everyone else folds.
It is one of those hands that no one was really interested in. It was a small pot, obviously Everyone missed, they were just more interested in getting back to their phones or their conversations with the neighbors, that they just blondly acted after their neighbor acted. They wanted no part of the hand.
Since everyone else folded, I reluctantly pushed the pot to seat 9. I considered speaking up or calling the floor, but then I thought about it and decided that was not a rules hill I wanted to die on.
It is quite clear seat 9 was cheating. He was seeing if the action was going to blindly check around before betting. It was also obvious that everyone else at the table did not care. Most of the other players would have been more frustrated by the delay in the game by me calling the floor. So I didn't call the floor.
After I pushed the pot and was cleaning up the board, I said to seat 9 that he has to be careful. If enough people check behind him (even out of turn), he might lose his action and his bet wouldn't count. He doesn't say anything for a few seconds, then halfway through my pitch for the next hand he starts going off on me.
He asks me if I am accusing him of cheating? His voice goes higher and gets louder. I say that I am just telling him that he wasn't protecting his action by watching everyone else check. It was fine this time, but it could come back to bite him in the future in a bigger pot where others were interested. Of course everyone else at the table is trying to figure out what is going on and all conversation stops.
He then asks me again if I am accusing him of cheating? I said that I am not accusing him of anything. I was just letting him know that his actions could be ruled differently in the future.
The whole rest of the down he keeps thowing out the cheater accusation. I really wanted to say, "Yes, you cheated", but I didn't. I kept quiet. He talked about going to my manager. When I finally got tapped out, I went to the area supervisor and explained the hand (just as I have here). I said that the player threatened to go to the shift manager over it so I just wanted to explain before that happened.
I don't think I handled it poorly, in fact I think I handled correctly.
I would like to hear others thoughts on this though.
Well that wasn't really what you said in the OP
As a player (and this isn't directed at you) I would hope my dealers are focused 100% on the game, not just watching it from their peripheral vision. You shoulda been able to say "seat 9 hasn't acted yet, it's still on him" instead of "to the best of my knowledge he hasn't moved". I mean, why even bring up the fact that you were fixing your rack when all this was going on if it had no bearing on what happened?
How does a human being focus on both seat 1 and seat 9 while sitting between them? That is literally impossible given the fact that humans have eyes on the front of their face and not to the side.
I brought up my rack because it was part of what I was doing. Would you prefer I lie to you? Again, even if I was 100% focused on seat 9, how do I catch seat 1 acting out of turn?
If you can’t watch s9 afire action while also monitoring s1 and s2, you realize you just literally said you can’t do your job. You can’t claim ‘I caught the OOT action by s4; see how good I did.’ You are expected to catch and attempt to stop OOT action by s1. I see dealers do this all the time
I also don’t know how you can claim being distracted by counting did not impact catching the OOT actions. You literally imply s9 is watching these. OOT actions but at the same time claiming it was impossibl
Tell me you have never dealt a hand of poker without exactly saying so.
Just saying.
So how many hands are lost when you need to make a floor call for not timely catching OOT action?
First if you are any good it will cost maybe a qtr of a hand per down to count the rack. Literally takes more time to pitch the cards to a full table than how long the count should take. And you won’t have to split your attention away from your primary responsibility.
Sure if the room rules are to check the rack while dealing, you should follow your rooms procedures. But the claim you are now making
Read the OP. I wasn't just counting the rack.
I will put this as politely as I can. I am 100% comfortable in my skill as a dealer multitasking compared to any other dealer out there. Am I perfect? Absolutely not. Am I better than the vast majority? Absolutely.
I have no doubt about this and it is reinforced by knowledgeable players who regularly recognize it. You are free to think what you want to, but I am fairly sure that 99% of dealers wouldn't have done as well as I did. It was a unique situation with the seating arrangement and the lack of care on the part of everyone at the table.
My post was about seat 9 taking advantage of out of order action and then getting aggressive when called out on it.
Today, many rooms will keep a fair amount of money in cash in the rack. This can’t be counted when not taking the cash out of the rack. But at Wynn, they often don’t stop and count when a new dealer arrives. In fact, you often don’t even notice that a new dealer has sat down. One regular player told me that they “don’t sweat the small stuff.” And my guess is that they get to deal 3 more hands an hour, and at a $5 rake, that should more than make up any rack shortages.
Mason
Great point. Even if a rack is in perfect order, it is impossible to know how much cash is there without counting it. A simple glance does not work.
99.9999% of the time no one knows I am counting the rack the first couple of hands of a down. I just brought up a situation that was an exception and many posters here are treating it as if it was the norm.
How does a human being focus on both seat 1 and seat 9 while sitting between them? That is literally impossible given the fact that humans have eyes on the front of their face and not to the side.
I brought up my rack because it was part of what I was doing. Would you prefer I lie to you? Again, even if I was 100% focused on seat 9, how do I catch seat 1 acting out of turn?
We're saying you shouldn't have been 100% focused on seat 9. I really don't know why you think you needed to be focused on him at all. You are allowed to move your head to keep an eye on the whole table, which I assume you must have done to be able to look at both the rack and seat 9.
I am amazed at the push back JL is getting here.
You weren't giving 100% of your attention to the hand in progress and you didn't notice the out of turn action until it should have been too late because significant action occurred behind seat 9. Seat 9 then bet and won the pot when he shouldn't have been able to bet in the first place.
Explain to me how much worse this goes for "99% of dealers"?
Let see JL admits that a dealer talking, which does not require his eyes, cannot function at his best (separate current thread) but claims splitting his attention between where the action is and his rack while effectively ignoring the next two players to act is a best practice. Vs dealer splitting attention between where the action is and next to act so he can immediately stop OOT action (or try to) rather than catching it on the 3rd oth 4th OOT action.
This doesn’t even include that this was apparently not a bang bang thing because he claims he watched s9 nodding and turning head as all of these OOT check were happening. In fact if he could literally see these nods and turns, why didn’t those actions trigger him to realize what was happening so he could stop the OOT action after the second check at least.
No one is saying the he could 100% succeeded stopping the action (though he says S9 should have been able) but it is a scientific fact that if he was not distracted by doing something else like talking or counting he could have had more attention on s1 and s2 and thus responded quicker.
Ignoring reflexes, when the human brain is multitasking it is really time splitting. The more task you are attempting to do the less attention any one gets.
Great point. Even if a rack is in perfect order, it is impossible to know how much cash is there without counting it. A simple glance does not work.
99.9999% of the time no one knows I am counting the rack the first couple of hands of a down. I just brought up a situation that was an exception and many posters here are treating it as if it was the norm.
True if there is cash in the rack you can’t visually count the rack and know it’s correct. But you can visually count the chips and “know” a) how much cash is necessary to make the count right and b) if the chip count ends in something other than a zero or zero and five (like ending in a 3) that the rack is not right. (This assumes the room doesn’t allow buying in with singles at the table. )
Btw if 99.9999% of the time no one knows you are counting the rack the first couple of hands, that means a) there is no cash (because if you pull cash out to count “we” will know) and b) the rack is not a mess (otherwise you would be fixing as you count and agsin we will know). So if no one knows you are counting it should not take a couple of hands to count.
How do I know…I am also often counting the rack your first hand if I am out. Not because I care if it is short or long but because it helps me practice quickly counting stacks of chips. So I can quickly count a players stack if I want that info quickly in a hand. Counting chips in a rack if not a big mess (if you are focused on doing that alone) is a few seconds not a couple of hands.
I do find it interesting you admit choosing to talk makes you deal less well and think it should not be done but choosing to be distracted by counting and thus deal less well is ok.
Let’s assume 6 downs per shift so 12 counts. If it takes 1/3rd of a deal to count a clean rack, because if it isn’t clean with no cash you really can’t be paying enough attention to the game. So how many hands do yo gain? Remember, the hand takes much longer to play on average than the time to deal. You are not even close to getting an extra 2 hands per down. And that assumes players are paying attention. In most smaller games, if you are not pushing his action there is one or more players who will never act when on them. They are busy on the phone, watching the game, calling for or waiting for waitress, etc.
