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

He didn't really bark at me. Just imagine someone who has been told 45 times in a row that the action is on him and is increasingly embarrassed over it. He finally decides to pretend he isn't the idiot and is in control (and got lucky).

Put another way, i was not offended in the slightest at him "barking" at me. I just felt like he was making it clear to everyone that be was on top of everything (even if he wasn't).

As for the trash talk. I don't think it was anything out of the ordinary. Especially since the other player showed his cards. If anything, his speaking gave away his hand to anyone paying attention.

I genuinely think you are reading too much into this. He was really a nice older gentleman who was friendly with everyone. He was just annoying to everyone who wanted the game to move faster.

Sounds to me like in the spur of the moment he pulled an angle and used you as a prop in doing so.

I will concede that it was a very slight angle and according to you a transparent one at that. But an angle that used you nonetheless.

That would bug me more than the rudeness, actually. People are rude to me all the time, but only a couple of times have I been used to help an angle and that always felt shitty.

Raising UTG without looking at cards is an angle now?

While I will agree he used my gesture to indicate that it was his turn as a show of strength, how is that an angle? He didn't even know what his cards were?

I think the term angle is too often overused nowadays. What he did was take advantage of a situation that becomes available to him. The thing is, anyone who was watching him closely would have instantly known what happened. Anyone could have 3 bet him pre-flop and stole his blind raise.

Flop Q86

3 players get into a raising war

A jams
B rejams
C tanks, eventually says “ok I’m laying down top and bottom” and mucks

A shows KQ
B shows QQ

Me: Floor on 34, fouled deck!

So the other day I am dealing in a special event. It mixes lots of amateurs/near amateurs with decent players. It is supposed to be a fun/charity event so everything is casual.

I tap into a table. Over the first few hands there is an elderly woman in seat 5 who everyone else at the table seems to hold a little bit of reverence for. I do not know her.

A man in seat 7 asks the woman if she had played at a regional tournament. She tells him that she has stopped traveling because her husband is sick. She elaborates and says that he has stage 4 cancer.

The table conversation moves on and doesn't acknowledge her comment. So as I deal the next hand, I quietly lean forward and say "I am sorry to hear about your husband."

Worst/best thing I have ever done.

The worst part was that for the next 25 minutes she talked to me about her dying husband. It didn't matter how much I tried to turn the conversation to a different topic, it always went back to her dying husband.

This was supposed to be a fun, social event. As a dealer my job was to make sure everyone at the table was having fun. Yet here I have to deal with a 80 year old cancer patient as material to chat about. I was lost. What do I say?

The best part was that it was really obvious that she needed an outlet and I provided it (willingly or not). I am pretty sure that her life consisted of taking care of her dying husband 24/7 and only made it out because this was a big charity event that she was part of. She really needed someone to just listen to her talk about her husband. I felt like she was really happy doing something she enjoyed (playing poker) while talking about her husband.

Absolutely one of the most jarring downs I have ever had.

In the end you did the right thing and showed compassion, which is often sorely lacking in the world, so I’d feel pretty good about it even if it was an awkward half hour.

We had a regular at my old job who kept being told by doctors he had 3 months to live. When I first dealt to him he'd been hearing this for several years. His cancer never got better, it just progressed much slower than expected. At some point he just hit the F- it button and decided to make the most of the situation. Any night he had enough energy to go out it was gambling, hookers, blow, and booze.

He was a fun guy, great tipper, and gave lots of action at the table. He also loved to talk about his situation so I knew more about it than I wanted to. All the new organs his cancer spread to, all the different treatments. He just needed to hang out and vent.

It was a weird mix of feeling really sorry for someone but also happy that he's getting a little more time to have some fun.

Was this the Women in Poker event at Resorts World?

Mod: We prefer to let our poker room employees remain anonymous. They can PM you if they want to, but otherwise should not answer here.

I have long told my wife that I am not going to wait around to die. If I get the dreaded X months to live warning, then I am living it up to the best of my ability. Doesn't matter the cost, let's do it.

My mistake, apologize, I wasn't thinking about it. I just think I may actually know the player and was really curious.

The event I was discussing was a charity for the group Women in Poker but had men playing in it also. Thanks for the response!

I had a doozy today.

Tournament. I don't remember the exact blind levels but let's say 200/400. Close enough. Post flop action is mostly heads up. Action gets to the river. Player A bets 6000. It is probably 50 - 70 percent of the pot.

Player B tanks a little bit. Not too long, but it is clear he is struggling with a decision. Multiple times he cuts out the 6000 call then goes back to thinking while shuffling the calling chips back into his thinking chips.

Finally Player B cuts out 6000. Sighs and starts slightly forward with the chips. His hand hasn't even crossed his cards. Forward motion is barely there. Player A then immediately declares a straight and starts to turn over his cards. Player A stops turning over his cards as he realizes Player B hasn't yet really called. Player B immediately stops his motion with his chips.

No cards have been shown and no call has been announced by the player or myself.

In my mind I am immediately trying to figure out if Player B made enough of a motion to be considered a call. My gut reaction is to say no, but it is close. No doubt. It is close enough and I am stunned enough that I take a few seconds. Too long.

Taking that long I realize it is beyond me now. I tell both players to hold all action and loudly call for a floor.

Floor comes over and I try and describe the action. Unfortunately the floor doesn't seem to grasp that there are multiple layers involved here. He seems to think it is a simple ruling of whether or not Player B moved forward with calling chips or not.

While that is the basic premise, Player A also pre-announced his hand without showing it possibly trying to get Player B to not call. Unfortunately in order to get the floor to understand this, I had to be rather explicit and say Player A hasn't shown his hand yet and might not actually have a straight.

Player B picks up on this and directly asks the floor that if he calls or is forced to call by a floor ruling and Player A doesn't have a straight, is there going to be a penalty for Player A?

Floor finally figures out the problem. He doesn't know what to do. He goes and gets the TD.

I will post the outcome later, I want to hear what others think first.

To summarize, it looked player B was going to call but IMHO hadn't yet called, and player A declared a hand that would make Player B pause.

Mod: I'm not sure if this was intended, but since you posted this in the breakroom thread, you should only be getting feedback from employees here.

As described, that's not a call.

Then it's definitely not a call.

In regards to your misdeclaration question, we have these rules (if it's a call and we're at showdown, and if it's not yet a call and we are not yet at showdown):

12: Declarations. Cards Speak at Showdown
Cards speak to determine the winner. Verbal declarations of hand value are not binding at showdown but deliberately miscalling a hand may be penalized.

67: No Disclosure. One Player to a Hand
Players must protect other players in the tournament at all times. Therefore players, whether in the hand or not, must not:
1. Discuss contents of live or mucked hands...

So yes, If it's (correctly imo) not ruled a call I'd penalize him if he does not in fact have a straight, for attempting to influence the action of the hand by discussing the hand in play. Severity of penalty would depend on player history, etc. If he does have the straight (and a winner) his "penalty" is not getting the chips he would have won had he not jumped the gun on declaring his hand.

Boy that would be nice.

It definitely sounds like an angle by A, and not a call. The penalty thing is a little tricky, though. Let's say B folds. Are you forcing A to show? I've been dealing tournaments for a while and never seen someone be forced to show after they've won a hand. Even the TD peeking at the cards is almost the same as showing, since they would then be making a ruling based on what they see.

I think a typical ruling would be the hand continues and A gets a warning. Maybe then a peek at the cards without revealing anything to the other players so the TD knows whether to keep an eye on them. If B does call and A doesn't have a straight then maybe there's a penalty.

Both players kind of set themselves up for a random ruling, though, so I'm not about to make a bet on what the ruling was here.

Wouldn't different rooms have different answers for this?

Hence having a thread for cardroom employees. You get to ask what others with real experience would do.

Hi everyone, It's been years since I've logged into 2p2, and I've never been an employee, but I used to lurk here quite a bit, and when I logged back in today and saw this section renamed for Bobby / YTF it brought a smile to my face, so I wanted to say something about it.

I'm in MN and used to play at CP with him quite a bit. While I didn't know him as well as I did some of the other dealers who were there at the time, I felt a little like I did because of this and his weight loss journey thread. I will say too, he was just as much of a one of a kind guy at the table as he was around here (which was awesome as long as you were on his good side), and I still consider the highlight of my poker "career" to be reading one of his stories and realizing it was about me! Thankfully it was a good / funny story.

Anyway carry on, I just saw the name and wanted to mention it.

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But no one mentioned that different rooms have different rules for what constitutes a bet. Like some are any forward motion, some if the chips cross the cards, some if they're moved past a line, some if dropped past the line; I've played in places with all of those rules. I've even heard of some where cutting your chips is a bet. So how would knowing what other would do, in rooms with different rules. matter for his particular room?

Fine my dude. You can't see the value out of it. That's ok. Those of us who work in casinos and make rulings do get value out of discussing it.

In this particular instance, the poster said "Gut reaction was that it wasn't a bet, but it was close" so we proceed with the discussion from that standpoint. We don't argue with him about whether it was or was not, because that's not the point. He was there. He said it wasn't a bet. So it's not a bet. We don't care what the rules are for betting in OUR room, because it doesn't matter.

We apply our discussion and hopefully learn something by thinking about what WE would do in a situation where something was not a bet, but close.

I love these types of discussions. It forces me to really think through weird situations and hear others' thought processes, which will help me when I inevitably go back to flooring. Hearing how different rooms would handle something is interesting to me and helps me avoid staying in a bubble. I've run into too many dealers and floors who get locked into one set of rules and can't adjust to a new room or evolving procedures. I don't want that to happen to me.

There is some benefit to hearing from players on rulings, but the loudest ones are often the one who don't really understand the rules or only know how they've seen things handled in the one room they've been playing in for years.

I wouldn't want to help an angle happen.

In the interest of fairness (Rule 1!) I would ask the player if he really had a straight.

If he answered in the negative, I would kill his hand and award the pot to the other player.
If he said that he had the straight, I would say it was not a call and the player's action is still on him.
I would also say that since he spoke his hand strength he needed to show to win the pot even if the other player decided to fold.

I would tell him to please check his hole cards again to be absolutely sure he answered correctly.
Because if he lies to me, the hand plays out as I said as if he didn't lie but then they will be 86ed permanently from the room.

i'm sorry i know i'm not allowed to post here, but need to commend this behavior, you're doing god's work here

that goes above and beyond and really helps with game integrity - thank you