Dealer Insults Player (s) ?

I say let the locals entertain the tourists a bit: be courteous, low-key, make a bit of small talk with a humorous perspective if possible. After all we are PLAYING a GAME and it shouldn't be too hard to find a way to have a little fun with it.


If the locals insist on sitting there scowling at the tourists the whole time, then they almost deserve a motormouth dealer who makes tons of mistakes.

Rick,


This is one of the problems in CA. The dealers are so used to being yelled at from all directions that when a player makes constructive critism the dealer is immediately on the defensive. I can tell you about something that happened to me recently. As you know I relocated to MS from CA. I was dealing a 1-5 stud game and a player asked me what I used to do; now I expected him to sya I shoudl go back to doing that, so I ignored him. I spoke to him out of the box later and realized he was just curios because he thoguht I was probably a banker or teacher becasue I ran the game smoothly and in a professional manner, but I was so used to the line of questioning in LA I immediately wnet into a defensive posture.


Randy Refeld

I heartily agree. It is interesting to see the various views, but in general I think these forums are much too tough on dealers. As long as they do most of their talking while shuffling, deck changes, waiting for tray refills, etc. I believe friendly dealers are much better for the game than quiet ones. Of course, they must play attention to the game and keep control of it. But in my experience, friendly dealers seem to be the better dealers. My guess is that the less skilled dealers are too worried about screwing up and losing their jobs to talk much. This opinion may be skewed by doing most of my playing in CO, where the stakes are low, there are no pros, the dealers are tipped well, the games are mostly friendly, and the regulars all know each other. But I do visit Vegas 3 or 4 times a year. I believe friendly dealer make the tables better and draw in the social players, newbies, tourists, etc. There is no reason to complain about people being friendly as long as they are doing their jobs. The Vegas locals should lighten up, IMHO.

Mabye you are right, but a dealer should NEVER say anything about how a hand was played/should be played. Period. It is one thing to make small talk with players. It is another to influence how players play their hands.

100% right, and they should save the small talk for getting into and out of the box, or sometimes a bit between hands--never during hands.

The problem is that many talkative, friendly dealers DO NOT keep their chatting for in-between-hands time. Lots of them chatter away during the hand, It's damn distracting; it can influence the action; and it leads to dealer errors due to inattention.


Between hand chatting is more or less OK as I see it, but let's not forget that there are often around 8 or ten people at the table. If the dealer is too chatty, even between hands, that's a way of monompolizing the conversation and that gets old quick, just as it would if some player talked enough for 6 people.


I'm not hard on dealers, but I do think they should be expected to do pretty much what they're supposed to do in the proper manner. And I personally find it annoying when a dealer tends to monopolize the conversation at a table.

I've never been hard on dealer's, but there is a poker room manager that is angry with me because I suggested it woudl be a good idea to have his dealers shut up in the box and to find some that can pitch the cards with exposing them.


Randy Refeld

The world's going to hell in a handbasket;-)


As far as some people are concerned, the word "competency" is just another word in the dictionary.

Wow--thanks guys (and Babe) for all the comments and posts.


In one sense, this is just a funny cardroom story. It was not mean to stir up any "tourist vs. LV regular" dispute.


I agree the dealer was way too harsh with his comment to the bad player. I would have been embarrassed. He really did say it like ---"you moron". He was also making fun of me as a very tight player too.