Players! Play.

“Shoot pool, Fast Eddie.”
“I’m shootin’ pool, Fats. When I miss, you can shoot.”

I love that quote. Its from The Hustler. And it says a lot…not just about pool but about competition. It can be applied to any challenge where skill and ego come in to play. In the movie, Eddie is shooting pool while expounding what he has learned about ‘character’ to his former backer. All the while, Minnesota Fats sits in a chair, waiting for his turn at the table (the “hot seat” or “electric chair” in pool terminology). After patiently waiting for Eddie to vent, Fats speaks up. It is met with the stern, confident reply.

A similar situation can be witnessed in poker rooms every day and night. (I’m talking about public card rooms and casinos, not friendly home games.) Very often, players that aren’t even involved in a particular hand will chime in on a situation. This rarely helps smooth anything over or straighten out a confused matter. The result is usually three or more people yelling at each other and the dealer in three different accents while the confusion mounts. It seems there are not very many participants in card rooms with the tact to navigate player-dealer or player-player confrontations. But I rarely hear this come up as the root of the problem.

Go to any poker room, check out any poker blog, or search any poker forum and you will find players ranting about bad dealers. True, there are a great many unskilled dealers these days. But I think people are missing the mark. Dealers are there to facilitate an interaction between players. That may sound like a tall order but not if players understand that their actions tend to stretch the dealers’ job description. The basic responsibilities of a dealer include understanding the rules of the game, distributing the cards, verifying chip counts before they are dragged into the pot, identifying the winning hand(s), and transferring the chips from the pot to winner. This exists so any of us can sit at a poker table and just play.

The first extension of a dealer’s responsibilities is in maintaining the order of action in a game when it is impeded for an unusual reason. The most common reason is a lack of understanding from a player. This can be related to a “new” player who does not know all the rules to the game. The new age of poker allows for this as all dealers are enabled to explain the rules, including the basics. This situation can also arise when a player is unaware of prior action. In this case, it is the dealer’s sole responsibility to explain.

Experienced poker players should not expect dealers to monitor every participant’s conduct. Those that know their way around a particular game should act within the rules and be ready to go when action is on them. When a player is distracted or confused, it is not the dealer’s fault. But many turn their frustrations toward the dealer in such situations. Even if they were correct, it simply doesn’t help.

Here is an example that doesn’t even involve the play of a hand: I was in a game at Commerce Casino recently. I was racking up and ready to leave as it had already been a long night for me. As I was waiting to take my last free hand, the table began to thin out. We were already 7-handed when two other players got up and moved to another game. Players are not allowed to leave a short-handed table to go to any other table running the same game. However, it is up to the floor managers to control who fills empty seats. They didn’t do that in this case…floor managers screw things up on a regular basis. Suddenly, our table was 4-handed as I had already stating that I was done. The remaining players were not happy. But one, in particular, got really upset. He is a regular at Commerce (I think he is French which I only point out to describe that he has a heavy accent) who has a short fuse. He immediately went off on our dealer, demanding that he should have called a floor man. It just so happens that while it is not the dealer’s responsibility to stop players from leaving the game, he had called out for the floor. But the Frenchman, in his rage, had not noticed. He proceeded to yell at the dealer calling him a “fucking asshole” several times.

Nobody came to the dealer’s defense because no one ever does. In this case, everyone else was distracted, yelling at each other and the floor person who did show up. I had not yet left the original table so I could have stepped in between La France and Le Dealer but I knew that would only make matters worse. He would likely just turn his barrage on me. Instead, I silently showed my support and sympathy for the dealer. I stared down the Frenchman to express, “Cool it. You’re out of line.” Things could only get uglier if I were to utter such a phrase. But he paid slight notice to me, gave up, and moved on. I don’t know if the dealer understood what I was trying to do because I decided not to exchange pleasantries and just move on myself.

My point with that story is to show how aggression can be not only invalid but misplaced. One needs social skills to properly handle it. Few do.

Another instance of misplaced anger was directed at me. Again at Commerce, I was at a table with a few very aggressive players, one of whom loved action (as long as it went his way) and hated when the pace of play slowed (I’ll call him Ho…just because). I always try to act without unnecessary delay because I understand the desire to keep the game moving. But sometimes I do have to put some thought into situation before acting. In this case, I had raised a pot to $35 (5-10NLH game) with A-Q from middle position and got four callers including both blinds, an early limper, and Ho (acting behind me).

The flop came A-7-3 rainbow. Perfect. If I had missed and it was checked to me, I probably would have made a continuation bet. Since it hit me big, I would definitely bet if it was checked to me. However, the blinds checked and the limper led out for $75. The pot was $175 so this was not a particularly large bet. Nor was it so small. I would have to think about this. First of all, I didn’t know enough about this player to have any idea what he was likely to be holding. All I knew was that he played a lot of hands. I couldn’t just call the bet. I would have to raise to find out where I was and take control of the hand. Now I had to consider how much it would cost me to play it out. A good raise would have to be $150 more to $200. With about 600 in front of me, that was a large portion of my stack. If he were to call and we got heads up and he checked the turn, I still wouldn’t really know where I was but would have to bet the rest of my stack (~400). If he actually had me beat, I’m betting right into him. So it was also important to note that he had enough chips to put me all-in.

I had only been thinking for about 20 seconds and had yet to determine a range of hands for the bettor. Then Ho piped up saying, “Its on you!” I calmly glanced up and said, “I know.” “Then say ‘time’ or something!” he whined. This came as a surprise to me since I don’t have a tendency to take time on decisions. I would understand if I consistently slowed the game down but that wasn’t the case. He also had no reason to think that I might not know it was on me. I don’t wear glasses or a hat. Everyone could clearly see that I was looking at the better and the chips he had put out in front of him. He was on my immediate right so there was no room for confusion.

My reaction was to look up at him and shrug. With a wave of one hand in the air to indicate that his statement was senseless, I went back into the tank. It took only 15 seconds more (about 35 total) for me to decide to get away from the hand. I folded because I thought the bettor might have a set and it could cost my entire stack to find out.

After the hand, I thought about Ho’s brusque statement. Why did he say that? My first impression was that he just wanted the game to move along. But it was moving. In fact, everyone folded to the bettor, including Ho. We were quickly on to the next hand. The only other reason I could think of was that he wanted to tilt me. I had seem him try this with other players in the past but I always figured it wasn’t intentional. Players just seemed to tilt easily at his stupid remarks. Now I thought this may be an angle of his. No matter. It had no effect on me except to make me even more aware of him (if that was possible).

In this example of misplaced (or intentionally placed) aggression, I believe my minimal action defused a potentially heated situation. If he had said it to any other player at that table, I am sure the response would have been vocal and loud. That would certainly lead to at least a brief argument as egos clashed.

I guess that is what it all comes down to…Egos. There is so much of it around a poker table that people lose their heads. If they acted that way at work, they wouldn’t last very long. For some of them, this is their place of work…I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t last long either.

Here’s the bottom line, folks. Help out when you can. Stay out of the way when you only have emotional content to contribute. And give the dealers a break. Think about the worst dealer you’ve had and imagine that guy running a cash register at a fast food joint. If he can’t find the button for Double-Horse-Patty-with-cheese inside of a few seconds, do you really think yelling at him is going to get that grease into your veins any sooner? It will just help the line get longer behind you and lead you to a coronary on an empty stomach.

“Fat man, you shoot a great game of pool.”
”So do you, Fast Eddie.”

SEEYa