Posts Tagged ‘dealers’

Smooth Delivery

by , Jun 5, 2012 | 11:53 am

Just when I stopped giving a shit about Daniel Negreanu’s weekly rants … and at a time when both WSOP rule-enforcement quandaries and professional poker bitchings are kicking into high gear … Neggy puts up this video from the felt — 20 seconds of someone else instead of 20 minutes of himself — highlighting some truly skillfull dealing (at least on the pitch).

Pretty impressive stuff — and nice to see a pro notice. If Caesars were ever to make a clone army of WSOP dealers, this guy might be Jango Fett.


Caesars Recruiting Dealers for 2012 WSOP

by , Mar 8, 2012 | 2:44 pm

The 2012 WSOP is looking for a few good dealers, or perhaps I should say a few hundred, and Caesars Entertainment still has a couple of 3-week boot camps to prep the troops.

You won’t get paid while attending the academy, but as far as I can tell you don’t have to pay either. Caesars promises to equip you with the skills to pitch cards and cut chips at RIO All Suites Hotel from May 27 to July 16, aka the 2012 World Series. A session in late April provides advanced lessons for dealing non-hold’em games.
I’m still waiting for a response on my application. If I get accepted, I hope to document the experience. And since Caesars stresses “good customer service skills,” we’ll do it with a smile.

The job ad also says “a neat professional appearance and good personal hygiene are essential.” That might narrow the competition in the poker community. But I know I’m ready to shave and shower before I shuffle up and deal.


Over Before It Started

by , Jul 10, 2011 | 5:00 am

Quote of the Series – Player in a cash game complaining to a dealer about how badly he deals… Dealer says to player, “If we switched seats, we would both make more money.”
Things I won’t miss after leaving the WSOP
  1. The piece of paper that has been on the 18th-floor ice machine for 45 days that says “Temporarily out of Order”.
  2. Players talking about dealers as if the dealer isn’t there.
  3. The 14th floor button always lit up when I enter the Masquerade Tower elevators. (As mentioned above, I was on the 18th floor.)
  4. People bumping into me and not saying anything.
  5. Players with horrible smokers breath sitting right next to me and wanting to talk and belly laugh my direction.
  6. Award ceremonies (with me not in them).
  7. A $10 food voucher and $12 worth of food.
  8. The announcement, “attention all time game dealers, at the end of this hand please collect time”.
  9. After above announcement, 3 or 4 players in each game saying “we just paid time”…yep we did ½ hour ago.
  10. People whose name I don’t know asking me for money, and then, not asking me for my phone number so they can find me to repay me.
  11. Losing 1 to 1,000 to Michalski.
  12. The phrase “Is Pepsi OK”?

Things I enjoyed at the WSOP:

  1. Getting more involved in Twitter and the laughs I got along the way.  Insert shameless plug here.  I’m Donkeybomber on Twitter.
  2. Award ceremonies celebrating others’ victories and the National Anthem.
  3. Seeing good friends that I only see once each year.
  4. Playing Chinese poker on all breaks. (I’m still owed some money by people.)
  5. Swordfish piccata at Buzios.  Their food got good again.
  6. Dinner at offsite places Herbs and Rye, the best chicken alfredo ever and Pho Kim Long…love Chinese poker and Chinese food.
  7. $10 Food Vouchers…I know, I’m complicated.

See you next year at the WSOP.


The Future of Poker: IT Casino Solutions

Dealer app for poker room management

by , Feb 4, 2011 | 7:20 pm

Check it out, of the many nifty-neato things I saw at the (brand-spankin’) new Aviator Casino in California’s Central Valley … their tables have a new embedded computer that seems to take swiping player cards to a new level. According to Team Pokeratier-turned-floor supervisor Harris, these are the first in play in a US poker room — what they are calling “the Julian System” by IT Casino Solutions:


A Tipping Point

Know how dealers make a living before deciding how much or little to leave

by , Feb 1, 2011 | 2:41 am

Chad Harberts


OP-ED

I recently set off a minor controversy when I mentioned to @Pokerati that a Red Rock Casino poker dealer complained that new Heartland Poker champion Rob Perelman (@veerob) didn’t leave a dealer tip at the conclusion of the tournament.

First, I do not know Rob at all and was not making an accusation against him. I merely passed along the information because I knew @Pokerati had been covering the tournament. Second, as with any tournament cash of any size, Rob is free to spend or not spend his money any way he pleases. (He later tweeted that he tipped $2,000 on his $158,755 cash. The confusion being that he left the tip the next day after most of the dealers were gone and not directly after the tournament.)

Still, I believe the practice of tipping is an aspect of poker that merits discussion. Certainly, there is no standard for tipping in cash games or tournaments, and a lot is left to chance when the casino and other players alike rely on winners to pick up the check.

You may not agree with me to tip 10% of winnings of more than $10,000 in a poker tournament, but you can certainly agree that .00025% is extremely low!

Mike Caro makes a number of salient points when it comes to tipping in both cash games and tournaments in his article from 2006 here. How one player tips in poker is probably no different than how the same player tips at a restaurant or when getting a haircut.

Some players think that the part of a poker tournament buy-in withheld from the prize pool should cover everything. I have heard that of the house cut for the HPT main event (a $1000+100 tournament), $50 went to Red Rock Casino and $50 to the Heartland Poker Tour. I find it a little incredulous that a Las Vegas casino would split the house cut 50/50, but it’s possible.

More…


Day 1: What if You Didn’t Play a Hand?

More poker-by-numbers in the WSOP main event

by , Jul 6, 2010 | 2:28 am

Had an interesting convo last night with @HeartlandPokerTodd (not his real twitter name, though it prolly should be) …

Todd Anderson from Fargo, North Dakota, bought into his first WSOP Main Event a few days ago, and we were talking about the value of chips acquired early in this $10k, long blind-levels, triple-stacked tournament. Before long we began to conclude that a player would be fine making it to Day 2 without playing a single hand. We couldn’t agree, however, on where that chipstack would be at the end of Day 1.

So here is my attempt to calculate it … feel free to disagree and/or disparage:

More…


Team Pokerati at the 2010 WSOP

John Harris: Weekend WarriorTTU

by , May 18, 2010 | 4:53 am

We wouldn’t be heading to the 2010 WSOP without patches, obv … isn’t that the whole point of the summer? (But we are running out ’em guys, so do be judicious with the sticky side.) The Team Pokerati crew will include some familiar faces and some new ones, too — from across the spectrum of player types who make their way to the Rio each summer. Follow along, root ’em on, and stay tuned leading up to WSOP Opening Day as we reveal the rest of our player line-up.

This year, leading off will be John Harris, aka @JohnHarristtu.

If Harris is a minor-league pro, then you might consider him a solid A-ball player. He’s done well at poker, but hasn’t yet made a big splash in the Hendon Mob database. (His profile here.) Harris comes from Dallas, where he took over as the tournament director for the 2007 Pokerati Invitational (and did an awesome job). He now lives in Las Vegas and is currently a dealer at Bellagio and the Venetian. He’s dealt the World Series for the past three years, became a TV-table dealer, and in 2009 was a finalist for WSOP Dealer of the Year. But this year Harris won’t be pitching cards at the Series … he’ll be working instead at the Venetian Deep Stacks and playing at the Rio on his days off.

His first event this year will be Event #1 — the $500 Casino Employees event. Beyond that, Harris will be looking to play all six of the $1,000 weekend events … believing that gives him the best prospects for ROI.

However, as an A-ball player, Harris is working with an A-ball bankroll. Thus, he’s currently locking down backers — friends and poker associates liking his chances of small-cashing repeatedly and/or going deep in at least one of those $1k events.

He’s seeking $6,500 in total, and still has shares available. So help Harris get in the game! He’s even got a nifty PowerPoint presentation laying out his tournament stats and the backing arrangement he’s offering.

Go Harris! And if you win a bracelet, we’ll definitely buy more patches.


Bustout Queen

Linda pitches bad beats to Ivey, Begleiter, Shulman, Buchman

by , Nov 8, 2009 | 6:24 am


Linda Tran delivered the harsh bad beats to Phil Ivey, Steve Begleiter, and in the hand pictured here, Jeff Shulman.

This is her second time dealing the WSOP November Nine … it was her birthday … and I caught up with her (on a ledge actually) to find out what it’s been like to (repeatedly) deliver the bad news, perhaps to the detriment of dealer tips.

Bustout Queen
[audio:Linda-Tran.mp3]

UPDATE: Buchman out at her hand now, too.

WHAT ARE the odds: She’s busted out via bad beat three Jews and a black guy. All the white/Euro hands held up. Just-sayin’ …


RE: You Be the Floor

by , Jun 23, 2009 | 12:03 am

The question was: How much can the first person to act come in for in Pot Limit Omaha if the blinds are 5k/10k, and the big blind is all-in for only 5k?

Most seem to believe that in WSOP-branded PLO, a true pot is a true pot, and therefore the answer is 30k. However, according to the decision handed down by TD Steve, it is still 35k, because you count the big blind as complete, lest you wanted to let someone limp for 5k. Most who disagree believd that sure, the minimum should be 10k, but the max would be only 30k. I tracked down the TD in question, and before I had the camera rolling, he acknowledged, “I was wrong.” But he may have just been joking, so I went Bill O’Reilly/local-news ambush journo and forced him to answer the tough question:


You Be The Floor:

Calculating an Undersize Pot

by , Jun 21, 2009 | 5:16 pm

An interesting situation came up the other day in a $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha that required floor intervention … (yes, even Harris screws up every once in a while occasionally calls for assistance.)

Blinds were 5k/10k … the big blind was all-in for his last 5k … meaning there was 5k in front of the small blind, 5k in front of the big blind … so the question is: How much can the first player to act bring it in for? Or perhaps more specifically, since we all probably know that the minimum to call is still 10k … How much would “pot” be in this situation?


Excalibur to Abandon High-Tech Tables?

by , Jun 20, 2009 | 12:48 pm

photo: Flipchip / LasVegasVegas

That’s the word we’re hearing … Excalibur has apparently contacted their previously laid-off dealers and offered them their jobs back — with a return to live, non-electronic play on July 15. Not sure yet whether this a sign of a rebounding Vegas economy or players just not taking to the PokerTek PokerPro tables, despite their offering some of the lowest stakes in town and the ability to play Pot-Limit Omaha at the flip of a switch.

Thanks @Bundas1971 for the tip!

More details here.


Hand Breakdown (in Limit Hold’em)

Devo’s Set vs. Boeken’s Overpair + Dealer Error

by , Jun 19, 2009 | 8:37 am

PokerNews has a pretty cool new(ish) feature on YouTube called “Hand of the Day” — where they get two players to break down a specific tournament situation in a relatively interesting way. In this episode, they talk to Bryan Devonshire and Noah Boeken about an unusual hand in $1,500 Limit Hold’em where the dealer dropped the stub and exposed three cards from the bottom of the deck:


More Team Pokerati Dealer Posse at the WSOP

by , Jun 15, 2009 | 11:24 am

DealerZach, pitchin’ to the Ladies … $1k NLH:


Team Pokerati at the Final Table

by , Jun 13, 2009 | 5:42 am

Jeff Carris beat out Jason Somerville to win the $1,500 NLH-Shootout in a 20-minute heads-up duel. And our own Team Pokerati ITMer John Harris (@johnharristtu) had just stepped into the box to deal the final hand:






Dealer Report: Cash Game Tips Noticeably Down

by , Jun 5, 2009 | 6:41 am

Just talked to one of my dealer sources — a reliable one, with decades worth of experience, not the sort who just likes to bitch after blowing a night’s worth of tips playing video poker … and she tells me, “In the six years I have been dealing here [at the WSOP] this is by far the worst.” She says she knows the economy is bad, “but this year they stiff you all the time. More of them.”

The worst game for dealers is supposedly 7-card stud (no relation to previous post), where she is regularly making $2-$3 a down (a half-hour shift).

Her best down so far has been $57. “But that only happened once.”

The tables that provide the best, or at least most reliable tips: $2/$5 no-limit, and $5/$10 PLO. “But never the highest stakes [$25/$50] PLO. Those guys never tip.”