Did you know she’s a dealer?
No! I thought she had a real job.
She’s so quiet. Never has any company and seems to keep to herself. I knew she worked at night but . . . who would’ve ever thought? I’ve lived next door to her for years and didn’t know.
People who spend their lives burning and turning aren’t all bad. Some of them are very good. Good at their jobs and good at disassociating themselves from that atmosphere after they leave their jobs and change out of their penguin costumes, you know – black and whites. They even pay their bills and live in real houses, raise children and continue their education. They don’t even have to be force fed to survive. Imagine that…real people!
If your dexterity and mechanical skills are excellent, you could have the makings of a great dealer but there are other factors involved. It would make your life much easier, if you are capable of all of the following:
If you are able to listen to fifteen people at the same time – ten players, the floor person asking which dealer you pushed out of the box, the player transferring to your game and wants to know where his seat is, the chip runner telling you the 5 seat has $500 behind, the cocktail waitress asking you who wanted a drink and anyone else that wants to butt in.
If you have eyes in the side and back of your head – the better to see those players seated in the 2 and 9 seat that check with their left pinkie which is hidden under their right hand and those dealers who are pushing you out of the box but stand 8 feet away from the table because your radar is more finely tuned than a bat’s.
If you’re 8 feet tall because invariably a guy that’s 6’4″ takes a seat in the 3 or 7 and his little, tiny arms restrict him from setting his chips out more than an inch from his cards.
Reading minds here is a big plus…then you know what a player meant to do instead of what he actually did. And don’t think for a half a second that you will ever be given credit for knowing what you are doing. After all, you’re only the dealer.
Having a calculator surgically implanted in your frontal lobe that can add and subtract large sums of money in uneven amounts would be a huge bonus. For instance, the game is Pot Limit Omaha with a $500 ante from each player, a $l,000 blind and the first player to come in has to open for $2,000. But now the players have placed a ceiling on the amount that each player can bet/play in a hand. Most of these games are ran completely by the players, but if one of them looks directly at you and asks how much is in the pot, cross your fingers that ‘multiple guess’ works here if you weren’t paying attention.
On top of that you are expected to have the rules and limits of all games firmly implanted somewhere on the ‘hard drive’ of your mind. But you are truly moving into the realm of the Twilight Zone if you think any rule ever applies in a high limit game. Everything changes, according to the limit and who the live one is in the game.
You may deal a game of $l-5 limit 7-Card Stud and then move immediately to $400-800 Razz and then on to $3-6 limit Holdem. Your next game could be a friendly little game of H-O-R-S-E. Maybe the limit is $l50-$300 and you have to take a time drop instead of rake; some games it’s taken after the flop and some games it’s taken right out of the blind before the hand is dealt. You also must put in a new deck when you enter a time game. Sounds like a lot of fun so far…doesn’t it?
What’s H-O-R-S-E? It’s Holdem, Omaha, Razz, Stud and Stud Eight or Better. The games may change with each dealer or the dealer may be required to move a button for each hand dealt, keeping track of the number of hands per game.
On top of this you have to: 1) be aware of who is playing the pot out. 2) make sure a player posts if they’re new and aren’t sitting down in the blind. 3) call for player’s chips. 4) call for cocktails. 5) get a set-up. 6) remember seat changes requested by players. 7) count the deck down once during your down. 8) be able to dodge and move your hands out of the way of speeding projectiles, (cards and chips), that are thrown by unhappy players. 9) and sometimes you have to call the fan police because the nonsmoker has a turbo jet fan lined up on the smoker’s chest. Hooray on that one! Some rooms are going/have gone non-smoking so you might be able to get past #9.
You must also remain completely calm when a player who just lost a hand tells you to make sure that you never walk in front of his car. Like you’re going to lay down, spread eagle, in the street if you know it’s him!
You must not laugh out loud when a player pays time for your down, loses the first hand you deal and then refuses to play anymore with you as a dealer. It’s harder still to keep a straight face when they lose that first hand and then proceed to slam chips into each pot after that while they are mumbling about “saving the blues”. In other words, you’re not going to be tipped by them. Bad beat right? You’ll find yourself wanting to reply, “You’d better save them, Sunshine, because as bad as you play you’re going to need every chip you’ve got!”
You may have a hard time getting through your set when a few of the ‘good ole boys’ are talking about going to a stripper bar or a ranch. They get right into the meat of the discussion from time to time. Makes you wonder if these guys have problems with real relationships or if it’s one of those male bonding events.
You earn the status of being a good dealer or a bad dealer by the number of pots you push to some players. The fact that you announce open seats, run your game, deal the cards right off the top, read the hands and push the pot to the winner, try to get cocktail service, change the deck while you’re calling for a set-up, count the rack down and call for a fill – doesn’t even register on the good dealer/bad dealer scale.
The best part of it is that there are many dealers in the poker world that do their job very well. There are a few that should pick another vocation, just as there are good poker players and few players that should also . . . well, no. If they did, what would the good players have to shoot at except each other?
As they used to say on the tournament circuit, “Who dresses them and how do they get here?”