Dealers have a thankless job. "Blinds and antes, please," is heard about 50,000 times during one tournament. Players are clueless and some have to be reminded twice. I get tired of hearing it, and I know the dealers get tired of having to nag self-absorbed players.
Yesterday, a dealer potentially saved my butt. With the blinds 5000/10,000 and 500 antes, I held ♦J ♥J and raised to 25,000. A guy two to my left was a short-stack and moved all in. Another guy thought for a while and folded. When it got back to me, I started to turn my cards over.
Do you see what's wrong?
The dealer said, "Wait," in an urgent tone of voice. I looked up and she asked, "Do you call?"
Sure enough, the other guy had 3000 more than my bet, and, even though it was obvious, I had to officially say call.
The other guy turned over ♠A ♣J.
"I folded Ace-Jack," said the guy who thought about calling. "There's no more jacks coming." (Calling a raise and an all-in with A-J is suicide, but that's casino poker for you.)
That was also good news for me -- only two aces left in the deck. My hand held up and I won a nice pot.
"If you turned your hand over without saying 'call', he could claim you were folding face up," the dealer pointed out.
She was right, of course. I don't usually make errors like that. I don't know what the tournament director would rule, but the dealer (her name is Vanessa) acted quickly to avoid a sticky situation.
When I left my tip after cashing, I felt good about it.
Photo of Horseshoe Casino by MOJO and taken with my P&S.
Good for you for both tipping appropriately and showing your appreciation.
ReplyDeleteI agree, it is so frustrating when dealers have to continually remind players to put out their antes and/or blinds.
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