Curious Dealer?
 

So I’m sitting in the 5 seat at the local B&M in my usual 3/6 game. There is a relatively new (to me) dealer. She has probably been there a couple of weeks but I usually only get to play once a week, so I don’t know her very well yet. She seems like a competent dealer, probably better than many of the other dealers there.

Last night there were only a couple of tables going, so we were getting the same dealer like every third down. I had been having a pretty good night, was up somewhere around 30 BB’s and had a pretty good stack of chips in front of me. I had been folding a lot of hands during her first down-I’m normally pretty tight anyway (a lot tighter than your usual 3/6er), but I just wasn’t seeing any hands and voluntarily played maybe one hand during her down.

She comes back an hour or so later, and deals a few hands, all of which I fold. The next hand, I’m UTG+1. UTG limps, I say “fold,” and toss my cards in front of her. She picks ‘em up and has a look. Doesn’t make any remark or anything, just looks and puts them back down on the table. Next hand, same thing happens - I’m UTG and fold, and she looks at my folded hand. Now I’ve seen dealers look at an occasional folded hand before, but not too often, and certainly not two hands in a row folded by the same player. And I’ve had dealers look at my hand after I made a comment about it – if I’m sitting in the 1 or 10 seat and quietly lean over and say something like “boy, I sure missed that flop” or “those were terrible” and toss them in and they will look at them and smile or something (btw, invariably when I do this, I would have flopped two pair or a set or something). She didn’t look at anyone else’s, just mine, I think 3 times during her down. Now I would guess that the dealer has the right to look at anyone’s hand if they suspect cheating or collusion or whatever, but this was obviously done only because she was curious.

Has this happened to anybody else? Did you do anything? If so, what?

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

WOW! The dealer looked at your cards? I hope you called the floor over later privately suggested she be fired immediately.

Of all the things that can happen to you in life, this has to be the worse. How could you just sit there and put up with such injustice?

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

GODDAMN this is such a nice site!

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

No, it's not ok for the dealer to look at your cards without asking. And they really aren't even supposed to ask. Well trained, well managed, professional dealers won't do this. One problem with them looking is they tend to have trouble protecting the cards from the view of other players while they do this while also keeping the deck flat and protected and doing everything else a dealer is supposed to do.

But as CC0 not-so-politely says, it's not a huge hairy deal in the grand scheme of things. If it bugs you, or especially if she's exposing the cards to other players when she looks, politely ask her to knock it off. But she'll get tired of this play-at-home game pretty quickly, I imagine.

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

"You look at my hand one more time, and I'm getting the manager over here and have him explain to you what your job does and does not entail. Am I clear?"

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

GODDAMN this is such a nice site!

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

u can say dont look at my cards, she was curious how u got a big stack cuz u werent playing ne hands and she prolly wanted to see the kinds of hands u were letting go so she could try it out. YOU ARE A SHARK1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

Something very similar happened to me this past weekend at Caesars in AC, except that the dealer both looked at my cards AND commented on my play.

It was a 1/2 NL game, and I was UTG. The first card sent my way hit my stack and flipped over, exposing the 5d. No big deal... the dealer followed the usual procedure of reserving the exposed card for the burn and completed the deal.

However, after finishing the deal and before I looked at my cards, the dealer grabbed them and took a look. Because this took me by surprise, I didn't quite catch what he said as he did so, but it was something to the effect that "this won't be a misdeal unless his other card is another 5."

He then slid the cards back to me, and I proceed to fold JTo. The dealer then commented, "Wow... that hand's not worth 2 bucks? Pretty tight." And then, after the flop came out Q high, he looked at me and said "Good fold."

I was pretty annoyed, but chose not to say anything to him or to the floor manager. Even so, I felt that the dealer was way out of line.

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

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I was pretty annoyed, but chose not to say anything to him or to the floor manager. Even so, I felt that the dealer was way out of line.

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This is where you guys are wrong. These subpar dealers are going to continue doing things like this, probably because they think there is nothing wrong with it, until somoene speaks up and goes to the person of authority that can fix the problem. There really isn't much use posting on the internet with the "should I have said something" line that I have seen here so many times. If you're asking yourself and a message board that question, the answer 99% of the time is yes you should have.

Re: Curious Dealer?
 

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WOW! The dealer looked at your cards? I hope you called the floor over later privately suggested she be fired immediately.


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I would actually have been satisfied with a two week suspension. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]