Vegas: Binion's Tournament Dealer & Floor Mishap

[KipBond]

Was playing a $70 tournament at Binion's in Vegas a couple weeks ago. We were about 8 minutes into the first blind level (20m levels), when the following happened:

3 players see the flop. EP player bets 1/2 of his stack (about 600). MP goes all-in for about 900. LP goes all-in for about 1800. EP calls.

Turn, River... MP has winning hand. EP has LP beat. 2 minutes later the dealer still hasn't figured out how to split the pot. He calls the floor. 1 minute later the floor comes over, takes 2 minutes to reconstruct the hand, and divvy up the chips. He walks away. 30s later he comes back and says that was wrong, and takes another minute to make it right.

We now have 5 minutes left in this blind level. At no time was a side pot created. They kept trying to do it in their heads. After all the confusion, I'm still not sure they got it right.

What a mess.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

I swear I'm starting to feel like a broken record. If this moron dealer would simply follow the most basic of procedures there would be no problem. And the floor gets the award for pathetic moron of the week. Let's'rehash what should have been done:

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuh (drool should be dripping from the side of dealer's'mouth)...

Bring in an equal stack from each player equivalent to the smallest stack. Do this BEFORE YOU BURN AND TURN! This is the main pot.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuh...

For the side pot bring in two equal stacks that match what's'left of the second smallest stack. Push this pot FIRST. Push the main pot SECOND.

I suggest caution when I'm out driving and these two fools are crossing the street. Plus they both should also be kicked in the nuts, of course.

Al

[PantsOnFire]

I did it my head in 10 seconds. What a clusterf**k.

[KipBond]

[ QUOTE ]
I did it my head in 10 seconds. What a clusterf**k.

[/ QUOTE ]

Granted, I made it easier by rounding the stack sizes, but still it shouldn't be hard. Especially if they make a side pot like they should.

[Gonso]

I don't understand how any dealer able to pass an audition can't manage a hand with ONE side pot... if you're new and you get multiple side pots, okay maybe, but one?

It's not hard if you do it the right way, but it can be confusing if you haven't done it a few times. This was probably a very inexperienced dealer.

[bav]

While it could be a simple case of incompetence, it's also not improbable that it was just a case of cascading errors and brain-lock. Once things start to go wrong, with 10 players glaring at 'em demanding he fix the side pots, and 4 of them "helping", I've seen dealers just freeze. And anymore a lot of "floors" are dual-rates who have been dealing for 4mo themselves, so joint brain-lock isn't out of the question.

Or it could just be incompetence.

I think it was Bally's a few weeks ago where a pretty young thang in the box got flustered. She's clearly struggling with the side pot and does one thing, then moves a few chips, moves some more... then starts to push. No, it's not even close. Player at the table stops her. She just stares at the pot, then up at him. He finally asks "do you need help?" She silently nods. "SERIOUSLY?!" She nods.

Now you KNOW she has to be able to do this most of the time, right? It wasn't complicated, and it was a single side pot. But somehow she just spaced. All I can figure is she didn't remember how much the bets were, and had screwed up the piles of chips and couldn't recover on her own.

[KipBond]

FWIW, this dealer was early-mid 50's male ... the floor was early 30's male ... the dealer went on and on about how good the floor is at "figuring out these sorts of things". A while later, after the dealer left, someone started talking about what a mess it was -- I said: "and the moral of the story is: always make a side pot". Even if it's not hard to figure out, a side pot makes it easier for everyone else to make sure it's being done correctly.