Shoving over a neatly-stacked pot: normal practice or bad etiquette?

[Svarog]

This is not a big deal, but I've been wondering about this.

I'm at a 1/1/2 spread limit game, sitting directly across from the dealer. I win a pot that consists of 4 neat stacks of 20 $1 chips. The chips are within my arm's length, but the dealer immediately pushes them over sloppily, knocking over all the stacks in a diagonal motion, so that they can't be restacked too easily.

Now the chips are about 2 inches closer to me than they were before, but are all in a heap and I need to restack them.

Is this normal, or should the dealer have just scooted the pot with both hands, to avoid toppling the stacks?

[GTL]

I wouldn't get pissed. It's a time thing. Generally, if a player makes a call with one or two big stacks and loses, the dealer will pick those up, give them to you, then push the pot. It would have taken him two motions to push the pot anyways, so he keeps the stacks intact. If he can get the pot to you in one motion, he should just push it. Better for you to be stacking as he's dealing the next hand, than have him take more time to get the pot to you.

[jamzfive]

Plus, isn't stacking the booty part of the joy of playing the game?

jb

[RarocASP]

I've seen this done a ton and have always wondered if it was taught to dealers as best practice by some casinos. Perhaps stacking the chips creates some kind of excitement, causing players to further enjoy their casino experience. Pretty sure this is a stretch though. Any insight from a dealer?

[LuckyTxGuy]

I had a dealer the other be very careful and push me two big stacks of chips without knocking them over and made a little comment like "trying not to knock these over for you....". I tipped an extra $1 for her courtesy. Oh and it was a huge pot. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

But I see no reason to knock the stacks over, especially for the sake of saving time. How many times does the action come to the guy who's stacking chips and he looks up and realizes the action is on him, he hasn't looked at his cards, he's got to move his chips, slide his cards over to look, all the while working around a pile of chips. THAT slows the game down. Not blaming the player, I'm just saying that if the chips are already stacked in the pot, I see no reason to push them over.

Just my 2 cents!

[MicroBob]

luckytx - that's exactly what I thought of. That the guy stacking the chips frequently slows the game down.
Not a big deal.
But I do think it's possible that the hands could actually go a tad faster if the dealer took the extra 3 seconds to hand over the stacks without trying to push them down.

[redfisher]

I think it's just too difficult to push a big pot in stacks. Keep in mind that they had to stack the chips to get the pot right and didn't have to bring all the chips in at once. That's why they have you leave you river bet out until a winner is determined. They don't want your chipstack all screwed up, it's just inevitable in huge pots.

Try pushing 300 chips around on the felt some time.

[buddypup]

commerce casino dealers do this all the time.....all the chips will be ready in the pot, usually stacked up if its just heads up....when you win, they will take all the neat stacks, and knock them over in your direction....Its almost like its done on purpose.

[Roma Norgy]

I've seen instances where a player requests to move seats and the dealer moves up to 6 neatly stacked stacks of chips across the table for them as a courtesy.

Granted the dealer waited till after the cards for the next hand were dealt to do it...

[lippy]

If a dealer ships me stacks, I knock them over just so that I can stack them back up :-D.