What should the dealer do? What would you want them to do?

[psandman]

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But you don't know my experience,

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well then why don't you tell us?

[Rottersod]

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What a ridiculous answer. If the dealer doesn't tap the table, will you call the floorperson and ask that they adopt your personal dealing procedures?
This is something I see at the tables all the time-- a player who does not know dealing procedures (but thinks he does) giving the dealer a hard time.
You should be more concerned with the dealers who have to tap the table in order to keep up on the action (It is a defensive procedure....the dealer is not sure if action is completed and is giving the players one last chance to keep him from making a mistake)
Even more ridiculous are the dealers who tap the table heads up, or when there are 3 players...and they all check. That's pathetic. And it is not in dealer manuals.

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You're pretty new here so you may not realize but Randy has many years' experience working in and running poker rooms. If he says that a dealer should always tap then there's a good, real world reason for it.

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Yes...we know what the reason is...his dealers are not well trained. Rather than giving them proper training, he tells them to tap the table.
Whether I am new here or not has little relevance to professional dealing techniques. Nor does Randy's experience in poker. But you don't know my experience, yet you make an assumption that the new guy must be wrong....because Randy has been doing it this way for a long time. Lots of people in poker do things incorrectly for a long time. That's the probem.
But if he wants a room full of dealers that can't follow the action to continually tap or pound the table....I guess he can have it.

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You're getting off to a wonderful start here.

[AlaskaGal]

I thought tapping the table was standard operating procedure.

[youtalkfunny]

Ruprecht,

In your world, is it true that "professional" accountants should not need erasers on their pencils? Any accountant who uses an eraser was not properly trained, right?

Why pay for guardrails? Just train the drivers to do a better job of staying on the road!

By the way, if you're going to visit twoplustwo.com and insist that " it is not in dealer manuals," you should at least read the dealer manual published by 2+2. On page 84 of 2+2's "The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook", under the heading "Burning a Card", you will find the following:

1. Always tap the table before you burn. This is to notify the players of your intent so that they can stop your action should the betting be incomplete.

I like they put a big 1 in front of it, because they think it's important.

(I wish I could give proper credit to the 2+2 poster who once said, "When you see a thread that was supposed to be dead by now, bumped back to the top with a lot of replies, be sure to open it. You'll find gold, every time.)

[Gonso]

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What is the "tap" about ? Professional dealers shouldn't be tapping the table at all, really (a little more acceptable in a multi-way pot with raises). Heads up, the dealer should be able to follow the action without the tapping.

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Ruprecht,

The "tap, burn, turn" procedure is used in every Atlantic City poker room, without exception. More than that, the dealer schools teach this procedure.

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But you don't know my experience, yet you make an assumption that the new guy must be wrong....

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Well, in my case, I don't have to "assume" anything, because my experience gives me more than enough expertise to "know" you're wrong. Your experience (whatever it might be), is clearly not in dealing poker, so it's pretty much irrelevant.

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And it is not in dealer manuals.

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That's nonsense, and I think you've never opened a dealer manual in your life. I have the manuals from Professional Dealers School and the dealing program at the local college here (the two largest dealing schools in my area). The PDS Handbook Youtalk mentioned (certainly the best poker dealing text I've ever seen) notes this several times also. Page 24: "After each round of betting, lightly tap the table to indicate to players that you are about to deal."

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This is something I see at the tables all the time-- a player who does not know dealing procedures (but thinks he does) giving the dealer a hard time.

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This is basically what you're doing now. You don't know the rules, but are trying to argue as if you do. Do you actually have any experience in a live poker room at all (live players should be used to seeing this)? Where exactly are you playing where you don't see any dealers tap before burning cards? Or what rulebook says that you shouldn't?

In fact, who told you this in the first place? Where did you get it from?

[Gonso]

LOL, in retrospect I probably didn't need a post that long. Cliff notes:

1) Tap, burn, turn is super standard.

2) Stop making things up.

[RR]

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LOL, in retrospect I probably didn't need a post that long. Cliff notes:

1) Tap, burn, turn is super standard.

2) Stop making things up.

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Sometimes someone will make a post that I just treat liek a floor decision. I tell them how it is and then walk away.

[pokerswami]

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Yes...we know what the reason is...his dealers are not well trained. Rather than giving them proper training, he tells them to tap the table.
Whether I am new here or not has little relevance to professional dealing techniques. Nor does Randy's experience in poker. But you don't know my experience, yet you make an assumption that the new guy must be wrong....because Randy has been doing it this way for a long time. Lots of people in poker do things incorrectly for a long time. That's the probem.
But if he wants a room full of dealers that can't follow the action to continually tap or pound the table....I guess he can have it.

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I believe strongly that you're wrong. I don't want this to degenerate into any type of personal attack back and forth, so please consider the points that follow.

First off, a quote from the 2+2 book, The Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook, page 84, under Burning a Card, “1. Always tap the table before you burn. This is to notify the players of your intent so that they can stop your action should the betting be incomplete.”

Of course it’s not just the betting that is of concern. It warns the players that you are about to deal card(s) and gives them a chance to stop you if anything is amiss or they’re unsure of something important.

Since you referred to dealer training so strongly in your posts in this thread, then consider that one of the most important attributes of a good dealer is that he follows proper procedures routinely. The exact thing you want from a dealer is that he habitually uses the correct procedures.

There are many things that tend to degrade a dealer’s performance as he is dealing. Very often, dealing is done under less than optimum table conditions and dealer alertness conditions. But the point of good training is that the dealer will continue to follow the procedures that he was trained to do even under adverse conditions.

I have many times been on duty for more than 12 hours, even more than 20 hours more than a couple dozen times. You may consider this a mismanagement issue, but you still want a dealer who is sleep-deprived to be in the habit of following proper routines. In other words, dealers often find themselves dealing while sleep-deprived, or after taking necessary cold/allergy medicine or dealing with family/economic/health/employee relationship/player relationship/behavior issues. Their focus will be less than optimum. You want them to let the players know they are about to act with their tapping to give the best chance for that dealer at that time in those circumstances to not make a mistake. The main point of this is that you want them to always tap so that they will always tap, even when they know that nothing else needs to be done prior to their next action.

Even if a dealer is fresh, the table conditions can be such that he can be unaware of the real situation and thus act prematurely. The tap adds another level of protection to prevent this. Have you never seen a dealer dealing to 10 or even 11 seated players with multiple sweaters, 20 loud conversations, yelling and commotion all around plus other loud mayhem at various points around the cardroom?

It’s very easy to miss a player saying “raise” or anything else under these conditions.

It’s very easy to go straight from dealing one type of game/stakes for hours straight to another game and forget to do something necessary before acting. This can be greatly enhanced with the loud boisterous atmosphere as previously cited plus being sleep-deprived plus other mentioned and unmentioned distractions.

So, what you do want are dealers trained to routinely follow procedures that tend to minimize errors. Tapping before certain dealer actions is absolutely one of these procedures.

edited to add: "YouTalkFunny": I must have missed a page of responses before I started typing, or I wouldn't have repeated the book quote you already posted.

[El Diablo]

R,

"I have never seen anything in any dealer manual telling a player to tap the table."

Are you familiar with the dealer manuals people have cited in this thread?

[DavidC]

lol not 3, the deck may have been corrupted and turn and river might show it, plus dealers aren't perfect, so having them make a decision about a hand before the turn and river is dealt would lead to more errors than there are already.

I prefer to have it happen quickly, although that might cause more errors than dealing it at normal speed, so I'm going to say normal speed.

The slow turn and river drive me batshit crazy, though.