How to tilt your dealer

As players, if you haven’t yet experienced the delights of tilt, you are at least familiar with the concept. A usually disciplined player presses the Red Button and starts to play wildly, losing their temper, and usually their money along with it. A potentially costly loss of control which is often characterised by visible signs of distress – you become edgy, chasing lost money along with your lost temper. Hand selection and all the patient skills which come belong to the winning player all go out the window as the blinkering effect of tilt takes over.

Having dealt for a year or so, I saw many instances of tilt, but was surprised to find that there are three broad categories of player which can turn the most methodical, professional dealer into a mistake-making, red-faced snappy so-and-so. I don’t begin to class myself amongst the top dealers about, but I imagine they too must have experienced some level of Dealer Tilt at some point (although are much better at controlling it). It’s nothing to do with tipping (usually illegal here in England anyway) – whether or not you get tipped at the end of a hand makes a difference at the end of the week but it’s not enough to upset the professionals. So, if you want to know what sends a poker dealer round the bend, here are the top three ways to tilt your dealer, in reverse order.

1) Play slowly. Pay no attention to the game, and, preferably, be so drunk you can’t pick up your chips.

There is nothing so annoying as having to play for all the players at your table as well as keeping the action moving. Reminding someone to put their blind in is one thing, but knowing that players must be shepherded along every bet, told what the flop is if they’re looking the wrong way and have their chips counted for them every time they want to act is like telling a preschool teacher that they have to do the finger-painting for the kids they’re instructing, and then grade it, hang it on the wall and eat all their portions of Brussels sprouts at lunch.

It’s a dealer’s job to be a facilitator of the action, relieving the players of the tedious business of shuffling and dealing those pesky cards, taking the house’s percentage and sorting out the pots (especially in pot limit and no-limit games). The other players inevitably become annoyed with the drunks and slowcoaches and who better for them to take their frustration out on than the dealer? It all gets very messy, as you can only ask Sir whether he wishes to bet or check and move on, repeatedly. The number of hands per hour goes down (which neither the house nor the players like) and as a result so do your tips (if you can receive them) and the mood of all involved.

2) Be superstitious, to an extreme degree. Complain that your dealer isn’t your ‘lucky dealer,’ that your ‘lucky seat’ has been taken by some queue-jumping ruffian, that the deck needs to be changed every 15 minutes as it’s not being good to you. When your hand is busted, slag off the dealer; after all, it’s his/her fault.

There is no use complaining about this, really – gamblers are superstitious. They have lucky socks, lucky card protectors, favourite hands, favourite seats (although there is sometimes a reasonable reason for this). If you’ve been dealing long enough, you will have seen every possible bad beat pop out of the deck, and the way some even veteran players react to seeing a three-outer crack their potentially lucrative hand, you’d think they had never experienced an outdraw. I have never yelled at a dealer for producing the one card that gives my donkey opponent a pot that should have been mine. I can see why people do it, though – they have to carry on sitting with the outdrawer and the other players and the only ‘safe’ target is the poor member of staff. My favourite response to a repeated haranguer came from a dealer in California – “I don’t write the letters, I just deliver the mail.”

In the case of a misdeal, there’s always one guy who takes a peek at his lone card, say, and discovers an Ace, deciding that this is a good reason to yell at his dealer. Better yet, as we all know, every poker player’s home game rules are The Rules, and different card rooms differing rulings are objects of great contention which prove a perfect excuse for, you guessed it, telling off the dealer.

My favourite example is this: where I worked, if a flop was dealt in error (say one player hadn’t yet acted) the flop and burn were to be reshuffled into the stub of the deck ( but not other players’ folded hands) and the thing redone completely once action had finished. This was in violation of many players’ ‘take the third card from the bottom’ rule, but in fact was a far better ruling. Instead of knowing for a fact that your straight flush could never again be a possibility (with the original cards mucked), there was an equal chance of the same cards coming out again. Did they want to hear this reasonable explanation for the ruling? Of course not. Did they want to call the manager and hear it from him, while loudly telling off the ignorant dealer? Of course.

3) Become a Deputy Dealer

This takes the biscuit, when it comes to tilting your dealer. In a tricky high stakes pot limit cash game especially, I often found someone would take it upon themselves to announce the amount of every bet loudly, say what the side pot would be, or be in permanent vocal suspicion that the rake taken exceeded its limit.

Right when I started out, I remember thinking how nice it was that the gentleman in seat 4 was doing my job for me (it wasn’t yet second nature to count chips by looking at the stack or work out percentages of pots). Very soon it became apparent why the more experienced dealers couldn’t stand this behaviour. The one time you take someone else’s word for what the side pot should be, will, according to Sod’s law, be the one time the guy is wrong. Deputy Dealers have the same propensity towards making mistakes as the real thing, and if the floor is called over a dispute and the reason you give for having mis-awarded a couple of hundred dollars is “Well, that guy said the side pot would be x,” it’s not going to be taken well.

Touching the pot is a big no-no, too: other players (quite rightly) take issue with their chips being handled by other people round the table and the helpful change being given or separation into the amount of the call and the amount of the raise ends up being the cause of a nice juicy argument, which the dealer should have avoided by slapping the offending hand, if necessary.

In conclusion, good dealers are fast, efficient movers of cards and money, and should be left to get on with it. You should barely notice the dealer, really, if they’re doing their job well. Tilting your dealer will only result in a decrease in efficiency, which is in no-one’s best interests. But if you want to do it, now you know.