Why Dealers are Donkeys

Aladdin $1-2 NL
3 hrs
+ $160

If you play a lot of live poker in casinos, you've probably played with a poker dealer who was playing on break or during off hours. And at some point maybe you wondered, Why do dealers play so bad?

Layne Flack and Scott Fischman were poker dealers once. Fischman thinks being a dealer helped him because all the hands he saw made him identify betting patterns that he now registers unconsciously. But for most dealers it just doesn't happen that way. I think part of the reason why is the half-hour turns in the box. Judging a poker game by a half hour is like judging a marathon by who is ahead after one mile. You get in a game for a half hour, you get a fragmented picture of a poker game, a distorted picture. You see a few big hands, maybe push three hands in a row to an action player but don't see him lose it an hour later. It is hard to see in a half hour the strategy the good players in the game are using. Of all the dealers I know, there is only one I consider a really good player.

Tonight at the Aladdin I was in a game with a guy who just started dealing at another casino. I will change his name cause I like him and everyone is entitled to an occasional big mistake. So I'll call him Trevor. Now I've played a lot with him and every time I would say he was solid. But now that he's started dealing his game may have fallen into the crapper.

There is a preflop raise from a straightforward player with AA, and Trevor calls with 99 and John calls behind him with 43. The flop comes 844, two diamonds. The preflop raiser bets $10, Trevor calls, and John raises to $40. The preflop raiser calls. Now Trevor, putting the preflop raiser on two unpaired high cards (he later explained), decides to push all-in for $200. Trevor has also played quite a bit with John, and in this spot, if you are observant and know how John plays, you know that John has to have a hand. He is not making a semibluff or pure move against a guy he thinks will call him with an overpair. Now John at this point also believes Trevor to be a smart, solid player. You see the dilemma this puts him in. He knows that Trevor should know John has a big hand, and that the preflop raiser most likely has a big overpair, yet Trevor is going over the top of both of them. John decides his 3 kicker sucks and that he could be drawing for a chop or almost dead against 88. He folds and is annoyed to see Trevor's play cost him a big pot which goes to the dude with AA as Trevor's nines fail to improve.

Hahaha, John doesn't bust anyone on that hand and I narrow the sidebet race to six.