Ooooh it’s all kicking off and there’s two of my favourite things in play; live poker process debate and divided opinion.

If you missed the hand-related drama, I’m gonna let Silver-Haired Zia Chardonnay tell you all about it, and then below that is a very long, boring and nitty blog post.

Welcome home, party people!

“Ban him from every casino in America” is the first popular opinion about the elderly lad in the video who was scraping his lost chips back into his stack.
The second popular opinion is that the dealer and WSOP are terrible operators and everyone who works for them should be water-boarded into a sobbing, and ideally financially costly, apology.

When situations like this arise, I notice a difference in response from people who have worked in poker rooms as dealer/floor and people who have not.
I am thinking here about all the suggestions offered by people, who I’m sure are competent poker players, on how this type of hand should be dealt; I use the word “suggestions” here diplomatically, and as a linguistically efficient synonym for “absolute, dribbling, moronic nonsense”.

I like rules and I like good, strict processes; a great process always has many important business reasons and never requires the benefit of hindsight.
If your solution is perfect to solve this specific problem that happened in this one example of a hand, but ignores all the other potential problems in a similar pots, then it should be clear it’s a fix and not a reliable, or effective, process.

There are arguably different, but equally sound, processes that protect everyone in situations like this hand, but there is a uniform goal: Award the pot correctly.

Whilst the primary focus is always the correct and fair outcome for the customers in the hand, it’s also important to consider the surrounding customers’ perceptions. It is long-term beneficial to the bottom-line if customers fully comprehend all aspects of the product they are paying for; if another guy gets cheated some way I don’t understand today, then I will expect to get cheated some way I don’t understand tomorrow.

It’s extremely important to give both experienced customers and floor staff a fighting chance to help the dealer recreate a pot when mistakes do happen, and mistakes are guaranteed to happen because humans.
It’s also vital to prevent bad-actors from having any opportunity to exact a cheat, or for noobs to make a genuine error, that impacts the equity of some, or all, players paying rake to the room that day.

To keep control of the players’ emotions, it is key to do boring pot-admin BEFORE the result of the hand is decided by the poker gods. It’s not always possible, but any opportunity to do so should be taken.

Not least, it’s very profitable to instil a sense of confidence and control within dealers. It saves/generates revenue on measurable streams like hand rate ph, required floor staff, attendance at work, ongoing training costs and staff turnover.
It also has positive impact on less tangible assets such as overall team morale, peer support tracks (critical when the cardroom boss is a mega bitch) and customer satisfaction due to being around happier staff.

I have explained the multiple good reasons to have a strict process around dealing multi-way pots (or any pot) accurately.

LET’S GET NITTY WITH PROCESS!


We’ll assume 3 players as per video, and we will only be talking about a full all-in pre flop situation.
We will also assume that “cut down” or “count” means to display the chips in acceptable casino dealer format. Poker dealers who cannot do this are poorly trained poker dealers.

“Confirm count” means dealer to verbally state count to the players at the table (and themself!) not call floor each time for a full “check”.

In all cases chips remain in cut formation until scooped.
Not going to argue with peers about exactly where on the table pots should be held during hands; my opinion is best, but for the purpose of this, we will refer to “pot X place”.

We will also apply the following rules to the dealer:

You may not release the deck unless river action is complete, irrespective of the number, or size, of stacks requiring a count. In the event of an all in pot with live action to come, the deck must remain secure. If you have more than two active stacks to count, you may switch the deck between hands. You may not count chips with an arm across your body, nor fully turn your back to an active stack.

Never action the demand of a player if it contradicts what you think you should be doing. You are sure of your action, you can explain it, and you carry on. Or, you are not sure and you stop and call the floor.
If a player questions your actions, explain yourself once. In the 2nd instance, call the floor. Actioning a player demand in contravention of the house rules or dealer procedures is gross misconduct.

As a final meta-rule (breaking it would get your knuckles sharply rapped whilst training with me):
Don’t you dare touch a single chip until you know exactly what you intend to do with it.

12 Steps To Accurately Award A Multi-Way Pot In A Drunken ShitShow Of A Game

Seat 1: Shortstack(but close count to seat 2)
Seat 2: Medstack (but close count to seat 1)
Seat 3: Largestack
All in pre, quickly.
Suddenly, there’s six cards face-up and everyone’s rioting.

Step One: Fucking Focus. Pull and secure your muck, and announce “3-way all in table X”. Lean into the buzz and make your voice loud and excited. Assess proximity of floor in case bad shit goes down.

Step Two: Demand stacks (or at least large chips if there’s an obvious monster stack) are put across the betting line, or forward motion if there is no actual line. Do not move on to Step Two until all active stacks have indicated clear forward motion.

Step Three: Eyeball stacks to identify which you think is smallest.

Step Four: Count perceived smallest stack. Verbalise the count as you go and clearly announce your final count “seat 1 count = X”. Leave chips in formation in front of player.

Step Five: Eyeball stacks, find 2nd smallest and repeat Step Four. If it turns out that Seat 2 is actually the shorter stack, announce “seat 2 count = X. seat 1 covers this player”.

Step Six: Take the largest stack and count out the smallest stack value, announce the count. 1 second pause. scoop largestack portion into pot 1 place.

Step Seven: Take the middle stack, count out the smallest stack value, announce the count. 1 second pause. scoop the midstack portion into pot 1 place.

Step Eight: Eyes back to smallstack, confirm count. 1 second pause. scoop entire smallstack into pot 1 place. Announce the players by seat who can win pot 1.

Step Nine: Return to mid-stack change. Confirm the count. Scoop into pot 2 place.

Step Ten: Take the large stack, count off mid-stack change value. Confirm the count. 1 second pause. Scoop the chips into pot 2 place. Announce the players by seat who can win pot 2.

Step Eleven: Bang the table, bring the energy back up after them having to watch you do pot admin. Pull them back in if they are wandering about fist-bumping floorstaff who should be watching your pot. Make sure all active players are engaged and understand what pots they can or cannot win. FINAL PAUSE.

Step Twelve: Deal the community cards. Award the pots correctly.

The short version of this pretty boring blog is that everyone is responsible here. The house is responsible for creating an environment where “gentlemen’s rules” can thrive, but all players, especially experienced ones, are responsible for having an eye on the action. Players can’t do much, but they can STOP the game when they see that the procedures they know are not being followed; in many cases that’s enough to stop a total pot doom-spiral.

When everybody knows what is happening, and what to expect in any similar situation, everybody can become guardians of their game. It’s important in any game of poker, but especially in tournament format.

I definitely do not want the several-beers-deep-fist-bumping-guy-with-J5* losing chips unfairly to better players than me in a tournament I’m also in.
I promise you, opponents, I’m looking out for your tournament chips on my table, because it’s the fair and gentlemanly/gentlewomanly/gentlepersonaly thing to do.

I’d like to know the majority are looking out for the equity I have in other stacks on other tables, wouldn’t you?

Of course, in this exact case, the weight of responsibility is clearly on the operator. It’s irrelevant if that old boy was a cheat, because tight processes stop cheats dead. It doesn’t matter if J5guy was not paying attention to his equity because his beer is more interesting, that’s why he pays rake on his night out.

The house has final and ultimate responsibility to cover all bases relating to the original, single most important goal: Award the pot correctly.

I will finish on a top-tip for any floor staff who might be reading this. There is a very clear moment where likelihood skyrockets that this lass is gonna rot the pot in absolute whopper style.
It’s already messy, and you should already be there at the table if they followed Step 1. This tip doesn’t work if you’re over the other side of the room and they haven’t alerted you.

In case of this video, there does appear to be a floorman there at the exact relevant moment, which is unfortunate. If only I could have given him this tip a couple of days ago.
See the image below for the dealer-tell to look out for, it’s a still from the video captured by @TiltedTay.

Dealer nervously breaks my knuckle-rapper rule; she touches a chip and she has absolutely ZERO clue what she’s planning to do with it. This is a major tell from dealer that she is about to make some sort of error because she is not sure about what to do next.
We see a brief physical display of a human psychological need to reach for familiarity when we’re scared. She confidently knows what the ante is, but she does not know exactly how to level this pot, so she just reaches for familiar safety. Then, she recognises action is complete and she also confidently knows how to get the community cards out, so she barrels on the next unconscious pillar of hope for her psychological safety.

Without strong process instilled through strict training, her brain is unable to overrule her base instinct to rush to safety and she proceeds to destroy the security of the game.

Noticing this action in relatively new dealers will save you a world of pain in pot reconstruction mess.
See it and bark “what are you doing with that chip?!”; they will freeze like a rabbit in a flashlight (because neither the conscious nor the subconscious has an explanation for an unconscious action).
The moment they pause is the moment you can guide them back to structured, safe process, protect the pot, and not end up viral on poker Twitter.
Had the floorman present just asked his dealer in this second, “what are you doing with that chip?!” and then enforced Steps 2-12 above… I’d have had nothing to write a boring blog about today.

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* Sorry, @MithPoker, you absolutely do look like maximum craic to play poker with! Beers on me if we ever end up doing so!