Dealers watch out!

I probably can give Anguila a run for his money as worst poker blogger out there, but I thought I would make a feeble attempt at a post for those thousands of readers I have out there whose lives are empty without a blog posting to read (which one is the dripping-with-sarcasm font?).

I was reading a Life as a Central City Floor post about a player who feigns not to understand English when trying to shoot an angle. While not totally related I was reminded of an incident while playing a tournament at Caesar's a while back. I don't know why I felt so strongly about this then but it obviously bothered me enough at the time to say something and still is in my memory months later. This incident probably has less to do with poker than with my broader belief system and values and sense of fairness.

We're all familiar with the English-only rule at the poker table and how the level of enforcement varies from card room to card room. Normally I'm not bothered by two people exchanging a few words in another tongue if it's fairly obvious that they aren't discussing a hand in play. At some point in the tournament I heard a discussion at the table behind me. The dealer was trying to enforce the English-only rule with a player and two of his friends who were sweating him. It caught my attention not only because of the dealer's raised voice, but also because he tried to warn the players in both English and then German. It got to a point where the TD was called over and after straightening things out the TD went so far as to make an announcement over the PA system to all the players.

Flash back to sometime during the earlier stages of the tournament, an older gentleman sat down to play. I definitely remember it was early in the tournament because he didn't last all too long. This gentleman was a jovial, friendly man with longish, silver hair and an obvious accent. His play was terrible but he managed to dole out some suck-outs to accumulate some chips. Sometime during the course of play the dealer and player somehow determined that they shared a common (native?) language. I couldn't place the language but the conversation seemed to be of the "where are you from?" "do you still live there?" "business or pleasure?" vein. It was fairly brief and soon enough the dealer got pushed.

Honestly I didn't think much of it and I most definitely didn't think that in any way was the dealer trying to give the player any information that would give him an edge in the tournament. But after the incident with the Germans I felt like I had to say something. I mean, if the TD is going to go so far as make an announcement to all the players, then the dealers can't be sending out mixed signals by conversing in other languages with the players. So at the next break I pulled aside the TD and told him what I had seen at our table. The TD took a very serious interest when I related the story and immediately went to our table to look through the dealers who had dealt at our table to identify the dealer in question. Something about the way the TD looked after he figured out who it was told me that this probably wasn't the first problem he'd had with the dealer in question and briefly made me question whether I had done the right thing.

Unfortunately I probably should have focused more on my own play than worry about dealer infraction because I played like a donkey and busted out shortly after the break.