The Exposed Ace and The Irresponsible Dealer

EDITED TO ADD:  BY ALL MEANS, YOU ARE WELCOME TO READ THIS POST AND LAUGH AT ME.  BUT, I HAVE BASICALLY RETRACTED THIS POST.  SEE THE FOLLOW UP EXPLANATION, APOLOGY, HERE

I saw this recently and to me, the dealer’s actions were so egregious, I don’t want to name the poker room where this occurred.  Maybe I’m overreacting.  Please tell me if you think so.
 

The room in question is one where there are a lot of regs, and I’m pretty sure the dealer knew the player involved from having dealt to him many, many times.  He addressed him by his first name, and didn’t do that with most of the other players even though all our names were on the screen in front of him.  Also, this is a room where a lot of people order full meals delivered to them while they play.  This was a NL cash game.

The player in seat 2 was an older gentleman to say the least.  As soon as he got to the table, he ordered a meal, which by now had been delivered to him.  So he was eating and not paying 100% attention to the game.  He usually had to be told by the dealer to look at his cards and act when it was his turn, at least before the flop.  So he was eating and not paying any attention at all to the dealer as he dealt this particular hand.

For whatever reason, the second card dealt to seat 2 flipped over.  It happened to be the Ace of spades.  A few players reacted to this of course.  “Oh, what a card.”  “He’s gonna be real pissed about not getting the Ace,” that sort of thing.  Meanwhile the dealer quickly grabbed the card as soon as he was finished dealing and put it on top of the deck.  He didn’t really flash the card to everyone, but it seemed like everyone but the poor gentleman in seat 2 had seen it.  Someone asked, “Is that the burn card?”  The dealer said, “Let it go….it’s over.”  I will point out that the dealer is not a young man himself, but is a veteran dealer I see at this room all the time.

I was a bit shocked.  I guess I gave off a tell, and so the dealer gave me a particular hard stare, which I took to mean, “Don’t you dare say anything about the exposed card.”  Seriously, it was a nasty look.  I said nothing and looked away.  At this point the preflop betting was about to begin and I expected the dealer to show seat 2 the exposed card, so that we all had the same information.  But that didn’t happen.

True, the Ace of spades was exposed on top of the deck, but I would bet anything that seat 2 would not have been able to see it from where he sat, based on how the dealer was holding the deck.  I’ll bet even a 25-year-old with 20/20 vision wouldn’t have been able to see it. 

After a few limps and a few folds, the dealer had to call seat 2’s name to get him to look at his cards and act.  He did and I kept waiting for the dealer to show him the Ace of spades sitting on top of his deck, but he did not.  Wow.

To make matters worse, the old guy in seat 2 limped in.  I don’t remember if there was a raise, but he was still in the hand when the flop was dealt.  As soon as the betting action was over preflop, the dealer took the exposed Ace off the top of the deck as fast as he possibly could and put it face down as the burn card.  The flop came Ace-King-X!  Seat 2 called a flop bet but folded on the turn.

I want to make it clear, I don’t think the dealer was actually intentionally trying to stick it to this player.  I strongly suspect he knew that this particular player would not react well to finding out that he had been dealt an Ace that had been taken out of play.  He didn’t want any backlash.  That’s my guess, anyway.

Well, that’s fine.  In the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter whose card was exposed. I mean, unless it happens to someone like me who has a blog and is looking for stories to tell.  I have no problem with the guy not being advised that it was his card that was exposed.  But it was totally unfair to not make sure he knew that the Ace of spades was out of play.  That is information everyone at the table is entitled to know.  For this one hand, the guy was at a disadvantage compared to the rest of us.

My gut tells me that the reason the dealer didn’t make a point of showing him the exposed Ace before he had to act—without telling him that it was his card, that is—is that if he had, he was concerned that one of the players would then pipe up and say that the card would have been his.  And like I said, I think the dealer had reason to believe this particular player would be very unhappy about that.  So he didn’t want to take a chance

I have no idea if it made a difference.  But it sure didn’t seem right to me that he wasn’t informed of the exposed Ace.

Now I know you can make a case that poker is a visual game, and that the guy should have been paying enough attention to see the exposed card for himself right away. But who are we kidding?  At most tables, half the players are distracted by something when the cards are dealt.  People are texting, reading something on their phone, watching a movie….or eating.  At this particular table, there was almost always someone distracted by eating a meal.  It could have been any other player at the table.  The dealer usually takes the card and waves it from side to side to show the entire table what card is out of play.  This most definitely didn’t happen.

Seat 2 lost a few bucks, so maybe no real harm done.  What if he had lost a big pot that he would have played differently if he knew that card was out of play?  A long shot, sure, but 8 players at that table had a slight advantage on the poor senior citizen.  The dealer penalized the guy for his own error.

Not fair.

The rest of his down, which didn’t last much longer, whenever I glanced at him, the dealer seemed to want to stare me down.  I dunno if he was doing that to the other players or I was the only one who seemed to be upset by his action.  Or….maybe it was my imagination?

Now, we’ve all had cards dealt to us that we would have wanted but got flipped, right?  I recall one time when a player had an Ace exposed and he told the dealer he wanted to keep it, even though everyone saw he had an Ace.  Of course, they wouldn’t let him keep it.

I dunno if I ever told this story on the blog before, but I still remember something from the first time I ever tried a no limit cash game when I was still a 2/4 limit player.  It was very early in the session too.  The dealer exposed one of my cards.  It was a 10.  My second card was a 10—I looked at it before I got the replacement card.  OK, pocket 10’s.  That’s nice, but still no guarantee of anything.  Since I hadn’t even read a NL strategy book at that point, I really wouldn’t have known how to play it anyway (you could argue that, to this day, I don’t know how to play it, I suppose).  I don’t recall what the replacement card was but it was an easy fold, preflop.  Of course, there was a 10 on the flop.  The hand continued and the turn was a 10.  So yeah, if not for the exposed card, I would have had quads.  Even I couldn’t have screwed that up too badly.

I was miffed, but that’s life.  It was unfortunate, but accidents happen.  But I can tell you, if I hadn’t seen the exposed card, and didn’t know that there was a 10 out of play, it would have been worse, because I would have been disadvantaged.

Anyway, I feel bad for the older gentleman who didn’t know the Ace of spades was out of play.  He didn’t need to know that it was his card….but he sure did need to know that it was never going to show up in that particular hand.