Anonymous says

Wow! This is great reading. You write very well. From your descriptions of the other people in class + the instructor, I could really picture the scene as though it were in a movie.

Also, a lot of us don't pay enough attention to the reasons behind all of the old sayings and how important they really are such as allowing enough time to be a bit early for an appointment and the importance of practice. I agree with you about what a difference a great instructor can be when learning a new skill. Thanks for highlighting these fine points. I'm really looking forward to reading your next installment.

10/25/07

Anonymous says

I take you for the last longer against the other people in the class. Maybe you can get the Brawny man to fight the asian hulk and we will take bets on that too. Good luck rod17 and nice update.

10/25/07

xxrod17xx says

haha I will take you up on that last longer! I am 5'8" and 140 lbs. I used to be 155 but I survived a cancer scare last summer and lost a lot of weight that has been impossible to get back. 1k? lol

10/25/07

lakong says

Good stuff. I'm really digging this. Keep it up.

10/26/07

Anonymous says

Hi,

just to let you know that I link your blog in my webpage http://infopoker.free.fr/?page=2

10/28/07

Landlord79 says

I'm glad to see that you're coming along! Keep up the good work.
LL

11/10/07

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"Ah you hup me in crass?"

I am glad everyone enjoyed the first installment of this series. I guess I will start where I left off with the last post. I had just paid for school two days before the class started, and I was really excited to get started. I got to class on Monday about 15 to 20 minutes early. I think this is something people should really start getting used to, especially lazy poker players. With my experience in college athletics in two different sports, I learned and important lesson: if you are on time, you are late! For anything important, especially if you are going to a place that you don’t know how to get to, give yourself plenty of time to get there and don’t be late.

The first person who walked in was a short but really stocky (like muscular, really muscular) Asian woman. She didn’t speak the greatest English and she asked me if I was going to help her in the class. She didn’t even know what beats what. The next person was a big guy who looks like the Brawny man. He started telling us how much money he was making playing 1/2NL at Borgata (like cool, dude, a monkey can beat that game!). They seemed nice, but I kept quiet. Based on everyone’s experience, I could tell that I was way ahead of the other two people in my class already. I expected to see more people in the class, but it was just us three. The last person was obviously my teacher, a relatively tall guy, salt and pepper hair, dressed like a bum(!) but very personable and nice. I was recommended by a room manager at Caesars A.C. to take this specific class with this specific teacher because he was good.

"Hold the deck like a bird...”

The first few lessons involved the absolute basics—what beats what, which seat is which. I am not going to bore you because I assume anyone that is reading this blog knows what beats what. But I am not sure if a lot of you are familiar with the stud games. In stud, there are no blinds, sometimes no antes like the most popular stud game in Atlantic City, 1-5 stud. This is a spread limit game where on any street you can bet anywhere from $1-$5 and raise anywhere from double the bet or a max of $5 on top. In stud, to determine who goes first, the lowest door card (stud has two down cards and one up card) has to bring in a “forced bet between $1 and $5. So what if there are two deuces out there, whose deuce is lower? The rankings then go by suit (only for the bring in bet). The suits rank (high to low) Spades, Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs. Easy enough, right?

Next, we went over how to hold the deck. Your thumb should be over top and your index should be around the front of the deck while the middle, ring, and pinky should be supporting the side of the deck. This should keep the deck firm and secure so no cards but the one that you want to come of to move. We then went on to how to thumb the top card off the deck. Anyone that had dealt a home game should know how to do this. Just push the top card off with your thumb. All of this was really simple and boring to me so far.

“You pitch like a girl!”

Over the next few days, we continued with the very basics for the inexperienced people in the class, and then finally towards the end of the week, we started to pitch cards. I did ok, but I definitely needed a lot of work. While I got the correct sound I was a little slow and I used my wrist too much. My teacher tweaked my pitch by telling me to do one thing, hold a chip or two in my pitching hand in between my palm and my ring and pinky fingers. This kept everything really tight (this suggestion is also in the Professional Dealer’s Handbook). I was getting better and better each day we practiced.

We also started to read some stud hands which was fun because the teacher would act like a drunk idiot and say he had hands he didn’t, or he would cover the up cards so it was hard for us to tell whose turn it was to bring in the first bet. At first this was kind of annoying because it was all new and hard to us, but I think it not only lightened the mood in the class but it trained us to deal up cards the correct way as well as read hands really quickly.

Tougher than it looks

So that was basically it for the first week. It was pretty boring for anyone who is an experienced poker player. When we started to get into the box and deal I was instantly humbled. This was really hard. You have tons of things to pay attention to and call out all that the same time. This is where you have to work. The time in class is not enough for anyone to become a good solid dealer. You have to work at it at home. Start with the basics, work on thumbing all the cards off the deck, then go on to pitching some down cards and lastly pitch some up cards.

You have to get comfortable with these things because they need to be second nature if you’re going to get good at the procedures of dealing. The instructor suggested to try and get some family members involved to play out a few hands with you. Point is, if you have to pay attention to what you are doing physically with your mind while in the box you are taking brain energy from the mental and social aspect of dealing. I thought this was good advice to look smooth in class and start working on more advanced things.

Practice

I practiced everyday for at least 3-4 hours before class. Add this to the 2 ½ hours of class and I was getting in tons of hours a week and improving very quickly. Actually, this might hinder your development in larger classes because the teacher is going to need to spend more time with the newer people. This is what happened to me. I was getting seriously zero attention the first week because I had most of the first week stuff down through obsessive practice. I thought this was how it was going to be for the rest of the month, I am glad I was wrong.

’Til next time

Hope you enjoyed this shorter part. In part 3, I will talk a little about limit hold’em, NL and more advanced dealing procedures that made me think I wasn’t going to succeed at being a good dealer. Some of these procedures are not familiar to the average poker player and clearly not familiar to most online players.

For those of you who are thinking about going to dealer’s school, you will encounter a similar humbling experience. This is because dealers (most of them) that have jobs in Brick and Mortar rooms are good. They make their jobs look easy—like anyone can do it. I learned this is not true. It takes someone who is dedicated and takes pride in what will hopefully be their work. Pride in being a good dealer is the key in my opinion. GL at the tables.