Atfer taking 2 months off i returned to playing poker again during september where my first stop was the DTD monthly weekend where i made a satisfactory return to Cash games wheres my tourney play was a bit of throwing my money away! After that i have mostly spent most of my month playing live cash in the Vic card room. The Vic is where i learned to play poker an it has been nice seeing old faces from the past.With all the players coming in from around the world due to the wpt ,wsope an ept the games would be good so i made London my home for a month grinding away trying to recover Vegas losses.
So with all the talking about dealers recently i thought it appropiate that very rarely do we praise good things that happen in our sport! I have played alot of poker at Dtd an the Vic an overall the dealing standard is good with the occasional rookie being quite bad but i guess you have to start somewhere right? Now i didnt play any EPT events until the very last few days of the festival when i chose to play the plo8 on monday. So after playing a whole month in the Vic it was a fresh change an wow wow wow i was so impressed by the dealing standards, the dress sense, the ENGLISH being spoken by non british citzens , politeness of them,it was just so profesional an nothing i have ever expierenced before an this was a hard game to deal as well plo8.
We all know that in the uk that dealers dont get the best wage an the companys budget has set rates that they can pay but surely there must be a market for dealers getting trained like Thomas kremser crew as they apparently earn alot more than the standard club dealer in the uk ! Wouldnt the games run smoother , Tips would be higher, The clubs popularity would go up, wouldnt hear moaning stories about bad dealing an i mean the pros far outway the cons?
Anyone else play during the Ept an enjoyed the expierence ? Poker is massive in the UK at the moment producing so much talent on the playing side ! Isnt it time we start producing talent on the other side of the felt ?
Pete what you need to do is address this to every manager of every cardroom you walk into.
It would seem that Poker Dealer's wages in the UK are at an all-time low at the moment. The difference you notice between the standard of Dealers out of Austria as compared to the standard of Dealers in London or Nottingham or Birmingham or elsewhere is of course directly related to the amount of money they can expect to earn. In Vegas, Dealers keep their own tips, they generally get tipped well, and being a poker dealer is a career. In Austria and some other European countries, dealers are well-tipped and well renumerated, so unsurprisingly there is a large number of people who want to be poker dealers.
I have spoke to poker dealers in London who have seen the hourly rate driven down from £20+ per hour to £7 per hour. Plus tips. The tip point you will receive will vary massively from gig to gig and cardroom to cardroom.
In the UK the convention is that tips are split between a pool of dealers and staff within a cardroom or casino, rather than the dealer keeping the tips he or she earns individually. This might be one reason why a lot of poker dealers do not strive to be excellent.
If the wages are low, who wants to be a poker dealer? The hours are unsociable and the job can be draining. At the rates paid by some UK cardrooms, many applicants would be better advised to seek work as a night-cleaner or a shop assistant.
The reduced wages paid to dealers, and the lack of tips they can expect to earn, means that being a poker dealer in the UK is not viewed as a career. It is more seen as a stopgap job, or a student job, or viewed upon by some, unfortunately, as a piss-about job.
If wages were increased, standards would increase. You would see many more people applying to the cardrooms. The cardrooms could be more selective about who they train. Players would be happier...
AND WE WOULD ALL GET TO SEE MORE HANDS
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