Dealing poker at our local poker room, The Poker Room NH, can become very interesting at times.

I work two days a week, Friday and Saturday, and I get to see many people coming to play at our tables.

I deal at the tournament tables and also at the cash Limit Hold’Em tables.
The cost to play at the $2/4 limit table is a buy-in of $20 minimum.

Some of the players that I see are regulars and most of them know how to play. Occasionally we do get new players that have never played a limit hold’em cash game.

There is a certain basic strategy that good players follow. Good players do not play in every single hand unless they have very good cards.

New players however may not understand or know that concept and think that every hand that they see is an opportunity to win a pot.

Recently three young ladies have been becoming regulars at the cash tables and I have dealt to them when I have been assigned to their tables.

English is not their native language, but they speak it rather well. I don’t know if these three ladies are related or not but the younger one smiles when she sees me coming to the table and says “Welcome Santa, I know you will be kind to me”.

Now my basic task is to try and make their experience enjoyable, but I am only able to guarantee that everyone at the table gets two cards each. Beyond that, it is the players responsibility to do what they can with these cards to win the pots.

The problem that I see with the young lady who calls me “Santa” is that she plays every single hand that she is dealt regardless of what they are.  To her sorrow and dismay, she usually finds that she has lost all of her chips within an hours time. And she usually buys a hundred dollars of poker chips at a time.

I am not always at the same table for long periods of time because we are moved from table to table every 30 minutes or so, and I do not see when she ends up re-buying more chips so I do not know how she is doing.

One evening however, I did end up dealing to these ladies twice in the same evening, although at a different table.

The story was the same. Big smile and a “Welcome Santa”, but at the end of the session, with her chips all gone, she looked at me sadly and said “Bad Santa”.

You know how it goes … you cannot please everyone …

(This post also appears at DadsPokerBlog).

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I am into my third week of dealing at “The Poker Room NH” and I am finding it a challenging yet rewarding profession.

What I find most enjoyable are the people that I meet at my table. For the most part, they are serious but have a sense of humor. Exacting, but they have a tolerance for a new dealer. What has been most gratifying has been their responses when they see me leaving for the day or when the see me playing at the tables on my days off.

Some of them look forward to seeing me while there are a few that might groan to see me coming.

The ones that groan might have been the victims of mistakes that I made when dealing to them. I am not perfect but I am striving to get better every day that I deal at the poker tables.

I make no excuses for my mistakes but admit to what I have done and apologize for any inconvenience it might have caused them.

When I sat down recently to play some poker, some of the players recognized me and asked how my dealing was coming along. I said I was improving but that I needed to speed up my dealing.  Three of the players immediately told me that I was doing fine and not to worry about my speed.  I thanked them then sat down to be a player for a couple of hours.

Poker is an activity that I really enjoy and I get pleasure from either playing or dealing. It is nice to have a job that pays you to do something that you love you to do!

Mom Pop Pow! Where you can do it if you try!

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