New setup? You're a moron.

God, how I hate idiots that ask for a new setup because they're in a dry spell for catching good hands. Do they seriously think that getting one or two new decks of cards will change that? It's sheer lunacy. Every hand you're dealt is random, whether it's from an old deck or a new deck. Random is random. Bad streaks are no more likely to end with a new deck than with the current deck. I wouldn't mind so much, except that it's such a waste of time, what with checking the decks for the right number of cards, getting them shuffled, etc.

I really want to ask these imbeciles to explain to me the mechanism by which they believe that a new deck of cards will change the probability that the next hand they're dealt will be a good one. They can't possibly have a cogent answer.

The only advantage is that this is yet another way that we learn which players think that they lose because of bad luck, rather than bad playing. If you ask for a new setup, thinking that it might change your luck, you're an idiot, plain and simple, in the same way that if you blame the dealer for bad hands you're an imbecile. You don't understand or accept randomness, which means that with your current mindset you will never, ever become a consistently winning player. You're a loser because you just don't get it. Thanks for volunteering to announce that to the whole table.

I understand randomness. I accept randomness. In fact, I embrace randomness. In the same way that random genetic mutations are the raw material on which evolutionary forces work to produce new species, random card sequences are the raw material from which I make strong, interesting, and unexpected poker hands. I make my livelihood out of randomness, and I accept that an inevitable consequence of randomness is that there will be long stretches of unplayable hands, and days and weeks when I lose money because I get strong but second-best hands over and over and over again.

That is the nature of the game. And it doesn't change because a new deck of cards is brought to the table, you pinhead. So stop wasting everybody's time. Go for a five-minute walk, and when you come back, we'll tell you that we changed the decks. Just believe it, and the effect will be exactly the same. (In fact, come to think of it, that's exactly what casinos should do: Anybody who asks for a setup is required to leave the room for five minutes. The game will just go on without them, but when they come back, everybody tells them that the decks were changed during their absence.)

Once again, if I had my own casino, asking for a new setup would be deemed proof that you're too stupid to be playing, so you'd be escorted out. But first we'd take a photo of you with a dunce cap on your head, to be added to the file of people not allowed back in for reasons of excessive stupidity.


I should note an exception to the above rant. Sometimes a deck needs to be replaced. This can happen because the cards have become sticky and the auto-shuffler keeps jamming, or the dealer keeps pitching two cards at a time, etc. Also, sometimes the cards are so worn that the backs of some of the cards have developed wear patterns that players can start to identify, or an out-of-spec Shufflemaster is putting distinguishing creases on some cards. If you can show the dealer and the floor person an objective reason that a deck should be replaced, by all means do so. I've done it myself a few times, including once when I spotted an ace that had been deliberately marked by a player. But as anybody who has spent much time in a poker room knows, the vast majority of setup requests are from players who want to change their luck. I frankly don't understand why casinos indulge these idiotic demands. Roy Cooke has it right again in his proposed set of rules: "A player may not request a set-up except for a marred card." ("Cooke's Rules of Real Poker," 14.19, p. 107.) Are you listening, poker-room managers?