"Did you see that?"

At the Suncoast Friday evening, one dealer's pitching technique was quite bad. She flashed a lot more cards than most.

One time a card she was dealing to the player on my right apparently flashed in a way that it would have been visible to me had I been watching, but my attention was somewhere else at that instant. She stopped the deal and asked me, "Did you see that?" I didn't even know what "that" she was referring to--some spectacular sports play on one of the TVs? I guess my look of confusion and reply of "See what?" weren't quite convincing enough, because then she explained that the card had flashed and I might have seen it. Nope. She apparently believed me and moved on.

But what a horrible way to decide what to do! Given the dishonesty of human beings in general, and the known propensity for a substantial percentage of poker players in particular to take advantage of any edge, whether ethical or not, it's sheer laziness on her part to take the easy way out and just ask whether a possible flashed card was seen. If I'm the guy whose card might have been seen, why should my ability to keep my cards secret from my opponents in this hand be made to rely on whether these strangers will happen to choose to answer her honestly?

The only correct and fair way to handle the situation is to replace the card. If it flipped or twisted or bounced in such a way that the dealer could see it, or it is reasonably possible that any other player could have seen it had he been paying attention, then just replace it--period.

I suspect that this particular dealer didn't want to do that because she would be replacing cards on almost every hand, her technique was so bad. So instead she developed the alternative "honor system."

It's a shame that poker players on the whole aren't honorable enough for an honor system to work, but we have to confront the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be.