Secrets most pros won't tell you, #2

When I wrote the first post with this title (or nearly so) last December--about the direction in which to turn one's cards upon receiving them--I hadn't really envisioned it becoming a series. But there are other nuances to the game that have never been revealed, despite hundreds of books about poker being in print. I feel that it is my responsibility to share these with you once in a while.

Let me tell you about the dealer button. Some other time I will rant about how people screw up moving it, cause problems by hiding it, irritate everybody by playing stupid games with it, and so forth. But today I just want to pass on an important tip about neatness.

Dealers, sadly, are too busy to place the dealer button correctly. This, for example, is how it was pushed in front of my during one orbit last night:




This is completely unacceptable. It's all askew. The poker gods have no respect for players who can't be bothered to tidy up.

The simplest solution is to simply rotate the button so that the word "DEALER" is directly facing you, like so:




(At a glance, this may not look placed quite right. It was. The camera, however, was a little off to the side, causing kind of a parallax thing.)

This is the minimum that is required of you. The poker gods will always smile favorably upon you for doing your share to keep the table neat and orderly when you expend this small amount of effort.

But you can do better.

On tables, such as at the Riviera, where there is a stripe, it further neatens the appearance if the button is placed touching the stripe, so that it becomes obvious that the word "DEALER" is parallel to it, like so:




The optimum solution, however, goes one step further. This involves placing the button so that the word "DEALER" is directly along the stripe, thusly:





See how nice and tidy that looks? The poker gods literally squeal with delight when they see you taking such care.

I have been studying this phenomenon long enough now to be able to report to you that you get pocket aces a full 71.4% more often when you take one or more of these steps, and, furthermore, your aces are a whopping 64.9% less likely to get cracked as a result. I'm telling you, the poker gods love orderliness.

Now, it must be said that one cannot always achieve the two more advanced stages of neatness as shown above. Some tables don't have a stripe with which to align the button. In some seats, it may not be possible to align the button with the stripe and simultaneously have it directly facing you, in which awkward situation you have to choose one or the other (and my studies have not yet been able to determine which factor should dominate). Also, even when there is a stripe, it may be so far inboard or outboard that it is not practical to place the button touching it; if you place the button on a stripe that is too far in, it may not be clear to everybody which seat the button is in, and if you place it on a stripe that is too far out, the button may sort of disappear from view. (The Riviera is really borderline in that respect.)

Finally, you should know that some dealers are really picky about where the button sits. There is often good reason for this, in terms of its visibility and not being where it interferes with pitching the cards, placing bets, etc. So if once you move the button a few inches for the sake of appearance, and the dealer sternly reaches out and moves it back to where it was, you should respect his or her wishes. (Angering the dealer is always -EV and severely frowned upon by the poker gods.) In that circumstance, you are limited to leaving it where the dealer places it and merely rotating it to a proper orthogonal orientation.

I can assure you that if you undertake this practice faithfully, you will be glad you did. You will come to see the wisdom of it and be grateful to the Grump. Cardgrrl is a fine example of this. She was, in fact, the first one to whom I revealed this secret during her visit here in February. She immediately expressed her gratitude. I believe her exact words were, "Thanks for giving me one more thing to obsess about."

It warmed my heart to have been so helpful.