Dealer errors can ruin your day. And in the game of poker, a dealer mistake can be worse than bad officiating in professional sports. In the realm of sports it’s typically said, “Don’t leave it in the hands of the referee”. In boxing, you never want a fight to come down to a decision. You’d rather have a definitive KO or TKO so that there is no confusion as to who won and who lost. In tennis, there was recent turmoil over Serena Williams freaking out over a technical call that lost her the championship of the U.S. Open. In reality, she put herself in a spot to lose the game and a technicality was the final blow. If you lose your game because of one bad call, the officiating probably wasn’t the only thing that led you to that point.
In poker online, the dealer is your referee, followed by the floor crew. Their decisions and explanations are final, and you have to deal with them. In last week’s World Series of Poker coverage, we saw Estelle Denis’ alleged Aces get mucked by the dealer after she had moved all-in. She was sitting in the 10-seat. The 10 and 1 seats are encouraged to use card protectors because of their proximity to the dealer. If any hands are mucked accidentally by the dealer, it’s almost always from these two seats. While the dealer had no reason to pull in Denis’ cards, they were not protected and assumes some of the blame for the mistake. The floor was unable to retrieve her cards from the muck and her hand was announced dead. The overage of her bet was given back to her, but she lost what equaled a call of the previous bet.
In a recent game I was involved in, the dealer mucked a hand of an online poker player who went all in as well. The dealer was about to award the pot to this player and then noticed someone still had cards. Two compounded mistakes happened here. Firstly, the dealer was not paying full attention. Second, the player’s cards were hidden and oftentimes throughout the hand held off the table. The game was for charity and was pretty friendly. They decided to chop the pot.
