Not even the dealer is perfect

It’s never fun when you screw up playing a game like blackjack. It’s frustrating, you get down on yourself and generally sink into a nasty mood for a few hours. But what about when the dealer screws up? It puts you in a very difficult situation.

First, and I know from experience, you can’t get mad. If you do, someone will ask you to collect your chips and escort you from the casino – effectively kicking you out for the night, or worse. It happened to me during a poker match, when I was banned from the poker room for arguing after I made a bet on a winning hand the dealer failed to see, and continued dealing. The game was declared a misdeal and everyone received their money back. It wasn’t casino policy, and it was a horribly inexperienced dealer. And you can only be so nice up to a point. Anyway, it turned out this little incident is what led me out of the poker room and over to the blackjack tables, where I quickly learned I could have as much fun and make as much profit playing this game, as well.

However, as I also realized, blackjack isn’t immune to dealer screw ups, either. This time I was just a witness, and in the end the player was wrong and out of line, but it still supports my point that casinos need a better way to handle these types of issues when they arise.

The guy was playing a “match” side bet. His regular bet was $10, and he tried to bet $30 on the side bet. Thing is, in this game, you can’t bet more on the side than you are for the regular hand, so technically the bet made was illegal. But the dealer didn’t see it – and that’s the mistake. Now, the dealer caught the error, but only after dealing two cards out to the players before this guy. The dealer then pushed $20 of his $30 bet back to him, and continued dealing. The guy proceeds to hit an exact suit duplicated (worth a 14:1 payoff), and the dealer pays him off $140 (14x his $10 allotted side bet).

Of course, the guy complains he should be paid off on the $30, not the $10, and so the game is held up for 10 minutes while the dealer has to accommodate the request to speak to the pit boss, and then Casino Control Commission, and so on. They all tell him the same thing. They’re sorry, but what the dealer did is correct, and he is only to receive the amount permitted in the side bet, which was $140 over the original $10 bet.

Yes, the incorrect bet was caught before he won, but two things I don’t agree with. First, there were open cards out on the table already. That’s a big no-no, and at the very least should’ve resulted in a misdeal. Second, the dealer didn’t do his job, didn’t catch it when he should’ve, and therefore caused the issue in the first place. The player suffers (arguably) as a result of the dealer’s incompetence.

But ultimately the casino made its decision, and that’s fine. But I’m curious, would the casino have given the guy $20 back if he’d lost the side-bet and the dealer didn’t realize it until after the hand? Would the casino have sided with policy then? You can bet the guy would’ve been playing the other side of the fence in that scenario, as well.