A poker dealer distributes cards

Playing card

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games...

 to players and manages the action at a poker

Poker

Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...

 table.

Professional dealers

Any casino

Casino

In modern English, a casino is a facility which houses and accommodates certain types of gambling activities. Casinos are most commonly built near or combined with hotels, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships or other tourist attractions...

 with a poker room must hire a staff of dealers. Casinos generally pay dealers minimum wage

Minimum wage

A minimum wage is the lowest hourly, daily or monthly remuneration that employers may legally pay to workers. Equivalently, it is the lowest wage at which workers may sell their labour. Although minimum wage laws are in effect in a great many jurisdictions, there are differences of opinion about...

. However, a dealer's primary source of income is not salary, but tip

Tip

A tip is an extra payment made to certain service sector workers in addition to the advertised price of the transaction. Such payments and their size are a matter of social custom. Tipping varies among cultures and by service industry...

s from players*. Tip income may be substantial for dealers who can deal hands quickly and efficiently, and are selected by the casino to deal in higher limit

Betting (poker)

In the game of poker, the play largely centers on the act of betting, and as such, a protocol has been developed to speed up play, lessen confusion, and increase security while playing...

 games. (*In some countries eg in Sweden, where all the casinos are owned by the state, Dealers and other casino personnel may not accept tips from players. This rule is complied with strictly.)

To become employable by a casino, applicants without prior experience are typically required to complete a 4-6 week training program at a dealing school. Dealing in a casino may require working late hours and remaining seated for long periods of time. Dealers also commonly work holiday

Holiday

A Holiday is a day designated as having special significance for which individuals, a government, or a religious group have deemed that observance is warranted. It is generally an official or unofficial observance of religious, national, or cultural significance, often accompanied by celebrations...

s, since these are especially busy days for casinos. Having to deal with difficult individuals may be another drawback to dealing at a casino—some players are abusive

Verbal abuse

Verbal abuse is best described as a negative defining statement told to you or about you; or by withholding any response thus defining the target as non-existant...

 to dealers.

Major poker tournaments

Poker tournament

A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table , and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables...

 also hire dealers. For a given tournament stop, the tournament coordinator will hire dealers on contract for the duration of the tournament, which may be a few days to a few weeks. Room and board

Room and board

Room and board describes a situation where, in exchange for money, labor or other considerations, a person is provided with a place to live as well as meals on a comprehensive basis...

 may or may not be provided by the tournament management; the dealer is typically responsible for his own travel expenses.

Mechanics of dealing

Dealers must be proficient in shuffling

Shuffle

Shuffling is a procedure used to randomize a deck of playing cards to provide an element of chance in card games. Shuffling is often followed by a cut, to help ensure that the shuffler has not manipulated the outcome.-Shuffling techniques:...

 the deck, distributing the cards to the players, and, if required by the game being dealt, turning up the community cards in the center of the table. There are two methods of distributing the cards, "American"-style and "European"-style.

Shuffling

To shuffle the cards, the dealer follows a sequence defined by the casino. First all cards are spread out on the table and pushed around randomly. This is called "scrambling" or "washing" the cards. Then the cards are collected and squared into a deck. At this point a typical shuffling sequence might be: riffle, riffle, box, riffle. Professional dealers always keep both halves of the deck very low to the table while shuffling.

Finally, a cut card is placed on the table and the deck is cut

Cut (cards)

After a deck of cards is shuffled by the dealer, it is often given to a player other than the one who performed the shuffle for a procedure called a cut.- Procedure :...

 onto the card. The cut card is held on the bottom of the deck for the entire hand, to keep the bottom card from being exposed.

American-style dealing

In American-style dealing, the deck is held in one hand, and the dealer pinches the front-right corner of the top card between the other thumb and index finger. The card is then thrown (pitched) to the player, with a wrist extending motion.

The positioning of the throwing wrist is critical, since the cards must be maintained low and level with the table surface, so that players at the table can not see the undersides of the cards.

European-style dealing

European-style dealers touch only the top of each card being dealt. The card is pushed off the top of the deck to the table surface in front of the dealer. The dealer then propels the card toward the recipient, usually imparting some spin to the card to encourage sliding.

Burning and turning

Before dealing a community card, the top card off the deck is burned

Burn card

In card games, a burn card is a playing card dealt from the top of a deck, and discarded , unused by the players. Burn cards are almost always placed face down next to the discard pile without being revealed to the players....

, or thrown in the discard pile. The rationale for burning is that the top card on the deck is visible to players during the previous betting round, so that a cheat

Cheating in poker

Cheating in poker is any behavior outside the rules that is intended to give an unfair advantage to one or more players.-Types of cheating:Cheating can be done many ways, including collusion, sleight-of-hand , or the use of physical objects such as marked cards or holdout devices.Cheating occurs in...

 might be able to spot a mark on the top card and therefore gain an advantage on his opponents.

When burning, the deck must be held low and the burn card kept level with the table surface. Casinos watch carefully to make sure a dealer does not "flash", or inadvertently expose, the burn cards to players at the table.

In flop

Community card poker

Community card poker refers to any game of poker that uses community cards , which are cards dealt face up in the center of the table and shared by all players. In these games, each player is dealt privately an incomplete hand , which are then combined with the community cards to make a complete...

 games, the three community cards comprising the flop are turned up simultaneously, never one at a time.

Responsibilities during a hand

Dealers control the action during a hand. This may include prodding players to act, verbally announcing actions of players to the rest of the table, and correcting players who act out of turn.

Dealers also must manage the pot

Pot (poker)

The pot in poker refers to the sum of money that players wager during a single hand or game, according to the betting rules of the variant being played...

. The dealer must verify the amount of bets and raises by players, collect folded hands, maintain side pots, and read players' hands at showdown to identify the winner or winners. In games with a rake

Rake (poker)

Rake is the scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game. It is generally 5 to 10 percent of the pot in each poker hand, up to a predetermined maximum amount. There are also other non-percentage ways for a casino to take the rake. Some cardrooms will not take a percentage rake...

, the dealer also must keep track of the amount of money in the pot and remove the appropriate cut for the house.

At times the dealer needs to communicate with the floor, or other casino staff. Some casinos equip the dealers with a headset

Headphones

Headphones are a pair of small loudspeakers, or less commonly a single speaker, held close to a user's ears and connected to a signal source such as an audio amplifier, radio, CD player or portable Media Player. They are also known as stereophones, headsets or, colloquially, cans. The in-ear...

 or walkie-talkie

Walkie-talkie

A walkie-talkie is a hand-held, portable, two-way radio transceiver. Its development during the Second World War has been variously credited to Donald L. Hings, radio engineer Alfred J. Gross, and engineering teams at Motorola...

 for this purpose, while in other casinos the dealer must shout over the ambient noise. The following table shows some common calls a dealer may make, and their meanings:

Call	| Meaning
	Requests the floor manager to come to resolve a dispute.
"Seat open"	Announces that a player has left the game and a seat is now available.
"Player in"	Notifies the floor or brush that a vacant seat has been filled.
"Players checks"	Requests a chip runner to retrieve chips for a player.
"Fill"	Requests a chip runner to bring chips to fill the dealer tray. This tray must be kept full of low denomination chips in a high limit game, so that change may be made in the pot so that the rake may be taken out.
"Set up"	Requests replacement decks be brought to the table.
"Pick up"	For cash games, used when an absent player's chips should be removed from the table to free the seat. Also, for single-table satellites Satellite tournament A satellite tournament is either a minor tournament or event on a competitive sporting tour or one of a group of such tournaments that form a series played in the same country or region.-Poker:... , used to request the staff to come collect the cash entry fees from the table.
"Playover"	Alerts the floor that a new player will be playing in a seat taken by an absent player, until the absent player returns. Usually a "playover box" or some other object is used to separate the seated player's money and chips from those of the person playing over.
"Winner"	Used in single-table satellites to announce that the game has completed and the prize is to be paid.
"Brush"	Calls the floor to deal with a game participation problem, for example if a game must be broken due to insufficient players.
	Alerts the floor that a player wants a beverage and/or food.

Online dealing

Online poker

Online poker

Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide...

 sites use Random number generation

Random number generation

A random number generator ) is a computational or physical device designed to generate a sequence of numbers or symbols that lack any pattern, i.e. appear random....

(RNGs) when dealing cards. A successful RNG distributes cards in an unpredictable and random way.