Would Being a Dealer Help Your Game?

[edcwy]

I know several good players that also deal. I'm also anecdotally aware that sometimes being a dealer creates it's own blind-spots and frustrations. What are the advantages or disadvantages to being a dealer as a player? What do you think?

 

[DuffMcGruff]

Being a dealer would mostly help out with keeping up with the action. Dealers need to keep track of the size of the pot so they can take out rake. That will help with bet sizing and pot odds in live games. Also it will help you pay attention while your not in a hand, which is detrimental to getting good reads on your opponents. The downside is you can't play at that casino, and depending on the casino, you may not be able to play in ANY wsop events, including circuits.

 

[detroitjunkie]

It depends on where you deal and how good of a dealer you are.

 

[rushdaman]

I think being a dealer would definitely help your game. For the most obvious reason you get to see a lot of hands that people play that are successful at the table. And as a little bonus you get tipped by the players =)

 

[OzExorcist]

My personal experience is no - being a dealer helps you to become good at dealing. Playing and studying is what helps you become good at playing.

You might occasionally pick something up if you've got some very good players on your table, and yes you'll get better at things like sizing up people's stacks (it still amazes some people I play with that I can tell them how much they have just with a quick look at their stack, when they'd need to break it down and physically count it to get that info) and tracking the pot size.

But the majority of your time you're going to be dealing to drunks and average bad players. There's not a whole lot to be learned from them, and even if there was, your time would still probably be better spent playing yourself, or reading strategy books, or watching coaching videos, or doing hand analysis, or having discussions with like-minded people online.

So I'd say even in the very best case scenario, it's an incredibly inefficient way of becoming a better poker player. Become a poker dealer because you want to deal poker, not because you want to play poker.