If you are used to playing in casino poker rooms, don't expect too much out of the dealers. For the most part everyone was great, but there were three weird hiccups in my 4 session spree at the SA card house.
1. Playing 5-5 NL Hold’em, UTG raises to $15, folds all the way to the big blind who had $5 out. BB throws a single $25 chip out, the dealer calls it a raise to $30 before BB could take his blind back. UTG corrects the dealer and tells him one chip is always a call. The dealer and UTG then get in a yelling match over this ruling. One of the floor guys then tried to say that an oversized chip is a raise which shocked me. It took the GM of the room to come over and tell the dealer to shut the @#$% up and that one chip is a call every time no matter what. Props to the GM for swiftly and sternly clarifying what I thought was general knowledge. I tried to tell the dealer that it's not his fault when a floor staff tells him wrong information but I think he was pretty embarrassed. The dealer then came out and apologized to the guy in the hand and everything ended well.
2. In a huge 4 way pot, I 3 bet the flop and everyone folded except a guy who had about 5 big blinds behind. Board is 5 3 3, he flips over Q3 (fish) before the runout. Turn and river blank and I toss my cards into the muck. A pretty solid local who wasn't in the hand then says "dang I really wanted to see that guy's (me) hand". The dealer then flips over my cards off the top of the muck exposing my hand. I was too shocked to even say anything at the time, I have never even heard of this happening in a cash game. Very unprofessional and the guy shouldn't be allowed to deal if this is the type of behavior he deems appropriate.
3. (Same Dealer as #2) I am dealt aces a few hands later on the button. A guy with a huge stack in front of me raises to 15 BB's (dream scenario). Folds to me. The dealer gave me a whole 3 seconds to think about it before he started repeating the bet to me. I was tuned in to the hand and have no history of wasting time. I honestly didn't know what to do when he kept aggressively repeating "$75's the bet" over and over while staring at me. I'm not kidding he said it 5 times in under 20 seconds even as I was grabbing raising chips. I am a very non confrontational guy but this had me pretty irritated.
PS: (guy flopped a set of Kings and I donked my stack to him on the flop smh)
PS#2: (during the giant post flop action the dealer started cashing in a player that just sat down, blocking the heads up line of sight to the point where I didn't even know what the guy was betting and had to get his attention when there was an all in call)
All in all, I think the room is friendly enough and the majority of dealers are quite professional. The GM is very stern with his dealers and will help you with any issues you have. You can tell they are trying to turn people off the street into competent dealers given how new poker clubs are to Texas. In time, I have full faith that the GM will weed out the bad eggs and take this room to the next level.
I did quite well in this room over the course of my time there and would come back if in the area. Plenty of action and big pots. TV's everywhere.
TIP: If you don't want to keep getting sucked out by two pair 2-3 times an hour you should ask yourself what an aggressive opening bet would be and then double it. Doesn't matter the stakes, these people love seeing flops more than any room I've ever played in. As long as you can avoid disaster scenarios, there's no way you should lose money here.
