An interesting situation came up a couple nights ago and I was wondering how other players and dealers would handle it. PlayingOmaha8, we happened to have not one but two physical disabled players who, for all practical purposes, were unable to speak. They are regulars at the card room in question and the dealers didn’t have any trouble understanding their checks, calls, bets, etc. but it got me thinking about what would happen if the dealers weren’t familiar with the players and their limitations. Let’s say for example that in a 10-20 game, a mute player is down to all green chips and wants to raise, not call, a $10 bet. He can’t say “raise”, so what does he do?
Answer 1:
Many players prefer to remain silent, lest their tone of voice reveal something. Placing an upward-facing thumb above your “piece”, whether it be a $100 bill in a 30-60 game or a $25 chip in a $10-20 game, and moving the thumb aggressively upward, is generally taken to mean “raise”.
Answer 2:
Well after I posted the original message, I realized I had left out some key information, which is that many people with severe speech limitations over have cerebral palsy or similar disorders and don’t have sufficient control over their hand movements. This was the case with one of the players (I probably should have mentioned that), who struggled even to manage his chips and had to keep them in a rack to avoid knocking them all over the room. I also question whether a dealer accustomed to always hearing “raise” in this situation would be even looking for the hand gesture. This is not a knock on dealers, by the way. It’s just that they tend to go on autopilot after the umpteenth thousandth hand they’ve dealt, especially when they’re tired. I’ve had situations where an experienced but tired or distracted dealer has assumed a player acted a certain way based on the player’s cards rather than by looking at the actual bet or listening to the player.
Answer 3:
This is something of which I am familiar. I frequently play with a mask (to keep out cigarette smoke). So I, effectively, can’t speak. When I play 5/10 with a $2.00 bring I try to make sure I have plenty of white chips in case I want to make my raise to $5.00 clear. But if, for some reason, I have found myself with only $5.00 red chips then I just gesture with my thumb
upwards until the dealer says “RAISE?” and I nod. There are some interesting things about this. First of all, unlike the mute people you refer to, I could always just lower my mask for a second and say raise. I use to do that on those infrequent occasions that I wanted to raise the bring in and only had high denomination chips. But I found that there is an advantage of making an elaborate showing of the need to raise. It really helps me steal the antes (if I am so inclined). This especially worthwhile if I am at a higher stake game like 20/40 (when I use to play that). If there were a couple of callers and the rest folded to me I would look at my stack of only green chips, grab one hastily, hold it to the dealer and make my hand gestures rather frantically. This coupled with generally tight aggressive play before it usually won me the pot even if I had nothing.
There was a ruling at the Trop this weekend that caused some controversy. We were playingOmahawhen the player in the 2 seat got up and left the table for a while. On the next hand the dealer, not noticing he had gone, dealt him a hand. A couple of players yelled misdeal on the basis that one of the first two cards off the deck were dealt incorrectly. Another player disagreed and the floor was called. The floor ruled that it was a dead hand, not a misdeal because none of the cards was exposed so it should simply be discarded and play should continue. This caused quite a bit of complaining, head shaking and argument for the next several hands. Does anyone know the rule on this for certain?
