Dealer Options

Dealer Options allows you to rig the deck so that certain cards will be dealt. Choose Dealer Options... from the Dealer menu.

The options you choose here will be applied to any ring games that you play and to the tournament games that you are watching or participating in. These options are never applied during online games, or to any background tables during a multi-table tournament.

Fixed Hole Cards

Fixed Hole Cards controls how hole cards are dealt to each player. Every seat has two radio buttons allowing you to specify how cards are dealt. You can specify particular cards with the left option or a range of cards with the right option.

Click any of the card backs to bring up the Card Chooser and select the specific cards you wish to have dealt out. Cards that have been chosen elsewhere will appear grayed-out. Cards left face down will be dealt randomly from the remaining cards in the deck.

Select the right radio button if you wish to select ranges of cards to be dealt to a seat. These ranges are based on the 169 possible starting hands in Hold'em. For example, selecting "Top 5%" would deal only premium hands that fall in the top 5% of these 169 hands. Selecting "Middle 30%" would select a larger range of middling hands from the centre of this ranking of hands.

Fixed Board Cards

Fixed Board Cards controls how the board cards are dealt. You can specifically select each board card with the card chooser as described above.

Other Options

You can uncheck Log Hand Histories and Statistics so that games played will not be logged in the Hand History Database or affect the tracked statistics in the Player Statistics System. You may wish to not record games and stats where you where the deal has been skewed.

The Remove Cap once Heads-Up option means that when you are playing against only one opponent in a limit game, more than 4 bets or raises are allowed in a round. This an optional rule in Hold'em seen in many cardrooms.

How Can This Help Me?

Being able to control which cards are dealt to which seat is a powerful tool for learning about different poker situations. For example, you can force yourself to be dealt various hole card pairs that you are uncomfortable playing so that you can try out various strategies and see which ones work in which situations. When you combine this ability with the ability to "fix" board cards and additionally even your position in a ring game, you have the ability to force yourself to learn how to deal with problematic situations until you become comfortable with them. Additionally, these options can be used to allow you to practice and explore specific concepts that you may have read in poker books.