The Venetian has become the first poker room on the Las Vegas Strip to move its dealers to slide dealing, and Matt Berkey has been asked to confirm that the cards are sliding correctly. Berkey, who praised the change publicly this week, accepted on the condition that he be allowed to measure it. The room has 50 card tables. He has so far measured eleven.
Slide dealing replaces the pitch used in most American rooms, in which the dealer tosses each hole card toward the player. A slid card stays on the felt, so nobody sees it on the way. The Venetian retrained its dealers on the new procedure and let them practice before it reached the floor. South Point, a 30-table room a few miles south, began training its own dealers first, and Las Vegas has been debating it since.
The Particulars
Berkey's method is to stand behind each dealer with a laminated card and a solver printout and note the distance, speed and finishing position of every slide. A slide that stops short is logged as under-sliding. A slide that arrives too confidently is logged as over-sliding. Matt Berkey found that dealers at the far end of table 14 were over-sliding the first card to seat 7, at a frequency his notes describe as not close to balanced.
The room has tried to be accommodating. A Venetian spokesperson said the dealers were told the review was a courtesy. They were later told it was ongoing. One dealer, who asked not to be named, said the training had covered how to slide a card and had not covered how to be observed sliding it.
The report so far is a spreadsheet and one recommendation: every dealer should slide each card at a mixed speed, so that no seat can read the slide. A slide that is the same every time is exploitable, the report notes. It does not say by whom. The dealers have asked whether a mixed speed counts as a strategy, and if so, whose.
Still To Come
The Venetian hosts the $5,000 WPT Venetian Las Vegas Fall Championship starting Nov. 5, and Berkey is expected to finish before it begins. He has asked to supervise the first few slides of the final table. The request is under review, and the spokesperson said it is being treated as a courtesy.
Slide dealing was adopted so hole cards would not be exposed. At press time none were. Berkey's notes say that is not the same thing as being balanced.
Nothing about this happened. Matt Berkey was not asked to audit anything and has not measured any slide, and no dealer or Venetian spokesperson said any of this. The change is real: PokerNews reported on Oct. 14, 2026 that the Venetian became the first poker room on the Las Vegas Strip to move to slide dealing, and Berkey praised it publicly. Everything else is invented.
