For this answer, we turn once again to Arnie Rothstein, our pseudonymous casino manager who, it turns out, has personal experience with this situation.
Man, don’t you just hate dealers like that?
I can make this short and simple, since I was, once, just such a dealer.
Management at the casino I worked at as a dealer used to rag on us about trying to speed up play at the tables. For this reason, the dealers were taught to wag their fingers at players who had a decision to make, in order to pressure them. In this way, dealers could get out more hands per hour.
However, at some point, it became clear that this strategy was backfiring: Dealers were driving away players by running them over on their way to winning some sort of marathon.
The bigger casinos now frown on dealers who try to speed up play and dealers are actually prohibited at most casinos from giving advice on any game, except for pai gow poker and even then, they can only tell the player how the house would set the hands and must remind the player that, "This is not a guarantee that you'll win."
Still, casinos can't control every dealer every hand, so if you happen upon one who's full of advice, here's one thing you can do. A player did it to me and I never forgot it; it made me a much better dealer and manager.
When a dealer tries to play your hand for you, ask him the following question with a smile on your face. "If I take your advice and lose, will the casino allow me to keep the losing bet? In other words, if I play it the way you say, you’re guaranteeing me a win, right?"
And in the off chance that the dealer continues to offer up advice, call the floorman over and say something like, "This dealer is telling me how to play, but he's not paying me when I lose. Is it the casino's policy to give bad advice to its players?"
Of course, if you have to resort to those lengths, you and the dealer will no longer like each other, if you ever did, so it'll probably be time to pick up your checks and sit down at another table where the dealer properly dummies up and deals.
On the other hand, card counters sometimes like this situation. If the advice is correct (or only marginally off) and a boss is watching, they'll let the dealer play their hand. This is one way to look less like a counter. Dealer help can also be solicited at key times. For example, the dealer has an ace up and the count dictates taking insurance, but you haven't been taking insurance during the session and doing so now might look funny. If you have a strong hand, like a 20, and ask if you should insure it, the dealer will usually nod yes (not necessarily with weak hands, though). So you accomplish your goal with a little bit of cover.
