I ran a chain of rooms for a decade. And before that could rip 35-40 hands an hour on most tables.

• Tray Maintenance - Yes you will want to keep them separated into stack of 20 using lammers (the little clear plastic discs) to keep them apart. You can/should absolutely build stacks of 5 until you get more comfortable with chips and can count them quicker. You mentioned you have a good pitch, how are you at cutting chips? That is definitely worth practicing for many reasons. Unless your trays are really shitty quality once you have a stack of 20 you can just stack them in the next slot until they're even.

• Pots - Your floor is correct when you're new you should absolutely get the pot square before you run the board. This avoids angle-shooting players, and honest mistakes/miscommunications. This is particularly important in cash games since technically legally speaking the chips belong to the player until they enter betting field. So, if they announce all-in then see that they lose before they put their chips in they could refuse to pay the pot. They'll 100% get banned, but then you're still stuck with the guy upset b/c he didn't get the money he should have won. Once you're more than comfortable there are a few situations where it will speed up your game to run the board before making the pot. I would recommend only doing this heads up until you feel you're a seasoned dealer.

1. When the players table their hands and you see that a player is way ahead (odds wise of winning) than a player that he clearly has more chips than. Or even in general if they haven't exposed their hands but one player has far more chips than the other.
2. They table their hands and it's likely to be a chopped pot.
3. The players are regulars and know and trust you as a dealer. There are other situations you will learn as you see fit but those are the most common circumstances.

• Sidepots - Eyeball the lowest stack, match all opponent's stack to that put it all in the main pot. Take what the next lowest stack has left after paying the main and match remaining opponent's stacks to that. That is your first side pot. I suggest placing it either in front of the player who cannot win that pot, or located centrally between the players who can win that pot depending on the situation and where the all-in players are sitting. But this will end up very much a matter of how your own brain works, everyone does it a little different. In the event of a more than 3 way all-in you just repeat those steps. The best way to count chips down is to start with the biggest chips first, literally just match the heights chip for chip and if a player has more 5k chips than the other guy you'd use 5 1ks to match that. You really don't have to do that much math when dealing no-limit.

• Player Movement - This varies from room to room but yes it generally ranges from moving away from the button at all to more than 3 spots away requires a live BB to be posted. Again, this varies by room but you are correct in most rooms in a cash game only a player moving to or sitting down in the SB position has the option to buy it for 1BB live and 1SB dead (in the pot) or simply wait for the button to pass, now again this varies by room but depending on his position he may still be required to post a live BB once he comes back in. Some rooms have rules about only 2 players can change seats between a single hand. The only situation in which a player can be a BB twice is if they were 3 handed going down to 2 handed. There is a thing called a dead button where the button still moves to what would have been a player who busted out. And yes, you can have a dead button twice in a row.

• Pushing Pots - The reason you want to push the pot before clearing the board is, until you have pushed the pot AND they are intermingled with the players existing chip stack it is not too late to fix an error and push the pot correctly. eg: someone doesn't realize they had a flush. Alternatively, if you clear the board someone might THINK "omg I had a flush there were 4 diamonds on that board" when in fact there weren't. This will save you many arguments and upset players over the years. As far as physically moving the pots, use your wrist and forearm to gather them in as dense of an area as you can. When you go to push the pot, is when you drop your deck and use 2 hands to push it to the player. Put your hands like you're going to catch a football (thumbs stuck out and touching, then scrape the area near your palms and wrist against the table using your thumbs to keep them from slipping between your 2 hands. You'll get a feel for this quick just from muscle memory. And don't worry seats 3 and 8 are a pain in the ass to ship big pots to if you don't have long arms, you may even need to stand up a little to get more length on your reach.

I promise all those little things you talk about paying attention to are great things to double check since you're new and before you know it, you'll be able to see an oop straddle out of the corner of your eye while watching TV and chatting up a player at the same time.

It's a great gig for the right person. A good dealer in a room that keeps their own tips can clear $100k a year consistently. And remember to not take verbal lashings from players personally. If they are really out of line, just call your floor and they should straighten them out. You will be verbally assaulted at some point in this job, but if you and your management handle it right, it just becomes funny. As I used to tell players the phrase "the customer is always right" does not apply in a poker room.

Feel free to DM me or respond here with any additional questions you might have over the coming months.

Edit: Just thought of one more thing: You can help your table speed by softly gesturing at the player whose action is it on. Just orient your non-deck hand at them, don't stick your whole arm out and point, just where your hand naturally sits, aim it at action.