I was playing in a 3/6 no limit
poker game at a strip casino. (3/6 means the table had a $3
small
blind and a $6
big blind.) I don't play a lot of poker, I find it
too slow for my tastes and it takes more skill and patience than I
have to be successful. On that particular game I was on a winning
streak and ran my stack up over $1,300. After winning another pot
from this one specific player, he jumped up and pulled a book out of
a white paper bag. Pointing the book at me he said very loudly,
"There's a whole chapter written in here about you. You're a
textbook player". I said nothing, not knowing what a textbook
player was. Was it a good thing, was it a bad thing, I didn't know.
By the way, I've never read a book on poker. The player to my right
was knowledgeable; he was a poker dealer at another casino. I
whispered to him, "I'm not sure if I like being called a textbook
player. "Just take solace in that pile of
chips in front of you,"
the poker dealer told me. I played a couple more
hands before I
decided to leave. As soon as I got up and started heading for the
door, Mr. Loud Mouth ran over and took my seat.
~Stoney
I was dealing in pit 4,
the carnival pit, and there were 7 tables open but only 1 floorman,
Eddie, watching them. Normally a floorman only has 3-4 tables to
watch so one floorman to 7 tables is incredible. Eddie had been
working as a floorman for 40 years; he is either in his late 60’s or
early 70’s with gray hair and an ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude.
Normally when a dealer has a player change in for $100 or more we
are supposed to call it out and the floorman will ok it and mark it
down. If it is really busy we will mark it ourselves and then just
tell the floorman later so that way we won’t hold up the game and
lose the casino's money. But there are some things we absolutely
must get approval on; for instance if I color up someone for $300 or
more or if a player changes in $500 or more. So all night we are
completely busy and you could hear all the dealers in the pit
screaming “change” and “color up” and Eddie was ignoring everyone.
He was standing on the far end of the pit talking to the only dealer
that had a dead table. I would call out something 5 or 6 times and
he would finally begrudgingly come over and act like I was making
his job difficult and I shouldn’t be bothering him. This kept on for
the rest of the night and all of the dealers experienced the
frustration that I felt when dealing with Eddie.
By the end of the
night I had this young couple come to my table. They were a really
nice Asian couple who looked like they very well to do. They said
they just saw a show and went to dinner. They wanted to try their
hand at 3 card poker and they played one hand. The husband put $250
on pair plus for himself and $250 for pair plus for his date. This
is something I have to get approval on so I spent 5 minutes calling
Eddie before he finally stopped talking and came over. He was pissed
but watched the hand. I dealt the cards and told the couple not to
touch it, since they were playing just the pair plus they didn’t
have to make any other decision. So I flip over my cards and I
qualify with a Queen high. I turn over the woman's cards slowly, one
by one, and the couple loved that. The lady didn’t have anything and
lost so I took her $250 and moved on to the gentleman's cards. I
slowly turned them over one by one again and Eddie got so pissed off
at me he complained loudly, “Oh, come on and just flip it over
already. I want to go home sometime tonight!”
The couple gave him a look as if to say go away. It was
3:20am and we were going to be off at 4am so this was going to be
one of his final tasks for the night. I was so mad because of the
way he acted plus the bullshit I had to deal with all night that by
the end I was fuming. So I ignored him and went much slower than
normal just to piss him off. He stomped his foot like an infant
having a temper tantrum. The man got a flush and ended up walking
away with $1,000. “Finally,” Eddie said as he stomped away. Like
that extra 5 minutes just killed him. I was just happy I could piss
him off and not get written up for it.
~Heather 2008
On my
blackjack table I have a way of dealing the cards so that the bottom
edge of my card is parallel to the straight edge of the table. This
makes it easier for the floorman and the cameras to read the cards.
I have been doing this for 5 years and I’m stubborn about it. There
was one player that, when I dealt him his cards, he would move them
so that they were facing sideways (this way the cards would seem
straight to him and, also, this is the way most dealers would deal
the cards). Me being my stubborn self, I couldn’t stand seeing the
cards messed up so I would change it back. He got so pissed that he
told me, “Don’t touch my cards! It’s bad luck!” I told him, “These
are my cards, I have been touching them all day and if you have any
bad luck it’s from your own stupidity, not from the position of the
cards.”
~Heather 2008
