The day that poker died

You’re milling around the card room and you happen to pass by table 11 as a new dealer is pushing in. The game is $20-40 Stud and the player in the 1 seat, referred to from now on as Nameless, says to the incoming dealer, “Get him outta here. He otta have his hands cut off for dealing like that.”

You have to do a double take on this one. Nameless was a dealer at one time. You give the player in the 2 seat a questioning look and receive a look back that indicates that Nameless has definitely lost it and is in rare form.

A few hours later you happen to be at table 8. The game is $40-80 stud and Nameless comes skulking up looking for a compatriot to share his misery. Nameless addresses the player in the 8 seat and asks if the 8 has an answer to his question yet. The 8 seat says, “No and I’m not going to answer that question.”

Nameless skulks around. Refusing to walk away and be ignored, he pursues it a little further. Now he addresses the player in the 6 seat, “Perhaps you’ll answer my question.”

The 6 seat says, “I’m off the clock and I’m not answering any questions.”

Another player chimes in and says to the 8 seat, “What was the question?”

The 8 seat obliges. “The question was, if a serial killer was killing poker dealers and you knew who it was, would you turn them in?”

Nameless has a satisfied look on his face. He now has the attention of the whole table and as sick as the subject is, he is even sicker for coming up with the thought. Before anyone else even begins to consider what they would do – he didn’t want an answer anyway, he wanted a sounding board – he states, “I’d give them a monthly income for life and health insurance benefits.”

There’s a moment of chit chat back and forth between the players, the dealer keeps dealing and of course poker takes precedence over everything else so Nameless was ignored after a few minutes and was forced to walk away. But . . . he opened the doorway one more time. The doorway to hell for a lot of good dealers that do their jobs very well and should never have to be threatened or even listen to this kind of garbage.

The following poem was written with the thought of “American Pie” in mind.

And they were singing, “Bye, Bye, Poker has died. There are no more games.”
All the poker players cried.

The Dealers are dead and cannot be replaced.
The Serial Killer sat with a smile upon his face.

“I killed them all or I cut off their hands. I won’t even plead insanity if you
put me on the stand.

“Some of them I shot in bars. Some of them I stabbed in cars.
They weren’t even human, they deserved to die.”

Yet in the back row a poker player cried, “Who will deal, who will push the pots?
Who will fade our anger and soothe our grief?”

No one stood up to take the poker dealer’s seat.
The day that poker died.

Sick? Hell yes, it’s sick. But what about Nameless and his kind. They’re everywhere in society. They use poker as an excuse to be a miserable loser. Nameless and his kind blame everything on someone else and then want to force someone else to suffer for their inadequacies. Their inability to put things in perspective, like 52 cards that come off the deck at random. They probably blame the mail person for delivering their bills. Nameless could never threaten a mail person though because we read news accounts of the tragedies in the U.S. Postal Service. A threat here would be meaningless and one of them might just “take him out” with everyone else they’re taking with them.

How would you like to have Nameless living next to you? What if your dog lifted his leg on your side of the fence but a few drops ran over onto Nameless’ side of the fence? Better yet, what if you had a daughter and he had a son and they got together and produced offspring, but before it worked itself out, it would be your daughter’s fault because obviously his son didn’t know what it was all about and Nameless would be ranting from the tallest steeple about what a cheap slut your daughter was for tempting his poor innocent child that way. And then to make matters worse, you would always have to have some contact with him because a poor, innocent child was caught in the middle of his whacko world. SCARY!

The best part of all of this is that you don’t have to fade him or allow him to misbehave at the poker table. You, as a player, can put your foot down when he starts in with killing and maiming the dealers and tell him that you aren’t interested in tolerating his behavior. Or you can just ask the dealer to call the floor supervisor and when they come to the table, explain it yourself. If we all take a stand, this type of garbage abuse will stop. Just think, if the attitude was more positive at the table, maybe dealers would try harder and feel they were appreciated a little bit more.

The next time you need a blood transfusion or your mother needs platelets, the dealer that you never made a hand with yesterday, may have donated those needed items. When you attend a funeral, or witness the birth of a child into your family, that same dealer may have gone through the same pain or joy that you are experiencing.

Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes applies in all areas of life. Try asking instead of demanding, listen to your own voice and how it comes across. A smile spans a million miles but anger closes all doors.

And why do you think that you didn’t say something when Nameless came to table 8 and began expounding on his gruesome request for an answer? Ahhh, yes, you may have been the dealer. See you there.