You’ve dealt to this guy for somewhere around 10 years. He played $75-$150 7 Card Stud at the Mirage and moved up with all the limits and all the games. He even got into a fight with Sam G. at the Mirage one time and Sam G. got 86’d for a hell-uva long time over it…permanently from the Mirage and the first year Bellagio was opened.

One night at the Mirage, you’re dealing a Mixed game of Holdem and 7 Card Stud to this guy, he’s the One Seat, Howard L. the Two Seat, Stu Ungar the Four Seat, and Doyle B. the Eight Seat. It’s a brisk little $200-$400 game and lots of action. One Holdem hand in which Stu is the Big Blind, Howard the Small Blind, Stu flops a flush and Howard flops two pair. End result is that Howard makes a Full House on the River. Of course Stu wants to feed you his hole cards and throws them into your chest and leaves the room.

That was a typical Stu move. Lose a hand, throw his cards into the dealer’s body parts and jump up and leave the room to go snort, choke, gasp, or whatever it was he did. Hate when all these movies and articles glorify a player and act like they were so great. If they were/are, why the hell can’t they take a beat like a gentlemen/lady instead of acting like they’re still in the sandlot playing with ‘liddle cars and truckies and Barbie thingies’?

Stu ambles back, takes a hand, gets beat by this guy and verbal abuse begins. Stu calls him everything but a real person, insults his girlfriend calling her all these ugly infested ‘c’ words, and a few other million things.

Doyle puts his chips in a rack and Stu asks him if he’s leaving. Doyle states that he is and ‘no one wants to listen to it anymore’.

Howard puts his chips in a rack and Stu continues on his ‘fucking whore, cunt, bitch asshole, no life, never had a life, never will have a life, I’ll bust your face and your bitch’s too if I see you in the parking lot’, distasteful use of wordage and language.

Finally the shift supervisor, Donna H. goes off shift and Walt S. takes over. Walt asks Stu to put his chips in a rack and end it. The game mercifully breaks up with the One Seat leaving and Stu putting his chips in a rack. By now you’ve made up the Set Up and the rack is locked up. Yahoo! You get to walk away from Mr. Potty Mouth.

Funny part of it is that the next night, several players approach you and ask why you didn’t call the Floor Supervisor when Stu was calling you all those names. You almost die laughing as you try to explain that he wasn’t talking to you, he was talking to One Seat.

So the story continues. You deal to the One Seat year after year. You never make a mistake in a game that he’s in yet he feels it’s necessary to interject with “Give him $2,000 change.” or “Just leave the bet in front of him and that’s what he owes.”

No shit! Often wonder what these guys think you do when they aren’t around to tell you what to do?

One night at Bellagio this player tries doing shots with the other high limit players. He can’t handle it and ends up throwing up on the table. They left him laying in it and moved to another table to continue to the game.

Then one day he finally asks his long time girl friend to marry him. A couple of the high limit players, as in Jennifer and Howard, like him so much that a few weeks before his wedding they hire a private detective to follow his betrothed around. Come to find out she’s already married. At least his friends waited until he had bought the ring and proposed, sent out all the invitations, set up the catering service and planned the honeymoon.

Is this sarcastic? Truthfully…do you want friends like that?

Well…back to poker, poker, poker. You listen to him one night as he complains that he never receives a tip from a dealer. No matter what kind of beats he takes or hard his night is, the dealer is always sitting there waiting for a tip yet the dealer never tips him.

You talk to Johnny World about this. Johnny World is in cahoots with you and when this player loses a pot, you are going to reach in your shirt pocket and throw him a couple of bucks. Johnny will back you up and say he put you up to it…but Johnny starts running across the damn USA to the East Coast and a few other places and you never get to pull it off. Damn bad beat there!

So…you go in to deal $1,000-$2,000 Mixed Games and this guy’s in the 4 seat. The game is Deuce to 7 Triple Draw. The bets are in on the first round and you burn and just as you get ready to pitch the first draw cards, this player screams, “Don’t deal the cards!”

You stop. What are you supposed to do?

This guy continues with ‘deal them down and push them’. Ok. After seven years of pitching draw cards, now, out of a clear blue sky and someone’s whim, you’re supposed to do it another way. Everything changes in high limit. One day they can chop, the next day they may chop your head off…you just never know.

A few hands later it’s the first draw in a multi-way action pot and this player wants three cards. You deal them to the table top before pushing them but one of them catches off the edge of the deck and does a little “SNAP”. It didn’t expose but instantly he’s on you.

“You’ve got to be more careful. We’re playing for real money you know!”

How many times have you heard that in your dealing career? Every time you hear it, you want to say, “No-o-o-o-! Damn I’m sorry. Thought you all got your chalk back at the end of the night.”

You respond to him, “I’m sorry.”

“Well you are going to have to pay more attention!” He pounds you like a meat tenderizing mallet on a bad steak.

You’re just dripping with a small amount of irritation and reply, “It won’t happen again. I’m trying to do the best job for you that I can.”

He explodes like The Blow Hole on Oahu, “THAT’S A LIE!”

He looks at his cards. “Well you may be trying your best but you will make the same mistake again.”

You just got Grayed…the G-Man bit a chunk out of your self contained, hard working epicenter.
The G-Man lives in a black and white world. He’s the only one that’s ever allowed a discrepancy and if it happens, he tries to kill all witnesses so they can’t tell anyone. If he’s the only one that knows of the discrepancy, he goes through extensive programming to remove all traces of it from his mind.

You have no win with him but don’t feel bad about it because neither does anyone else in the world.

Why was Stu so verbally hot on the G-Man? Word had it that Stu ran a poker stake up into a bit of cash and instead of divvying it up with the G-man and someone else involved, Stu blew it on the race track. When the G-man tried to collect, Stu went to SOMEONE that could hurt you. The SOMEONE called the G-man and the other someone else and Stu together and informed the G-Man and his pal that Stu didn’t owe anyone anything. The whole thing was dropped. Stu liked to punish people when he felt he had the upper hand and that’s where he was with the G-Man.

*****
This post is done by Chanzes – during the time period that I took a break from posting in the Diary.