Last night I skated past all the high limit, tonight I think I hit everyone until the last part of my night. Everything was screaming mayhem. Microphones howled with pages for players to their open seat and table transfers and pages for phone calls, people talking and milling about, dealers, chip runners, supervisors, cocktails, porters, announcements of satellites being held for Omaha 8 or Better Tomorrow. The noise and stress level of working in it, was enough to make me wish they were passing out medication when you entered the room. It was brutal. (Results of today’s tournament here, the final 8 play off tomorrow.)

My first game was $200-$400 half Deuce to 7 Triple Draw and half Omaha 8 or Better. It was a drag. Half way through my down, Curtis and Yen started discussing where they felt the dealers were the best and Curtis said, “New Jersey.”

They watched me deal and continued the conversation like I was a side of beef…let me leave it at that.

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My next game was $60-$120 Omaha 8 or Better with a 1/2 Kill. Joe was in the 2s, he can be extremely funny or extremely irritating. Tonight I thought he was funny. His vocabulary consists of Fuck with a few adjectives thrown in to get his point across. He said one of the dealers was offended because he said fuck and Joe wanted to know what the fuck was wrong with the dealer for not understanding how Joe carries on a conversation. That’s just the way Joe is.

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Then on to $25-$25 blind Pot Limit Omaha. Dave AKA the Devil Fish was in the game. I’ve had a few bad sessions with him and he’s not on the top of my list for players that handle themselves well at the table. He won a pot when I first sat down and then a few hands later, went all-in and had to re-buy. His girlfriend came up to talk to him and he had his arm around her waist. He was the second $25 blind and after everyone else had called and the first $25 blind had checked, I looked directly at him and he did a ‘raise/drop’ motion with the hand that held the cards. I pulled in the bets, announced the number of players in the hand and he glared at me with, “Do I get a chance to check?”

I said, “You tapped the table.”

He retorted, “You mean I tapped her ass!” He was referring to his girlfriend, of course.

Well maybe you did tap her ass but you tapped the table also. My unspoken thought.
Instead, I asked him what he would like to do. He said he would check.

That game was kind of fun because the guy in the 1s was carrying on and laughing and gambling. He won a few pots and then a huge one with A-A-?-? He told me he would be my back up if anyone tried to mess with me, he’d set them straight. I left the table laughing.

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Next was $30-$60 Holdem…this game and one of the players in it is a story of its own but it’s a must save for another night as I’m running out of ‘zing’.

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Then $20-$40 Omaha 8 or Better with a 1/2 Kill…mostly the usual suspects with a few new faces and we always go to war when it’s a Kill in the blind and they want to chop blinds. It’s against House Rule. I refuse to let them do it and they always argue that they do it all the time…except when I’m dealing. When I left the game I went to Suzie and she followed through by visiting their game and telling them they couldn’t do it. They always lament, “if none of the players object…”

My thought on that is, what if we ran every game in the room by asking the players if they object to everything that comes up…let your imagination run with this one…

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The next game was $2,000-$4,000 Limit Mixed Games with $500-$1,000 blind Pot Limit Omaha thrown in just for the hell of it. Doyle and Lyle were sitting next to each other and they had some little betting thing of their own going on with suits and cards on the flops, and they were keeping track of who owed what on a note pad.

Ted, Minh, Sammy, and one other player were walking and Chau, Jason, Doyle, and Lyle were still playing. Doyle and Lyle were dilly dallying with their hands, conversation, and their own score keeping and Chau and Jason were barking at them to knock it off and just play. All in all, it was an easy down for me.

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Another $30-$60 Holdem Game, a Must Move $60-$120 Omaha 8 or Better, a $15-$30 Holdem, a $15-$30 7 Card Stud, and an $8-$16 Holdem finally let me hit the time clock and the cool, early morning air. Thank you, God.