Sometimes magic fills the air, a certain hush breathes an unexpected change for the better, excitement dances across your senses and you want to scream and frolic with the breeze that whips at your hair and screams, “Come on, run with me! Catch me if you can!”

Everything you know and understand rips apart and is replaced with the tantalizing, teasing, scent of something looming just ahead of you, just out of reach, but damn it…you’re going to find it, feel it, taste it or you’ll die trying!

BOOM! Just when you’re on the first page of a new day of your life, someone spanks you back into an old saw…something that’s been hashed and rehashed and you’re really sick of it…anyway I am sick of it…so here it is again.

I’m a degenerate Pan player. I’ve played it off on for the last 20 some odd years. I learned to play with a group of old Railroaders when I lived in Montana. Those boys were fun to play with because they were so old and crusty, they even reverted back to having a sense of humor, not like playing with the ‘ladies’ at the Plaza or the Sahara over the years.

I started a friendly little Pan game at my house, on one of my days off, with a few friends that I thought had a pretty good sense of humor…now I’m wondering.

Two of the players I’ve known since my Montana days and I consider them to be true friends, the kind that stick with you through thick and thin, listen to you when you’re beat to shit by life, tolerate you when you’re too busy to have anything to do with them, and show up when you call them for a Pan game. Love them, Gordon and Carole Long. They’ve been around the poker circuit too. Carole has dealt and brushed, and Gordon has played and been a break dealer, brush, and security person in poker over the years.

Grace, another friend, plays poker and pan, has also dealt at the Mirage, Bellagio, and the ‘tournament circuit’ since I first met her in ’87.

Vive, a poker player, and good friend, I met through the poker tables at Bellagio. She learned to play pan through my home group.

Esther, a poker player and friend, I also met at the poker tables at Bellagio and she learned pan at my home game.

This whole thing is about a conversation that erupted at our last Pan game. Esther is extremely outspoken and totally convinced that she’s right. No matter how much the rest of us know, it never figures into ‘Esther World’.
She brought up the subject. “I want to ask you a question.”

It was directed at me in reference to Thao, one of the dealer/players at Bellagio.
The conversation went something like this: “Thao plays a lot in games I’m in and I don’t like the fact that he check raised me heads up. If he does it again, I’m not going to tip him. I don’t think a dealer should ever check raise a customer.”

Me, “So you think the tools of poker, like check raising should only be allowed for the customer but not the dealer that’s playing his own money?”

Esther, “Yes. I think he’s wrong because I tip him when he deals.”

Me, “That’s bullshit! If I’m in a game, playing my money, you should have the advantage to use the tools of the game to your benefit but I should be restricted because I work there?”

Gordon interjected here with the fact that he felt that dealers abused a lot of things when they played and they shouldn’t be allowed to play in the house they work in…I don’t agree with that line either because a lot of times, if dealers didn’t play to keep a game going, there wouldn’t be a game when you, the customer walked through the door…but my main beef was with Esther at this point so I went off on her.

Esther, “Yes! I tip dealers. I don’t want them check raising me when I tip them and they are playing against me.”

Me, “You should tip dealers because they do a good job, not because you are thinking about what they’re going to do with the money you tipped them with.”

Mainly, of the six people in the pan game, I ended up in a heads up with Esther.

She informed me that she would tell Thao that if he ever check raised her again, she would never tip him again.

I told her it was ridiculous that she would expect a dealer that played to never check raise her when she could use the same tool in a game with them.

She countered with, “You wouldn’t check raise me heads up.”

I said, “No, I’d just bet right at you if I thought I had the best hand.”

She said, “If someone I thought was my friend, check raised me, I wouldn’t be friends with them anymore.”

I snorted, “Well if all it takes is a check raise to decide if someone is my friend, then I would figure that person was never really my friend to begin with.”

She jumped right into, “I would stop playing in a room that a dealer check raised me in and that was why I stopped playing at the Mirage…”

Now come on, I don’t believe that because I’ve heard other reasons from her as to why she stopped playing at the Mirage…if she stops playing in a place because a dealer check raised her, she’s going to run out of places to play damn fast.

She was belligerently adamant about her position…on that subject and several other ones during the course of the evening. I never thought I would convince her and I don’t care one way or the other, I just find that train of thought to be suffocating…I slap you but you can’t slap me back because you work here.

Kiss my ass, boys and girls, if you play in a poker game with me, and the only way I think I can win a pot that has my $???? in it is to check raise, I’m going to. You should do the same to me.

If you set me up for a check raise, I don’t have to bet, right? Right!

Did I try to explain to Esther that poker is POKER? Yes!

Poker is unique in it’s own little set of rules, lying and stealing is legal, and the purchasing department is always open.