I am hellerly late with a post. Sick…sinusitis, headache, stuffy nose, all that crap that puts a wrinkle in your day and leaves you not giving a damn whether or not you do anything, has been heaped in stacks on my plate. Yes, it will pass…can hardly wait. I’ve called in sick the last two nights but I still have things to write about.

One night last week, I dealt a $1-$5 Seven Stud game that would’ve knocked your socks off with the action that was going. Chips rained into the pot. The first hand I dealt turned into a raising war between the 1 and 6s but four other players went along for the ride until the River. On the River they put in seven bets. The 1s held a full house and the 6s held three of a kind. The pot was so big, I thought about calling engineering to see if they would bring in a backhoe to push it to the winner.
That’s how it started. They gambled in ‘full tilt’ mode throughout my entire down. All of them, except the 5s.

He appeared to be in his 20’s, clean cut, serious as hell, and a friend of the 6s. He threw his cards away, hand after hand, and finally got involved in a hand that took him and the 8s to the River. On the River he paid off a bet, after thinking about it, and when he was shown a winner, he just shook his head as if to say ‘I’m an idiot’ and pushed his cards in.

As the game rocked around him, each time he looked at his cards, he shook his head and his face changed into ‘terminal frown’. He had given me eye contact several times and the next time he looked at me, I said, “Honey, your poker face has a leak in it.”

He really looked at me now. He sat a moment and then took a walk. I wasn’t sure if I upset him or if I had created a big problem by opening my mouth. He just seemed to be in so much distress that if the other players couldn’t see it, they were wearing blindfolds. He was gone for the rest of my down. But as I came off of a break out of the next game, I passed him on his way to the Cashier’s Cage.

He thanked me. He told me that he knew he wasn’t playing as good as he should be and that if the dealer noticed it, everyone else would too. So he took a walk and settled down and then went back; he even won a little. He finished with the statement that it wasn’t about the money, it was about how he was playing.

Phew! I certainly didn’t want to run off a young WPT watcher or hurt anyone’s feelings. Love those Cinderella Story endings.

*****
I was part of this project. Sweet!
Howard Lederer’s ‘Secrets of No Limit Holdem’