November 10, 03. It’s ‘jaw dropping’ amazing how fast time flies when you are having fun, and on the stress side of life, when you have so much to do that if you had a compactor and could squash all of your projects into a fragment of their original size, you still couldn’t beat the clock. I’m past ‘jaw dropping’ amazement, my jaw is on the floor. I had the greatest plans for the weekend and they disappeared in a blast of hot air that blew past my head as I was swearing at computers. Finally, after almost a week of swapping files, networking, fax and printer set-up, I think…stated nervously while fidgeting…think that I have everything licked, cured, healed, fixed, repaired, up and running, and I’m on the road to getting back into a routine…oh wait, where’s the wine?

Monday night, work as usual. I had to make a mistake, it just wouldn’t have gone with my ‘mistake waiting to happen mode’, if I’d made it through the night without one. The comedy of the whole thing is that no one caught it but me. It was $4-$8 Holdem, everyone was talking and kidding around, the 10s kept yakking, I kept listening and laughing…Hey…I’m guilty here, no way around it.

The action went to heads up on the Flop, the 5s bet, the 10s called. The Turn, the 10s checked out of turn and I was obviously having too much fun with him, I explained that he was last and that action out of turn was the action in our room, so…

He laughed and went with the fact that he didn’t know he was last to act. By now the 5s had bet $8, the 10s checked again, I burned and turned off the River, the 5s was reaching for chips to bet the River. No one caught it.

I went into, “Whoa! I made a mistake. The bet on the Turn was never called, let me call for a decision.”

I got one from Dave N., I explained what had happened, prefaced with, “Idiot dealer error…”

Dave said, to take back the River card and see what the 10s wanted to do. The 10s hesitated for a few seconds and folded. It was over. I teased the 5s because he was willing to bet again without the 10s calling his bet, the 10s said it was his fault, I said, “No! It was my fault. I made the mistake.”

They all took it better than damn good and the game went on. Me? I’m just hoping the brain dead, non focusing, dip shit that’s living inside my skull right now will dissolve off somewhere in the night air and I’ll return to my original state, Super Dealer.

*****

Amazing as poker is, it’s still mind boggling to see someone come up to a three handed, $100-$200 Holdem game and look at the table and then ask what the buy-in is. After being told, he disappears for a moment and then returns with $2,000, flip/flops out 20, $100 bills in all shades of disarray and I ask, “Would you like chips, Sir?”

The vacant look in his eyes, as he tried to focus on me, alerted me to the fact that he’d had a little too much to drink but he wasn’t ‘out of it’. He had no idea what the bet was, how much it was to him or what his options were…not because of alcohol. He was g-a-m-b-o-l-i-n-g. He wasn’t an idiot and he knew what poker was all about, but damn he picked a limit and players that most people in their right mind wouldn’t sit down with. As soon as he sat down, David S. bought in. A few minutes later, the game was filling up. I left him in the hands of the next dealer with instructions to ‘take your time with the 5s, he needs a little help when it comes to the bet amount’, and I was off and running…a break, and then more games to deal.

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