Have a seat…the ramble’s starting. I began playing and dealing poker in 1980, in Missoula, Montana, at the Oxford. The Oxford’s claim to fame was ‘brain’s & eggs’ – advertised on the menu as ‘He needs them’.

I jumped into poker without ever looking back. That time in my life was filled with lunacy…a lot of it was my own lunacy but there were a few extenuating circumstances that added to my big leap.

The games were crazy. Poker and live keno were the only form of gambling that was legal in the state (no machines to suck away the cash) and people were ready to play poker. Those games were the true meaning of the words No Foldem Holdem. But after a few years, as happens in all Fairy Tales, the fatted calf began to lose a lot of weight.

Machines were legalized, with horrible payout structures, and people began throwing their poker bankroll into the Machine Demon’s Mouth. The whole area ran on minimum wage and a lot of players kept themselves broke by playing poker, keno, and machines.

The games sucked, running for 20 hours one night and for three to four hours a night for the next week. Too many places opened up and each place tried all kinds of bonuses and specials to bring the players in. Soon the competition was like the old gas wars. There was no fat left to spread anywhere.

In 1987 I dealt my first big tournament in Nevada. From December of ’87 to July of ’89, I made trips from Montana to Nevada and back, and dealt all the big tournaments. I made the move to Vegas in 1989 and helped open The Mirage.

The Mirage was unbelievable. We opened with 30 tables and added another one within a few months. Poker rooms around town closed…we had all the business. The place never slowed down but it wasn’t only the poker room, the whole casino was almost impossible to walk through even late at night.

We were jammed 24 hours a day. On holidays and weekends and when professional fights were scheduled, all the lists were 50 and 60 names long.

In 1993, I moved to the Gulf Coast and helped open the Gulfport Grand. I stayed a year (that was as long as I planned to stay and knew when I left Vegas, I would return). The same scenario as the Montana ramming/jamming and The Mirage ramming/jamming took place in Gulfport.

Within a year, the Coast exploded with 22 casinos in a range of about 25 miles. Things started to slow way down, just like the Montana days.

Almost exactly a year later, in 1994, I returned to Vegas. Treasure Island was just in the process of closing their poker room and it took me about three months to be rehired at the Mirage because Treasure Island poker employees had first preference.

The Mirage was still jamming. I took the 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. shift and the first two years I was on it, I worked overtime at least two nights a week.

Around ’96, the same crunch started to hit…poker opened up across the USA. Too many places offered what had once been unique to Vegas. The slump was on, the games sucked, instead of ramming and jamming, the room was slowing down.

I began to feel that poker was losing its ground and soon there would be no new players to fill the empty seats and all the regular players would end up like the Montana Death Knell. Of course you’re asking what is that. The reason Montana poker players are so tough is they have been fighting over the same $100 for 20 years.

Every year things looked a little leaner and grimmer from my point of view. The games were never crazy or filled with new players wanting to just be there and play. I seriously wandered what I was going to do make a living in the next few years.

I moved to Bellagio when it opened in 1998. The games were better over all than the last few years at The Mirage but not rammer jammers except on a holiday week or weekend or a fight event.

Then Internet poker hit the big upswing and we lost a lot of players. Yes, there are a lot of players that learned to play on the internet and in the long run, each facet of poker helps the other but in the meantime, the games looked pretty damn grim.

Then the strangest of all events happened. The Poker Genie jumped out of her bottle in the form of the WPT and the world has gone crazy. Poker is a household word, everyone watches it on television and everyone talks about it and everyone wants to play.

There are new Internet poker games appearing constantly. Brick and Mortar rooms are cranking up everywhere…even in casinos that never had a poker room and those that closed their poker room years ago are bringing poker back.

The fatted calf has arrived in poker land…things are good. I don’t have to look for another job and I can hang out with the kids at the green felt and do what I do best. Hey, I was born with a deck of cards in my hand.