Friday night at the zoo! That statement says it all most of the time but not this time. It wasn’t a zoo. There were no cages and orderly paved walkways. It was a jungle. I swear there were people crawling up the walls and ceilings and swinging on the drapes to get into the middle of the room and sign up for games. The lists were 50 long…that’s not an exaggeration.

I came in early and met Craig (Andy Beal’s sweater) at Snacks (he played Howard in the heads-up $25,000 tournament). We’ve been friends for quite some time and his wife and kids flew in to spend the weekend. I had the pleasure of meeting his family. Great people and a good friend with strong values and life goals.

Then it was back to the jungle. I started on Table 5, $25-$50 NLH. Derrick, a ‘used to live in Missoula MT’ (my old stomping/poker dealing/ran my own games/beginning in poker), knows my sis and always has a big hello and smile for me, was in the 7s. He comes in at tournament time.

The 5s was laughing and jamming, drinking and making sure everyone knew about it. He was pretty damn entertaining, even from the dealer point of view, but I’m sure he was more entertaining to the rest of the boys because he was giving away chips. At one point he left the table for a few seconds and raced back yelling, “Deal me in!”

I replied, “Oh…absolutely.”

The 4s gave me the ‘you know what you’re doing look’ and said, “No kidding!”

My next game was, as always, just deal and get through it. $20-40 Omaha 8 or Better with a Half Kill. Double A and Al N. are the only bright spots in the game – as in they smile, they act like they are alive and aren’t going to die if they don’t win the next pot – and Al went on dinner break.

It was all uphill from there. $100-$200 Holdem, must move.

Then $100-200 Holdem main game. Then off to $10-20 blind NLH.

One little teensy game in my line-up, $2-5 blind NLH, almost as if it were a mistake for being there.

The next game was a full $100-200 blind PLO – The Devilfish, Eskimo, O’Neil, and Johnny Chan were part of the cast. I got through that one without scrapes or bruises. Most of the faces were new to me. Devilfish called the 8s by name and asked, “Do you know how your name became famous?”

The 8s replied, “I will be famous when you are a dead fish.”

It was pretty funny. He was laughing when he said it and I almost spit laughing.

Hello $600-1200 Mixed. Greg Raymer was in the 4s. Randy was in the 6s and hardly slowed down to suck air as he kept taunting everyone to make it $800-1600. He went to war with himself. It was a one man battle trying to goad everyone into playing his game. At one point he stated, “The person with the least money wants to play higher!” He was right, he had the least amount of chips and he definitely was the only one that kept wanting to play higher…huge advantage for him if he hit a rush.

Cuckoo was in the 8s and between him and Randy the word fuck was thrown into every other word in every sentence. If words died because of over use, that one would have been buried that night.

I moved on…dealt to Tobey Maguire in a $100-$200 blind NLH game. The game was short handed when I sat down and was almost full when I left – no silly, not because of me. Lots of rock and roll in that baby. No head aches or problems for me and I made money. I pushed more than one average size pot to the 8s (although I’ve seen him in the room before, I’ve never dealt to him until now). He was very good to me. Sweet because I was almost feeling pouty, it was Friday – MY FRIDAY – I signed up to EO/play and I had to play dealer all night.

My last game was $80-$160 Omaha 8 or Better with a 1/4 kill. Four handed. They were great but I was beat. My brain was fried, the noise had leveled off to a dull roar, the people had stopped crawling on the walls and ceilings and swinging on the drapes to get into the room. There was now room to walk between the tables, and the fresh, crisp night air was waiting. Question was, could I could just make it to the Time Clock and survive the walk under the building, up Heart Attack Hill, to the Employee Entrance on Frank Sinatra Blvd. to wait for the employee bus.

I made it…a few hours sleep and I was off to Sam’s Town for the World Poker Blogger Tour breakfast and tournament. Post to follow.