There’s an incredible dance going on across the sky right now. It’s early a.m. – work behind me – I followed the dance across the city as I headed North towards home. An occasional gutteral rumbling echos an encore request each time the dance stops. One compliments – one performs – and so it goes on and on…unfolding in a spectacular show that never becomes out of date or mundane. Poker seems so trivial at this moment but I feel compelled to immortalize it and the people I find in it – even as I watch the dance.
The Big Game tonight was a $4,000-8,000 and I missed it. I was in a completely different part of the room. Hey…hey…hey..hey! Life is good. The game was full of Name Brand Players. Sammy F. was in that game and has been wearing a brace on his left wrist/hand. Last week when I dealt to him, I asked, “What happened to your wrist?”
He waved his arm and said, “I broke it hitting a dealer in the head.”
I mocked shock, “Oh no!”
He laughed, “Oh…not a poker dealer. A blackjack dealer.”
I still think it’s funny. But I’m twisted.
Monday night there was some guy out in the Sport’s Book with a camera and everytime one of the Name Brand Players walked out of the poker room, he snagged them for a picture with him. Sammy was one of them. Cute! I do think it’s pretty damn kewl of these players to give autographs and allow photos. I can remember a few short years ago they didn’t want you to address them by name. Poker’s come a long way.
Earlier this week my first game of the night was a $30-60 H. A new player sat down in the 5s with two racks. I asked if he would like to post and be dealt in or wait for the blinds. He opted to wait. Fine. I dealt the hand. He made no move to take his chips out of the rack and I politely said, “When you have a chance, please take your chips out of the rack.”
I got the croaking, “W-H-A-T? What did you say?” like I’d asked him to donate a kidney or blood or something bizarre.
I repeated my question. He snorted, “I know the rules!”
I said, “Ok. Excuse me.”
Another player jumped in and informed him that it was a house rule. He again stated that he knew the rules. Then he went into a tirade about playing in another game earlier and a woman in that game had her chips in racks and no one said a word to her – he was looking at me.
I said, “I apologize for the other dealer, Sir.”
He acted like I wasn’t there and looked around the table. “If you ever played poker in L.A., you’d never play here.”
Well polish my brass buttons and call me Matilda. WTF is he doing here? I wanted to ask him if he’d lost his way and I could find an address on Map Quest for him. Instead I clammed up, exploding with laughter inside at how ridiculously overinflated some of these people are.
Several other players informed him that he paid a lot more to play in CA than he does here…he wasn’t having any of it. I was happy to be tapped out shortly after that and move on.
The chips in the rack thing is one of those idiot things that makes me want to choke the other dealers for not doing their job. It’s pretty standard in most places throughout Pokerdom and not something novel and unusual. But I ran into it again in a $30-60 last night. Ho was in the 2s and his chips are always in racks because he had a stroke some years ago and cannot handle chips. The 4s had a ton of chips in stacks and one rack with chips in it. The 5s – female – had a rack with chips in it. When I dealt the first hand, I said, “Everyone knows that racks aren’t allowed on the table, right???”
The 4s did the dual ballistic bitch thing. “As long as we have playable stacks we don’t have to take the racks off the table.”
Barry T. was in the 3s and he went with my statement. The 5s took her chips out of the rack. The 4s continued to ramble that he’d played in a game last night…blah, blah, blah. And he finalized it with telling me to call the Floorman.
The 9s piped in, “It’s the rule and you might as well not argue about it. Calling the floor won’t change it.”
I did call the floor. The decision was ‘take your chips out of the rack’.
Then came the discussion of Ho having his chips in a rack…finally that was settled…then came the threats that the 4s was going to watch in every game he played in to make sure that other players didn’t have their chips in racks. Oh my God! The Chip Rack Police are in the room. *laughing my butt off* Like who’s he going to hurt by doing that? Certainly not me, it would make my job easier since the other dealers can’t do theirs.
We finally settled down to the game of poker and he lightened up. Love it!
Exit poker! The dance is still on. The air has an exciting, sultry feel to it right now. I love to sleep to the rumble of thunder. G’nite real world. G’nite Emerald City.