It’s really difficult for me to believe – even when I stop and sort through all the memories and great times I’ve stored in my thoughts – but as of today, I’ve been back in the employment of Bellagio/Mirage for eleven years. I opened The Mirage in 1989, left in April of 1993 to open The Gulfport Grand in Gulfport Mississippi, (And good God!!!! Yes…I’m so glad I’m not there now!), and returned to Vegas in April of 1994. Where in the hell did those years go? My life feels like it’s on fast forward. Everything speeds by and I chase the small Time Tendrils, trying to hold onto every moment, taste it, feel it, breathe it, live it, and absorb it into my being to be savored when something jolts my thoughts and reminds me of another time, another day, another fleeting moment that I can never have again.

*****

Well here I am. Right back in a Time Warp with a few players that I had hoped would disappear. These players are not part of the small Time Tendrils…they are more like giant, vacuous spaces that destroy the best parts of time. One of them is Sam. A Mirage player for years – came with us to Bellagio – horrible attitude and it’s always the dealer’s fault. If an earthquake shook the building, it would be the dealer’s fault. Hell, there may be a major Dealer Fault Line running right under Bellagio, creating tremors and aftershocks that are too big to register on the Richter Scale and Sam may be one of the few players that knows it’s there. But Sam is back, after being 86’d for some time, he’s haunting the card tables again…or the card tables are haunting him. He’s glaring and staring his way through $30-60 H and from what I heard last night, he may be right on the edge of the Dealer Fault Line again…as in close to leaving us for another few years. Shit! Do they ever learn? In Sam’s case, apparently not. I’ve dealt to him a few times and last night found him in a game in my line-up…he’s not been out of line during my downs but his grim face leaves me wishing he’d find another avenue for self inflicted pain.

Another one that hit my line-up last night and has been a major pain in the butt since The Mirage Days; played regularly at Bellagio up until a few years ago, had to destroy a down for me. I would have to give him ‘No Name’ because I don’t know his name, don’t want to know it, can’t believe his mother ever gave him one…he’s such a piece of shit. I rarely try to tip the scales of life by being brutally cold about a person’s value in life, but this guy is beyond the realm of how I feel about my fellow man/woman. He’s a Creep Freak. He used to be a Box Man at The Mirage…or so I’ve been told. Even when he played at The Mirage, he was still employed by The Mirage, and he couldn’t wait to come into the poker room to torment dealers…all this in $3-6 and $4-8 Limit although I’ve seen him play as high as $8-16. Whoopee! He will have to be C.F. (Creep Freak) for this writing. And I believe I’ve posted about him before…but DAMNIT…if I didn’t, I should have.

He’s in the 5s of $4-8 H. He glares at me when I take the Dealer’s Chair. Quite seriously, he’s thinner, older, and he reminds me of what I would imagine Satan to look like if he were in human form. C.F. plays every hand. He wins a pot with about $50 in it. He doesn’t tip…I didn’t expect him to.

There are a few players that if they tipped me, I would be highly disappointed. I would have to restructure my thought on them because it would blow apart everything I’ve learned about them…and I would have to tell them, “Thank you!” No…NO, Mrs. Wizard…do not make me tell them thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Wizard for keeping them in the same safe dark hole I’ve placed them in and not allowing them to come out in the light.

Everyone else at the table is a new face, relaxed and playing poker…but not C.F. It only takes him a few hands to start feigning deafness as a problem for not hearing me say, “$4 to call.” This is an ongoing thing with him each time I’ve dealt to him for over the last ten years or so, If he’s really that hard of hearing, why doesn’t he get a hearing aid? To easy! How could he make everyone else miserable if he couldn’t act like he was unable to communicate? He knows exactly where the action is and how much it is to him, he just likes to disrupt the game, act likes he’s being persecuted by life in general, and act like an overall asshole. BTW…he does the ‘overall asshole’ almost better than anyone I’ve ever met.

C.F. had a $100 bill under his very short stack of chips; had two $1 chips out for his SB; the bet was raised, it was $6 for him to call. He pushed out the $100 bill. I counted out the chips from the rack, stacked three stacks of $5 chips in stacks of five, spread three $5 chips on the side, and four $1 chips, and pushed them in front of him, showing a neat little $94 in change and leaving $8 in front of him for the call.

C.F. stared at his change, rifled through it – then declared that I didn’t do it right. There were six other players in the hand, all their bets were in front of them, nothing had been pulled into the pot, and I went through the process of explaining his change.

“WHAT?” His glare focused on me.

He can’t fucking hear. Right? Yeah, right!

I explained it all again, patiently counting out all of his chips, showing him the stacks of five, the odd three, the four $1 chips – the correct change.

“WELL…IT’S NOT RIGHT!”

I did it all again. Several players chimed in and told him it was right. He argued. I called the Floor. I got Skip. I explained the situation to Skip. Skip told him it was right.

“NO, IT’S NOT RIGHT. MY CHANGE ISN’T RIGHT!”

By now I was yelling…maybe it was to make him hear me or maybe it was because I wanted to knock him off his chair…and maybe that’s where he wanted me. Sure…I thought about that too. I explained, loudly, that he had $102 in the pot, that he now had $94 in change.

After shuffling through the stacks, he noticed the three odd $5 chips, like they materialized out of thin air. “Oh…I didn’t see this one,” pointing at one of the $5 chips.

No Shit! Maybe it was put there by Lance Burton.

Before Skip left the table, he told C.F. that he was going to have to listen to the dealer and pay attention. Even after the pot had been pushed and we were on to the next hand, C.F. kept looking at his chips and mumbling. A few hands later, when he was one off of the Button, the bet was $8 to him, I looked at him and said, “Eight to call.”

He said, “I check.”

I didn’t even crack a smile or change my tone of voice, “It’s eight to call,” as I gestured at the eight $1 chips in front of the 8s.

He snarled, “Did he bet?”

“No dip-shit, the Chip Fairy just threw those chips out on the table,” that was what I wanted to say but instead I said, “Yes, $8 to call.”

He snapped out, “Well, you are supposed to tell me he bet, that’s your job.”

I screamed for Skip. When Skip arrived behind me, I explained. Skip told C.F. that he was going to have to follow the action and pay attention to the game. And listen to the dealer. The problems stopped. C.F. knew what was going on all the time. He also knew the Floor Person wasn’t going to put up with anymore of his antics so he simply stopped.

In the meantime, Cheryl was in a game two games away from my line-up. Another one of those people that I wish would just go somewhere else and do something different with their lives. She hasn’t been around for a while and I certainly haven’t missed her. She could be a beauty queen but she chooses to dress like one and behave like a trash mouthed slut that thinks the world revolves around her rosy red ass…maybe it does when she’s not in Poker Land…but she’s a horror to play with and deal to. She had the whole table worked up into a mad dog frenzy…I could hear her and them while I dealt the game with C.F. in it.

I got pushed, took a break, and hit my next game – right behind the game I just came out of…I had a front row seat to watch C.F. and his antics. And Cheryl moved into the 1s in that game. I got a new player in the 5s in my game. He wasn’t new to me…he’d just left the game that Cheryl left and he didn’t have any kind words for her. D-a-m-n! Ain’t she a charmer?

About half way through this down, C.F. went ballist-i-co. He had to have gone broke or picked up what few chips he had left and gave up his seat. But he didn’t leave. He stood behind the 6s, yelling – it appeared to be at the dealer because he was glaring that way. The vile mouth moved continuously (I couldn’t hear what he said but I could sure as hell imagine what was going on there) as the demon eyes focused on the dealer. It went on for about five minutes.

Leslie, Floor Person, walked up to the table, listened/half looked at C.F. and then started to walk away. I called her back. I couldn’t imagine the dealer not calling for a floor to get C.F. out of there but whatever the case – enough was enough. When Leslie walked up behind me, I explained that the floor had already been called on C.F. twice when I was dealing that game and he shouldn’t be allowed to stand there and glare/yell at the dealer. Leslie started to move in his direction and he drifted off.

When I hit my next table, (those three tables are in an L shape), C.F. walked up by the original table to glare at everyone. Then he walked over to the table I was dealing at and glared at me. I started laughing. He finally moved off again – hopefully he found the entrance to the hole he crawled out of. And if he did, I sure as hell hope that entrance is sealed off if I hit the Time Warp again.