Swear to God, the poker world is too big – you just never know who you’re going to see where. I hit Fry’s this afternoon, buying some ink cartridges for the printer, and when I stood in the Que, who should be there ahead of me but Andy Bloch. I’ve always loved Andy for a variety of reasons. One is that he just comes to play poker. Two is that he is a reasoning, intelligent individual and is capable of thinking through a situation. Three is that at one point, Mason Malmuth decided to post a poll on Two plus Two as to whether he should keep a link to PokerWorks.Com – keep in mind that I never asked him for the link, someone else did. Mason proceeded to trash me and claim that I was a terrible dealer that talked in the box continuously and made a lot of mistakes. And in recent posts, Mason has stated that this site should be read for entertainment purposes only. I have no problem with that. I HAVE a problem with someone stating that I’m a terrible dealer and talk all the time I’m in the box. LIE! But back to Andy and why I love him. This was his reply at the end of the thread:

*Begin post*

7/11/02 – Andrew Bloch

If you don’t read Linda’s site regularly, you should. It’s the only poker site where I read everything that’s posted, and I find almost every entry entertaining and original.
Why am I not too surprised that 2+2 would consider removing the link?

*End post*

Oh…and yes…I have the whole thread saved on my computer because I believe it’s disappeared from Two plus Two.

So back up – Saturday, February 25, 2006. I sent an email to the Pan Crew, asking all of them to meet me at MGM. I hadn’t been to MGM in years and Chad Patterson, dealer prodigy/student/friend works there and has been there since opening. Ain’t he cute?

Playing at MGM would be the first time Chad dealt to me from a professional standpoint. He’s dealt in games at my house – that would include Pan, Big Deuce, and Poker…but never as a professional in a casino poker room. He wasn’t even in our line-up at MGM. So when he hit a break, I asked him to beg for a reroute or line-up change so he could deal to us. Us? Here we are:

Left to right: Marie, Greg, (standing over Greg, Chad – they are brothers), me, Wayne, Amy, and Vivienne. Gary, Marie’s better half was at MGM also but he opted to jump into a $10-20 H game that had started when he arrived. Don’t think it was an easy feat getting all of these people together in the same game…it took a lot of maneuvering. Wayne and I arrived first and took seats – in separate games because that’s all we could find.

We managed to get into a game together – even next to each other – and this hand came up: I was in the BB with 6-4 Spades ($3-6 limit), Wayne raised UTG. The 4s had arrived about 20 minutes earlier and he acted like he had an issue with the air he breathed so we were really a pain in his ass. We should have just written him a check and not forced him to try to beat a win out of the game. The 4s raised. I called. Wayne raised, the 4s raised, I called. The Flop was 6-6-5. Nope! No happy ending to this little story.

I fired, Wayne raised, the 4s called, I raised, Wayne called, the 4s called. The Turn brought a King. I had the f-e-e-l-i-n-g that I was in second place. I bet, Wayne raised, the 4s called, I called. I checked the River, Wayne bet, the 4s called. Where was my head? I called too. Wayne showed K-K and stacked the pot. I asked him if he thought…for even a half of a second that he might have been in trouble. His answer was yes. But later on, when the whole crew was together, he explained it like this, “The Flop was 6-6-3 and a King on the Turn, where was I going?”

Not quite like that – the flop or the way the betting went – but it’s hard to argue with a winner. He beat me fair and square and he had the best hand…or maybe the 4s had the best hand pre-flop…unknown.

And Wayne – who can figure out the little kid insanities that are going on in there? I start to focus the camera and he starts the insanities. So be it!

But getting back to getting the whole crew together for the same game, Greg and Amy arrived and stood behind Wayne and me as we played. Vivienne came in. Suddenly a new game was starting where the $2-4 Mixed had been a few moments before and we all moved into it. Marie and Gary were on their way and I had their names on the list. Gary had been giving Marie an $8-16 lesson at Wynn. She won and he lost…go figure! Who needs the lesson? Sorry Gary.

When I first joined a $3-6H game, Mark came up and introduced himself. He thought that I might be moving around town from reading the posts here. BTW, if any of you are in town and want to be included in a poker room/photo shoot/group play post, get in touch with me. I dealt to Mark some time ago at Bellagio and the first thing he asked when I dealt to him was how much I’d donated to charity. That would mean a post I put up where I stated I would donate everything given to me in ‘ultra high limit’ – except for one person that I had dealings with away from the card room – because I was totally sick of the attitude that we were cattle working for grazing rights and the privilege of dealing high limit. I would be the first to admit that tipping has improved in Bobby’s Room since TV took the world by storm. But I still donate my earnings in that room to a worthy cause. I’m not the Barry Greenstein of poker dealers…I’m the Linda of bloggerdom.

Try as I might, I had a helluva time getting a photo of Mark…remember I can’t have the flash going off and all that weird shit or I might be attacked by the Camera Police. So…this photo is not as clear as I would like but it’s the best of the group of ‘Mark photos’. Mark – you’re an asset to the poker world.

My group took over Table 2. We played on one end of the table, the rest of the world played on the other end of the table. I had a chuckle going on with the 3s. We never exchanged a word but our eyes and motions told the story. He was fun and kewl…I’d enjoy having a drink with him away from the game just to know where he was from and how he slipped into pokerdom to start with. Amy was our sweater…she moved around between us and visited and had more than a few brews. I went from never winning a pot to going backward. No hits, no runs…lots of errors. I flopped two pair to be beaten by two bigger pair and on and on and on. I quit trying to play good about a half an hour into this game…believe me, it’s better that way sometimes.

The downside: 1) I hated the chairs. My legs and body ached within 20 minutes of being seated. The chairs are too low for the table and forced me to keep my legs tucked under my chair and hunched forward to see what was going on at the table. 2) The cocktail waitresses are like the waitresses everywhere else, they want to stand at one end of the table and have you scream your ass off over the noise and hubbub because they won’t walk to your seat and give you customer service. 3) You cannot buy the button. You cannot post in between the button and blind. 4) If you move more than one player out of the blind, you have to wait to be dealt in or post.

The upside: 1) They had buttons on the table to summon chips, cocktails, open seats, and the dealers had to swipe in when they sat down and they could swipe players in for perks from the dealer’s seat. 2) Several people that I’ve played poker with and worked with were working in this room. Ron AKA Fuzzy used to work at the Gold Coast and moved to the Orleans and then to Bellagio – is a Floor Man at MGM. And Mark, used to work at the Horseshoe, is a Floor Man at MGM…I played a million or so hands of poker with him on graveyard at the Gold Coast and the Orleans over the years. Nice! 3) The room was very busy – at one point all of the tables were up and running. That’s always nice.

The room from the NLH side:

Tables along the rail were extremely hard for me to deal with because of the cigarette smoke but in the middle of the room the smoke was barely noticeable except for some clown on the rail that was smoking a cigar. Maybe clown is too nice a word. Figure it out people, if we wanted to smoke, we’d go buy our own.

I took a walk at one point, stretching out the legs, leaving the ugly cards behind, and headed for the ‘lion habitat’. This beauty was out, laying right next to the glass where I positioned myself, giving an inquisitive eye to something although I’m sure it wasn’t the world outside the glass. Ain’t she kewl?

I ended up being the last of the group to leave. The game got really good. Only problem was my cards still looked the same. I gave up and headed for home somewhere around 1:30ish AM. I had a great time. I’m a social creature when it comes to cards and poker…otherwise you have to hike with me or drink wine with me to get into the ‘Linda zone’ and lots of people don’t wanna be there. New flash – I don’t want most of mankind to be there so it works out.

*****

Tony G. just won the WPT BAD BOYS OF POKER! Way to go Tony.