The cards are being dealt to me right now. I’m playing on Tony G. For any of you that are hanging out on New Year’s Eve, Tony G. Poker has a special party planned – join now and find out what the party’s all about.

And back to the subject of dealing. I often hear, “You need to get back in the box! Your blog is much better when you are dealing.”

That could be. It might not be. It all depends on your perspective. Being human, we always seem to become more alert and decisive when we are dealing with adversity. When life is at its darkest moments (not necessarily death but let’s put a little despair in there for flavor), that’s when we tend to kick in and shine, we’fix’ things so we can’handle’ them – either by taking action or by reasoning our way through the situation so we can deal with it. In the days before TV POKER, it was very difficult to continue telling myself I wanted to stay in poker as a dealer. I still have stories that have never been told. Maybe they never will be told. I do know that dealing now is like a Cake Walk in comparison to five or six years ago. And five or six years ago was a Cake Walk compared to 15 years ago. I’ve listened to a few players tell me that if they were in the dealer’s box, making money all night long, that they would never get upset over what a player did. To that I say, “HORSE SHIT!”

There’s no way you can go in to the same repetitive scenario, day after eternal, never ending day, listening to the same sludge telling you that you should be ashamed of yourself for dealing cards, or someone asking you how you sleep at night, or someone else pegging the cards at your fingers with venom in their eyes, or someone else glaring at you with evil hate daggers shooting out of their eyes, or someone blaming you because they are a perpetual loser, or someone calling you names that you would reserve for your ex after you found them sleeping around on you and they cleaned out your bank account to afford that someone, and just sit back all shiny and new and go, “Hey, you’re a player. I’m cool with it. Beat me up, slap me up, do whacha want.” There ain’t enough money in the world.

When you know exactly what someone asshole/assholette is going to say before they even open their mouth, and you are very good at your job and are giving them the best side of it even when they are acting like freaked out cry babies, there is no way you are ever going to just go with it. Maybe at first, but in the long run of life and things that grow old fast, somewhere people that play poker have to stop and realize that there is no deck that cares if they win. There really is no dealer that ever cares if they win. If you find a dealer that cares, you are the fool. Either you are playing their money – or you are a “George” – or they are cheating for you. Take your pick.

No dealer should ever care whether you win or lose if they are a professional. One of the sickest parts of my early dealing career to big name players, and some that weren’t big names but they played high limit a lot, was the fact that I actually wished for them to win when I dealt to them. Not because they tipped, God forbid that they would ever give you anything for doing your job, but because I didn’t have to put up with their hateful animosity. I didn’t have to hear their whispered anger and feel their ugly eyes trying to rip my head off if they lost. In those days, a player had to be terribly out of line before they were cautioned by the floor person. Thank you Linda Johnson, for stepping to the forefront of poker players and standing behind dealers. If a player was out of line, and had been reported by the last 30 or so dealers, the floor might come over and ‘sweat’ the game to make sure the player behaved.

“Here, Honey, let me pat your back, kiss your ass, and grovel while I’m watching to make sure you don’t try to stuff the cards down the dealer’s throat because you missed your flush draw and made top pair and had to call!”

That’s how it felt from my side. I wanted the assholes to win…in those days. Now I say FUCK’EM! If they want to bleed off chips, I just deal as fast as I can to make sure they go broke while I’m in the box. You got attitude? Go fuck yourself. The cards come off the deck at random when I deal. If you’re expecting something other than a game that’s on the square, when I’m dealing, you in da wrong hotel baby.

Here’s the bottom line. I’ve spent over 25 years in the player and dealer seat…mostly the dealer seat. I would hate to play poker for a living. I think it’s a tremendous amount of hard work andyou haveto be on top ofyourself to conquer the internal demons that haunt you, then you have to live through bad card runs, long and short term luck, bankroll, personal life, game availability, peer pressure, and a few million other things that can affect your poker game wins/losses. I never professed to be a player.

I am at my best in the dealer’s box. But I just don’t want to be there anymore. No one gives me shit -because I do my job the way I’m supposed to. If something comes up, I just call the floor person, I don’t try to solve it myself. So that’s it in a nutshell. I can deal, I will deal, but if I was financially capable of walking away from that world right this minute, I would do it so fast you wouldn’t have time to say, “Call!”