Want some whiskey in your water
Sugar in your tea
What’s all these crazy questions they askin’ me
This is the craziest party there could ever be
Don’t turn on the lights, ’cause I don’t want to see – Mama told me not to come – Lyrics by Three Dog Night

The only thing wrong with the party/picture is me. I’m out in left field, lost somewhereunder a blade of grass while the show is going on around me. There’s nothing wrong with the tournament, the players, the format, the noise and excitement, or anything in general…except me. Everything’s wrong with me. I have no focus. I’m not in the mood to be there. I find it to be quite stressful. And to make it worse, Istarted my first down on Monday night with a gigantic blunder on my part and the rest of my night seemed to follow suit.

Let me back track for half a second. I started myentrance to the poker room with hate glares from J.C.P. I happened to look around the room as I walked back to the Page area and he was sending me the look of death and destruction, totally focused on extinguishing my life at that moment, and I stared right back at him with a big smile on my face until he left my line of vision due to players’ heads blocking out his ugliness. If he put as much energy into laughter and life as he does into anger and self loathing, what it would be like to see him in the room?

I used to think I was in the top 1/4 of the dealing class as far as being able to run a game and pay attention to what was going on -there are times that I’ve felt I wasat the bottom of the dealing class but then managed to overcome my low opinion of myself and go back to thinking I knew what I was doing- now I think I’m in the bottom 1/3 of the dealing class and I don’t know if I’m capable of moving up out of it. Focus is a keyword in this entire scenario. Lately I feel as though I have A.D.D., I can’t concentrate on anything and it shows.

But back to the party. I started in the Fontana Lounge, dealt the last few hands of asingle table satellite and the ‘added events’ $1,000+? was starting at 7 p.m. My table kicked off missing a few players but I’m dealing to the stacks and somewhereclose to the end of my down, Tommy arrived, laughing and chuckling (I get a gigantic charge out of him – long time history back to the Mirage days) and semi showed me histable/seat receipt. I take the blame here, I should have just reallyl00ked at it, I did the non focused glance and he took the 4s. The only other seat open was the 5s. The blinds had already passed the 4 and 5s so the stacks were correct when Tommy got involved in a hand.

Right in the middle of the hand, Ron Stanley arrived to take his seat. It was the 4s, Tommy was supposed to be in the 5s.

The flop was out, Tommy was facing an all-in bet, and I – like a mental basket case – reached over to just move the 5s chips to the 4s and have Tommy move to the 5s. The 1s said, “You have to call the floor; you know better than that.”

Kee-rist! I do know better than that. WTF was wrong with me? Don’t even go there, too much to talk about and it wouldfill up all the cyberspace of the world.

I agreed with him. I called the floor. The decision was first we finish the hand and then Tommy would move to the 5s with his chips and Ron would take the 4s with the chips that were in the 5s now.

Tommy couldn’t make up his mind and we sat. I was scorching myself mentally for being a retard and not paying attention to start with. The 6s finally said we needed a clock. I called for a clock. After our floor arrived to do the clock thang, Tommy gave up his hand. One player went bust in the hand. The game went on, but my brain kept cramping.

I mentally slapped myself a million times, refreshing on the word ‘FOCUS’ so I could get through the night. It’s amazing how once you make a mistake, you do a form of second guessing everything you do, wondering if you’re right or if you’re missing something…counting down chips, reading a hand, etc.

I made it through four more downs of this ‘special added’event and my last table in Fontana was one of the ‘daily’ events. The chip colors in these events are completely different than the colors of chips that we are familiar with. The yellow chips are $500, in all of our other chip working situations, yellow designates $1,000. I knew I was going to take an extra minute every time I had to count down an all-in just to make sure I didn’t screw up the amount with the way my cramping brain was processing information. I dealt the first hand of this down and the table broke down due to combining tables. I was out of Fontana and going back to the main room.

I managed todeal flawlessly through a $50-100 PLO game. I don’t know how. When I walked up to push the dealer out of the game, there was a gigantic, heated discussion between a player standing over the 1s (I’m figuring he had been in the 1s earlier), the shift supervisor, and the 7s. The discussion turned into a sort of screamer, with the standing player doing the screaming about an overbet of the pot and he should be refunded for the overbet. He stomped off in a fit when he was told there would be no refund because the cameras hadn’t picked up any discrepancy in the betting. Someone at the table laughed and said, “…he’s going to get a gun.” It just added another chink in my brain cramp as I wondered if I could keep my focus and not allow an overbet and keep the pot straight. I did…big pot on the last hand I dealt, around $14,000 as the 2s went into the ‘tank’ and we waited…a long time…before he folded and the 5s-9s went to the river.

Off to $100-200 LH on the platform where the temperature is at least 1000 degrees. Tables 4-5-13-14-15 are all on the platform and ever since the room remodel with the beautiful glass panes enclosing the area, it’s likea sauna up there when the room is busy and it appears there is no way to cool it down. No one likes dealing up there because of the temperature. This was an uneventful game…my brain cramp kept screaming at me, “Focus, Linda, focus!”

The next game was mixed, $200-400, and we had a helluva time getting a cocktail server to acknowledge any of my three requests for cocktails – even tho she was eight feet from our table, she wouldn’t look up or even acknowledge my pleas for cocktails. She appeared to make it a point to walk around us. The 7s said he’d been trying to get service for quite some time. I finally called our high brush and explained the problem. He went after the cocktail server and sent her to us. This took about five to eight minutes to happen. When she arrived, the 7s said he would have to pass on service – he said it quietly and just didn’t order from her.

When she brought the drinks back, the 5s did an “OMG” type of thing as he’d watched CSI or something with forensics and poisoning type of things and decided he wasn’t sure he wanted to drink his drink. Ming La was in the 2s. He was chatting with a player in the game next to us, in a foreign language. Their conversation was animated and consuming their attention. Loy was in the 4s and he was listening to their conversation, eyebrows going up and down, a word here and there, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. The focus went to the player at the next table, it was damned funny if you were there. The conversation had something to do with a food server spitting on someone’s food, I think. Simply because Ming La won a big pot and tipped me with, “I don’t want you to spit on my cards because I didn’t tip you,” as he busted out laughing. So did I.

During this down, a new dealer, that I’ve never seen before, stood and watched me deal for 20 minutes. When I left the game to push to my next table off of the platform, this same new dealer was sitting a deadspread. He informed me that I was out of the line-up (yes, I signed the E/O after the line was drawn) but he didn’t know how to deal a mixed game and wanted to watch me instead. He also didn’t know how/what/when/where Time Pots were. I spent 15 minutes trying to explain the difference in Time games and some you collected from the player when you first set down, some were taken out of the pot after a flop, some were taken out of the small blind depending on the limit, etc., etc., etc. I told him the best thing to do was to ask a player if he didn’t know, generally thereare always player/s in a game that will always help a dealer. He was still befuddled when I left him but I did the best I could and time in the box will straighten it out for him…hopefully.

I did go to the next game he would be pushing to, tapped Paul on the shoulder, and explained to Paul that the next dealer coming in wasn’t familiar with time pots, “Please help him out.” Perhaps my opinion of my dealing has just moved me up to the top of the bottom 1/3.

What else can I say, the party is going on, it’s one of the strangest because more and more new faces appear in all line-ups, and my focus is shot. WAKE UP, LINDA! There won’t be a test later but it will help if you can pay attention.