My life was on a roller coaster ride straight into hell and the fiery inferno picked up a wicked smile each time the car I was in hit an all time low.  My relationship with Rod was as sick as it could get, and for some reason, I tightened up the seat belt and hung around for the ride. In retrospect, I could never be where I am today if I had cut the seat belt loose and dove through the window to the light.

The Las Vegas Strip was a completely different string of flashing lights infused with human misery in those days and downtown Las Vegas was the main event.  We (Rod and I) looked for a weekly or some place to stay that was really cheap.  We ended up in some places that were the true dives of Las Vegas.  Somewhere around Harmon and Las Vegas Blvd. – across from what is now the Cosmopolitan/City Center – was a super dive weekly.  We ended up there more than once on our tournament dealing travels.

It was the kind of place that you could expect to hear the sounds of a fighting couple or someone screaming randomly as the cops pulled up.  We were on the second floor.  Our bathroom window opened up to a view of the back of the hotel/buildings next to us with about an 8 to 10 foot span in between.

One night I had the bathroom window open and heard noises. I looked through the window as the light was going out of the sky.

I watched two boys that appeared to be around 10 years old as they got ready to lay down for the night in an almost grave like hollows in the earth.  Yah, it was like peeping.  They pulled some blanket scraps from the hollows and then drug big pieces of cardboard up over their bodies and close their hiding place.

I felt sick.  I couldn’t imagine kids that age being out on their own, let alone sleeping in holes in the ground.  Now that I’ve lived in the desert a long time, I can’t imagine what manner of bugs and pesties crawled into their holes with them.

I had a hard time dealing with most of the whole Vegas scene.  It was at least my third tournament dealing trip to Vegas before I finally started to realize there really were grocery stores, pharmacies, and a lot more spread out around the city.  I kept wondering where real people shopped for food since the only thing we saw the first few trips was the casino for work, the hotel for sleep, and the Stardust for all other waking hours to play poker.

Rod thought he was the best poker player in the world.  And as amazing as it is, he played a NLH live game and a NLH tournament in Reno with the greatest poker player in the world himself, Phil Hellmuth, when we dealt the Hilton Pot of Gold the following year. But that was down the line, we’re still stuck at the Grand Prix and dives in Vegas so let us proceed.

The Stardust had nonstop action and insanity pumped into the air 24/7.  I played $3-6 Holdem games while Rod played $10-20.  That’s where I first became aware of Roy Cooke and Sissy Bottoms, mainly because Rod bitched about how bad they played when they ‘drew out on him’ but that’s what the best players in the world are supposed to do, right?

I rarely even approached the $10-20 table, let alone played it and stayed in low limit, sometimes playing their 7 Card Stud games that were $1-5 I think. The $10-20 was a big game in those days.  I didn’t check out all the games in the room so perhaps some of those dangerous cheating games we’ve all heard about were running when I was there.

I was shy. I didn’t say much and didn’t mingle.  Rod on the other hand was mouthy, arrogant about his play, a jerk at the table when he was losing, and had an eye for the ladies.

Everything is a game, some of us just play different. Yes, you can quote me on that.

The picture on the left is a ribbon with all of the buttons pinned to it that I had to wear while working casinos in Vegas – and some of my name tags.  The picture on the right has the four Grand Prix buttons on it, on the right.  I wore the top one the year I worked it, Frank Cutrona gave me the other three a few years later at The Mirage when he found out I saved them.  They really are a collector’s item.

So you want to know what happened in the first game I dealt at the Grand Prix, right?  Of course you do.

When the player threw out the thick roll of $100 bills and another one raised it to $1,600 and the next guy called and the bettor called, I was in panic mode.  I’m not sure why I didn’t just toss the deck in the air and run for the nearest exit.  If you had any idea how I hate to make mistakes and hate to not be able to do my job (any job) well, you would know that at this point I think I stopped breathing as my right hand slowly stretched out for the roll of bills.

Right now I can’t begin to think what I thought I was going to do with the bills.  But miraculously, that’s when I heard “put in on the piece” so my hand went back to the deck and I spun off the next card.  But I got a reprimand about setting the amount the bettor owed in chips from the pot on top of the bills. Lesson learned.

The last round of betting happened, the original bettor lost the hand. The winner got tired of me not looking like I knew where I was or if I was breathing, let alone what I was doing, and ground out, “Give him back $2,600 and give me the pot.”

Done deal. I survived the down, I think I got a $5 toke out of it but I remember it wasn’t much and with my current dealing standards, I should have tipped them for putting up with me.  Roger Moore won almost all the pots during my down – he was the toker when I left the table.

I survived the night too but the bad thing about tournament dealing is you usually do not get days off, you work them straight through, and this one was three weeks long and ending just before Christmas!