Man, Thursday night was just fantastic all around. First of all, my Cardinals beat the NY The thing was, during the ninth inning of the game, I was dealing a $50 blackjack game with my back to all the TVs in the bar, so the floorperson and the guy playing at my table were giving me the play-by-play because I couldn't turn around and watch. It was absolutely killing me, hearing everyone cheering and screaming and not being able to turn around and see what was going on.
But the absolute worst was the end of the game--I could feel the tension--everyone was glued to the tv, and there I was dealing my game, and knowing that the bases were loaded with Mr. Cardinal Killer, Carlos Beltran, at the plate.
The first two strikes were reported accurately to me, and I was getting excited, but when strike three came, the floorguy standing next to me yelled Beltran hits a home run--Mets win! just to be a dick. I almost collapsed in a heap right there on the floor, but him and the player at my table were laughing and high-fiving, then fessed up that they were just messing with me. Damn near killed me. But right then there was a lull in my blackjack game so I took a quick peek over my shoulder to see all the Cardinal players celebrating on tv, so I knew they'd won. Whew.
How about Wainwright's nasty curveball on strike three? Wow...just a sick pitch!
Even better--no teams from New York are going to the World Series! Hey, East Coast media--Suck it!
Ok, but now they go to Detroit and are a *heavy* underdog. I don't care. I'll still root for them right up until the bitter end. Because you just never know... Go Cardinals! Man, what I wouldn't give to be in St. Louis right now. I'm telling you, that city just has the greatest vibe ever when the Cards are in the post-season. I can't describe it, but those that have lived there know exactly what I'm talking about. What a great time to be a Cardinal fan!
Whew... I think I got that out of my system. Pardon me for being excited, but damn, that's my favorite sports team of all time... I can't help it.
As far as work goes, it was a busy night for your humble scribe. I was stuck on one single blackjack table almost all night long--a $50 shoe game. But I only had one player all night long--just me and him for six hours straight. And he was a dream player--somebody known as an Uber-George. He sat down just as I was opening the the table at 8:00 pm and asked the floorperson if we could make it a $50 game instead of a ten-dollar minimum to limit the doofusses that walk up. The bosses said yes, so it was just him and I for the long haul. And as soon as he got into positive territory, he always had me up for anywhere between $5 and $25 per hand. Oh hell yeah. We started with an empty toke box, and by the time I left the table at 2:20 in the morning, it was about three-quarters full, and I lost count of what I dropped somewhere north of $700. And he kept leaning over the table looking at the toke box and saying, Nope, not full enough yet--guess I'll have to keep playing!
The bosses want us to deal about 450 hands per hour on a shoe game, but damn, I was just flying. I must've been pushing 600 hands an hour with this guy. Fastest blackjack game ever--the only thing slowing me down was all the time I had to take to drop tokes in the box.
Not only was this guy taking care of us--we had a couple other of our favorite players on the dice tables tonight, dropping huge money for us. The dice dealers dropped so much money that we had to change out the toke boxes before the shift was over--they had so many checks in them that we couldn't squeeze anymore in. I'm hoping that because of all that we end up somewhere north of $200 for the night. That would be most excellent.
Finally, about twenty minutes to three, they moved me to dice for the balance of the shift. It was a busy game, and I haven't dealt dice with a lot of action in probably two months. But all was well and I did fine. In fact I really enjoyed it--it was a nice change of pace from all the time I've spent in Chinatown these past couple of months.
I finally punched out at 4:00 am, and now I'm pretty beat. I've got to get a few hours of sleep, then I'm meeting Marty, Shock, and Kikky for lunch at the Grand Luxe. Then I kill some time before picking up Sticky at the airport around 5:30 or so this evening. After that, it's all going to be a blur.
Time to get some rest.
Mikey
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