While I was so busy yesterday, today has been a bit better. I slept in until about 10:30, and after I got up I finally hit the kitchen to make those biscuits and gravy I've been talking about for the past few days. This batch turned out pretty damn well, and erased all psychological trauma relating to the tartar sauce incident. I think I've figured out the secret to perfect sausage gravy--a dollop of bacon grease in the mix, and about a half a teaspoon of white pepper in addition to seasoning with salt and ground black pepper (which I think makes it look better, along with giving it a little zip).
I just got back from the alteration shop, and the guy there didn't even charge me this time around. Either I've given him so much business in the past or this particular pair of pants was just an easy fix, but either way, I'm just glad that I didn't have to break out the wallet.
Work was fun last night--I think I had the Ultimate Night Behind the Tables, at least as far as I'm concerned. I only had to deal my two favorite games--no blackjack, no carnival games, no rapid roulette. I spent the first five hours dealing on the same Pai Gow table, with a fun crowd, and then at 1:00 am, they moved me to a very busy dice table where I had a lady at my end tipping me out at least $50 after each and every roll. I swear I dropped at least a grand in the toke box within my first twenty minutes of standing base.
We also have a new boxman that thinks he's the God's Gift to the dice table, and gets all pissy when they make him stand floor in blackjack or Chinatown, and I caught him twice calling out the wrong prop-bet payoffs, one of which he did several times. When I was on stick, I told him the correct payoffs (a $50 horn bet with a $50 Yo, and the 12 hits--it's $187 to the player, but he kept telling the gal on stick before me that it's $180. At the time I was buried at my end and couldn't pay attention to all the bets in the prop box, so I didn't catch it until later). But that really put him off his game and he was muttering about it and trying to refigure it for a good half hour after that. He finally admitted that I was right.
Heh. Arrogance will bite you in the ass every time. Especially on a heavy-action dice game. I'm far from the best dice dealer in Vegas, but at least I can admit when I make a mistake.
Sidebar-- The best, and quickest, way figure out a horn bet is as follows. If the low side (3 or 11) hits, it's three times the bet, minus other action. Or for you math freaks, (3x - OA), where x = the amount bet on the horn. If the dice land on the high side (2 or 12), it's seven times the bet minus a quarter of the bet, minus other action. Or [(7x - .25x) - OA]. So if somebody has a $50 horn bet and a $50 Yo bet, and the dice land on 12, it would be 7 x 50 ($350), minus a quarter of the bet ($12.50, but we round up to $13 since there are no quarters on a $5 dice game), so that brings us to $337, minus the other action ($50 on the Yo), which is $287. I tried explaining this until I was blue in the face to the frickin' boxman, who should've known this already, but it was to no avail. The stickman didn't catch the error, either.
Anyhow, it was a fun table, but it was a workout. But it was nice to finally be back dealing dice again. Unfortunately, we only have three dice tables, but about 25 dice dealers on our shift, so table time is usually hard to come by.
I almost forgot to mention that I had a couple of interesting characters early on at my pai gow table. Two sad sacks that come in almost every night and piss away all of their money sat down to play (more of those type that refuse to go home unless they've spent their last dollar). Anyhow, after I dealt myself three bonus-type hands in a row, beating them each time, I was treated to their theories on how the Shufflemaster machine can be set to give the dealer a winning hand each time.
Um, yeah, and I think maybe your tinfoil hat is on a bit tight.
I don't know if anyone out there has ever seen the inside of a Shufflemaster, but there is no optical scanner or card reader of any type. Just a ladder mechanism that moves up and down at random, and a little arm that pushes the cards out of a stack until they're all distributed. There is no possible way to set up hands, winning or otherwise.
After I dealt myself a king-high pai gow a few minutes later, I went along with 'em an told them that obviously the machine dealt me a loser that time to make the game seem more legit.
Morons.
They eventually left, broke, of course, which was cool with me.
But when the night finally wound down, I went straight home, exhausted. Even though it was Friday night and I usually go out with my friends, I took a pass this time. I'd forgotton how much work dealing dice really is. I had no trouble at all sleeping last night.
Mikey
PS. Doc Al just called. He told me he's standing in front of the Riviera, on his way to the coffee shop. I asked him if he was wearing a sandwich board and selling fake ID's, but he said no, he had a stack of porn flyers and that if he could give them all away this afternoon, he'd get paid $20. Yep, it's gonna be a long couple of days...
No comments:
Post a Comment