Mistakes

Good morning, everyone--I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Mine was ok--busy at work, relaxing at home. Otherwise, kinda dull, now that I think about it.

First things first, I want to go ahead and offer a public service by giving a big 'thumbs down' to Cool Mint Creme Double Stuft Oreos. They are not very good at all. I like mint, and I like Oreos, but if I want mint cookies, I'll call up the Girl Scouts. Mint cream Oreos are too sweet and kinda taste like ass. And not that good ass you see in high heels carrying drinks in the casino, either. More like the white-trash ghetto booty ass you see at WalMart that ought not to be wearing spandex.

Even if they're on sale, stick with the original flavor Oreos. Trust me on this.

My last couple of nights at the casino have been somewhat interesting--I was lucky enough to be dealing my favorite games, but I was in dealer hell for a couple of hours. What is dealer hell? That's when you're busting your good players, but the jerkoffs and stiffs keep winning hand after hand. And it drives you nuts when that happens, because you know it's costing you money.

Other than that, I had an interesting thing happen on Saturday night. I was deep into my second hour of Pai Gow, and still had yet to drop a single dollar in tokes. I was striking out big time. I was really getting bummed because I had dealt one lady about four bonus hands in a row, and she wouldn't even cough up a dollar. I told myself that if I went five more minutes and nobody toked me, the 'show' would be over, I'd stop talking completely, and just dummy up and deal for the rest of the night, going as fast as I could, and letting the house edge work it's magic.

Just as I was thinking this to myself while riffling the deck before loading it into the Shufflemaster, I saw the lady on seat seven--who I'd just given a full house to--drop a nickel for me out in front of her Fortune Bonus bet.

Normally I bet the nickels on the main hand, and the dollars on the bonus hand whenever I'm dealing Pai Gow, so I just reached over and pushed it out from in front of the bonus and into the space in front of the main bet. (We've got a much better chance of winning the main hand, truth be told, so I figured, after two hours into my shift and not dropping a dime into the toke box, I'd take a chance on making ten bucks) The player was talking to the cocktail waitress at the time, so she didn't notice my little act of subterfuge.

So, the cards come out, and I dealt them around the table. The lady in seat seven picked up her cards, started to set them, and I noticed her grinning. She then looked over her cards and notices that the bet she made for me has moved.

Doh!

She said Hey, I put that bet on the bonus for you--you shouldn't have moved it!

Did I make a mistake?

Yeah you did--you would've gotten paid! Move it back!

Um, lemme call the floor person over. I can't move it back now that you *know* it's a winning bet, I said.

So I called for the floor, told him what I did, and he said to move it back.

Before I did, I told him, Well, I think it's a winning hand, and she told me to move it back *after* she saw her cards.

So he said, As long as it's not a Royal Flush or something like that, I don't care...

The player then chimed in, saying that she had a Straight Flush!

Immediately, I felt sick. I'd just lost $250, because I *knew* there was no way they were going to let me drop that in the toke box. The player's bet was safe--She was getting $250, but I realized that instead of $250, I'd make a whopping ten bucks instead. Great.

Of course, as soon as she said she had a straight flush, the floorman looked at me like I was a complete f*cking idiot, and at the time, well, I was.

He said he couldn't approve a disputed payout of that size, and that he'd have to call Surveillance to see what really happened.

So I had the cards spread out on the layout, her bonus money all cut out in front of me, and the game came to a complete stop for damn near ten uncomfortable minutes while the floor supervisor was on the phone with the Eye. All the players were like "Dude, are you going to get in trouble?"

Of course not, the house LOVES it when they don't have to pay a bonus. And I felt like a total shiatbag for moving the bet over, because tokes are hard enough to come by on a Pai Gow game, and losing out on $250 is a huge kick in the balls.

I looked over my shoulder a few times, and I could see the guy on the phone and it wasn't looking good. His body language told me all I needed to know, and he kept shaking his head whenever I made eye contact. But they were looking at the tape for a LONG time.

Finally, he hung up and walked back to the table.

Gimme the bad news, I said.

Well, he said, according the the Eye, the player put the bet in front of the Fortune Bonus, and was unaware that you moved it. Pay both bonuses.

The whole table erupted in a cheer! Of course, they were all going to win their $20 Envy bonuses, but they were rooting for me to get the big payoff. So I gladly dropped the $255 in the toke box and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

And I swear to God, if that would've happened at any other casino in Vegas, they would have *never* paid that bet to the dealers. Not in a million years. So the next time my co-workers are bitching about how the casino is sticking it to them, I'll remind them that they don't have it so bad. And word spread pretty quickly that night that I'd dropped a $250 bonus on a Pai Gow table, so I was the big hero in the break room. But when I told them how I almost lost it, well, I got humbled again. And again. And again.

After that, it was like the floodgates opened on the tokes, and I ended up dropping almost $500 before calling it a night, which is unheard of in the Chinatown pit. And we ended up making over $150 in tokes for the night, so it helped.

Last night, however, was the polar opposite. On one game I had people betting for me almost every hand for the entire hour, and I didn't win one single bet. I just wiped everybody out. It was a bloodbath. I *may* have dropped about $50 total for the entire evening, but I had at least three or four times that amount bet for me--I just couldn't win a bet!

But, word around the campfire was that day shift dropped some big money, so I'm hoping somebody carried my ass like I did for somebody else the night before. Normally, I'm almost *always* ahead of the curve as far as amount of tokes go--I'm one of the big producers on my shift. But not last night. I was a cold-blooded house-dealing bankroll killer--you didn't want any part of me if you were in the casino. It was just one of those nights. It couldn't end soon enough.

But the nightmare is finally over now, and I'm chillin' in my bed, ready to get a few hours of sleep. I've got one more night of this silliness before my weekend, so let's hope the gambling gods are kinder to my players tonight.

Mikey