Sadly, no cocktail waitresses were involved in the experiences leading to that headline...
Finally--my weekend is here! Everybody muppet-dance!
Oh, what's that you say? It may not actually be my weekend after all? Ok--I guess I'll have to explain that one later...
So there I was yesterday evening, running late for work, deciding to skip the shaving part of my daily toilette, and sliding in just under the wire at the casino. Good news first--I was lucky that I didn't get out early on Sunday night--we made $175 in tokes that night. The bad news--instead of being on my favorite home string of tables in Chinatown, I was assigned to work three different six-deck shoe blackjack tables. Ugh.
The dirty little secret in Las Vegas is that once somebody learns how to deal Craps or Roulette, they pretty much loathe blackjack. And I'm no different. I would rather get stroked all night by the local fleas and sweat my ass off at a the dice table than spend eight hours listening to the whiners trying to make their rent money at the blackjack table. Dealing blackjack all night is truly a grind, especially if there are no carnival games or Pai Gow to break up the monotony.
Still feeling a wee bit under the weather anyways, the first thing I did was say F*ck it, I'll take an anytime early out, and I thought maybe I could beg to get sent over to the dice pit. I was the relief dealer, so I had the first break of the night. The first priority was to go and put my name on the early out list and then try to bend the ear of the shift manager, telling her I'd be happy to go home as soon as she could afford to punt my ass out of there--it looked like it was going to be a slow night, anyways.
At twenty after seven, I got to my first table, and just killed everyone at the table halfway through the first shoe. So I was standing there dead, alone in my misery. A few minutes later, the boss came by, holding the roadmap, and I figured that only meant one thing--Ripcord city, baby! I was goin' home!
As Lee Corso would say, Uh, not so fast, my friend...
The first thing she asked me was if I dealt poker.
I answered, You mean like the Ultimate Holdem game? Of course--you know I've trained half the dealers here on that game.
No, I mean like real poker, in the poker room. Texas holdem and such.
Oh yeah, I do. I've done a bunch of private tournaments around town and actually went to poker dealers school, too. Why do you ask?
Well, the poker room is slammed and they called me and asked if I had any dealers that knew how to deal poker. You interested?
I believe my exact words were something along the lines of F*CK YEAH!
As long as I've been a dealer here in Vegas, I've never heard of this happening. It would be like asking somebody from the cage to go help out at the Front Desk. So as soon as the next group of dealers came back from break, I got tapped out and headed over to the poker room. To say I was a bit nervous would be a great understatement. Like I said, I've done the classes and I've dealt private tournaments, but my cash-game experience is quite limited. In fact, on a scale of 1-10, it's about .08, right there at the back door of legality.
I thought I'd be dealing 4-8 Hold-em exclusively, but as soon as I got there, they gave me a tin cup to put my tokes in and threw my ass into the briar patch--a completely full 1-2 No Limit game.
So if you were walking by the poker room and saw a large unshaven bald man wearing a flamboyant blue polyester shirt and sweating profusely, yeah, that was me. Holy shiat I was scared. I've *never* dealt a no-limit cash game before. I told the room manager to keep an eye on me, as I was a little rusty, but honestly, after a few minutes, I settled right in and did fine.
And it helped quite a bit that all of the players were extremely cool--no table captains, no loudmouth drunks, no angry Phil Helmuth wannabes. Everybody was just there to have fun, play a little bit of cards, and have a drink or two. It was much easier than I expected. And I didn't even screw up at all--I never forgot to take a rake, I didn't misread any showdowns, I never pushed the pot to the wrong player, basically, I did just fine. I was only on that table for about 15 minutes before the next push, and then I did a half hour on a 4-8 game. Again, smooth sailing.
I got tapped out at the end of the 'down', and went to the desk. The room manager said I was doing just fine, no complaints, no screw ups, and even a few players mentioned that they liked 'the new guy'. And it turned out that I made about $30 in my first 45 minutes of dealing. Nice. So I cashed my chips and dropped a five-dollar bill into the bucket for the floor/brush, and went on break.
One of the other poker dealers was going at the same time, so as we walked back to the dining room, she gave me a few pointers, such as making sure to tip the floor/brush guy at least ten bucks a night and he'll call me back every time they need a dealer. Good advice!
My night kept getting better, because I was on a 'long' break, and when I got back to the dining room, my gal Beth was back there eating alone in the corner. So I got to spend some quality time with her, catching up on the latest, which made the time just fly by and before I knew it, I was back in the poker room. Since they were short on dealers, we had to 'push' four tables, so it was awhile before I got another break.
When I finally got tapped out on the 'break' table, and finished my chores like bringing racks of Aces to all of the other tables, I cashed out for another $80+. Woot! Of course, I dropped some more cash in the tip bucket for the floor guys, and went back to the dining room, where all of my co-workers from the pit were eager to hear of my adventures.
Once I got back to the poker room, my shift boss was there, and I thought I'd have to go back to the pit or something, but she was just there to tell me that once they cut me loose in the poker room, I was free to go home. But the floor boss in the poker room said that he was going to keep me until 3:00 am. So much for getting the early out, but damn, I just didn't care anymore! I told him that I'd stay all night if he needed me.
It was another long rotation after that, three or four more tables--I don't remember--it's kind of a blur. I only had one 'difficult' game--a 4/8 table with one drunk table captain, and a couple of other people who were tired of his chatter. I just dummied up and dealt and avoided all controversy, but it turned out to be my most lucrative table. Several times I pushed pots and got $6 tokes from the players. Most of the time it was just a buck or two--and only ONE person stiffed me the entire night on one pot--so I was making pretty good tips.
Anyhow, on that table, just as I finished pushing the pot on my last hand, Mr. Table Captain got into it with a gal who was also a big talker. She said something like "Wow, I'm not good enough to call with bottom pair", and that just set him off. He said something like "Whatever, you look like Rosie O'Donnell's ugly cousin..." and then it was ON. Luckily the floor person was right there, telling them that the next person who insults another player would be thrown out. I just played deaf and dumb, laughing my ass off on the inside, because yeah, she kinda did look like Rosie, and was just as annoying, too. I didn't take sides though, because they were in an unspoken pissing contest to see who could tip me the most after winning a pot. Seriously. It was the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed as a dealer. It was like both of them knew they were gonna get a talking to from the floor eventually, so they both wanted me to take their side in case things got testy.
I was lucky enough to profit from it, and got out just in time.
A little bit later, one of the other floor bosses from the pit came over to watch me deal, and all of the players at my table were like Hey Gary, you gotta let Mikey transfer over here! Start that paperwork!
Heh. I loved hearing that.
Anyhow, a couple of games went dead, and they told me that I'd be able to go home at 1:30. No problem--I would've loved to stay till 3:00, as I was making great money, but they only had three tables going, and it was about to get down to just two.
When I finally cashed out for the last time, I had made over $200 in tips in just over 5 1/2 hours! That's not counting a couple of breaks in there, too. So I left about 10% in the brush bucket, and happily went on my way. Of course they asked if I'd be willing to come back tomorrow and Wednesday, and I said something along the lines of F*CK YEAH!, again.
So I went back to the pit and told them that my weekend might be gobbled up by the poker room, and my boss said that was cool and that she'd sent the casino manager an email telling her of my situation (my schedule might need to be changed this coming weekend, and they've got to figure out which department is going to pay my hourly wage). I'm also hoping that I get to go back to the poker room on the days I'm already scheduled in the pit, too.
But it all depends on how busy we are. First of all, this coming weekend is a holiday weekend. And the poker room is slammed on swing shift because the Bad-Beat Jackpot is up over a quarter-million dollars, and the cut-off is down to losing with four-of-a-kind sixes or better, so it's likely to hit very soon. Once it does, the poker room will be a ghost town for a few weeks. So I've got to take advantage of it while I can.
And I've got a couple of things working in my favor--the poker room manager seemed to really like me, he was impressed with my work, and the players all loved me. My fellow poker dealers all came over to thank me for filling in and helping them out, too. Word around the campfire is that they're short a couple of poker dealers right now, so if I could possibly parlay this experience into a departmental transfer, I'd be about as happy as I could be.
Bottom line--I just *loved* the experience last night, and the money was soooo much better than in the pit. (In addition to my tokes and my hourly wages, I also got an hour's worth of tokes from the pit, too. Heh). Also, time just flew by when I was dealing poker. When I'm dealing Pai Gow or even blackjack, there's a lot of daydreaming going on. But not in the poker room--it required me to keep my head down and keep full-on concentration. I didn't really get to loosen up until my very last table of the night where I was finally comfortable enough to joke around with the players.
I just hope it wasn't a one-time thing.
Skipping out of work with a pocket full of cash made my night seem so much better than I thought it was going to be when I punched in at 7:00 last night. I still hadn't eaten much of anything in the past few days, and now that I was feeling better, I stopped at the store and picked up a few groceries (I'm thinking about spaghetti if I get a night off this week).
Once I got home I put a frozen pizza in the oven, and considered spiking a glass of Coke, but thought better of it. But now I'm feeling much better than I was yesterday, and I'm hoping the phone rings this afternoon--I would absolutely be thrilled to go back in and deal some more poker on my day off.
If not, no biggie--I could use the relaxation. And I've got another house to go look at either tonight or tomorrow night. It's even closer to work--only like a mile and a half away, and it's in a nice, new neighborhood, too. After making that trek up to Anthem Highlands last week, I've decided that my new home must be within Free Bird distance of the casino.
What is Free Bird distance? Well, several months ago, I was listening to my old 'Road Trip 2005' CD, and when I was leaving work one night, that quintessential southern-fried anthem came on as soon as I started the engine. And I got home before the song ended. So basically, this is as far as I want to be from work, time-wise. But this house I'm going to see next--hell, it's not even I Wanna Be Sedated distance from the casino.
We'll see what happens.
Mikey
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