Hey gang, I know that all you re-clickers out there have been patiently waiting for an update on the latest happenings in the Life of Mikey, but damn, Brothaman is just plum tuckered out. Here it is after midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning, and even though I'm beyond exhausted, I still haven't quite made it to bed yet.
Oh, I'm showered and actually in bed, but the warm glow of my laptop is keeping me awake. I've had a very long couple of days, and I won't be able to enjoy slowing down and relaxing until maybe Sunday or Monday.
I've got lots to write about, but I know that if I go into details, I'll be up all night at the keyboard, and I *really* need my sleep. I have to be back at work at 9:00 am, which means that I've got less than seven hours to sleep.
Wednesday was an epic day--I'll write more about it this weekend, but I saw one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen at a poker table, and yeah, I was involved. Truly, it was absolutely SICK! People were talking about it all day long down at Binion's.
And Thursday was just ridiculously long. I got into work at 9:00 am, and we had one table going with just six old farts playing 4/8 Hold-em. Another dealer was scheduled to come in at 10 am, so in my first two hours in the casino, I worked a grand total of 30 minutes and made a whopping $16 in tokes. Yay. I thought the day was going to suck like burnt crap on a stick, but man oh man did it ever turn around. It got so busy that at one point I pushed five tables in a row (that's dealing for two and a half hours straight without ever stopping to stand up, stretch, pee, or just scratch my ass). Sounds easy, doesn't it? Try it sometime--you'll feel like you've been run over by a truck once you finally get the chance to get out of the box.
The worst part is that you're constantly talking, saying things like Four players.... check... check... the button bets... the bet is eight... it's been raised to sixteen.... re-raise... make it 24 to go... heads up to the river... and on and on. It doesn't seem like much, but if you go that long running your game, in addition to all the social talking that goes on with the players, your mouth gets so dry that you can barely say two words when you finally get a break.
And once I did finally get my break, I was told to just take ten minutes, instead of the half-hour I was supposed to get, so that I could come back and open another No-Limit game because we had a waiting list ten players deep. I didn't mind that so much-- I *love* dealing No Limit, and a long 'down' on a game like that means nothing but dollar signs to me.
I was telling Doc Al earlier last night that once I got off of that long string of tables, I had to pee so bad that if there would've been snow outside, I could've not only written my name, but probably the names of the entire cast of Ocean's Eleven, also. And since I was parched, too, I ran my ass over to Fatburger to get the biggest damn fountain Coke I could get my hands on, and I sucked that bad boy down in record time.
In addition to all the cash games going on, we also had our daily tournament to run, and I got a 'down' on the final table dealing to the survivors. The cool thing about the Thursday tournament is that they offer bounties, and every time you knock out another player, you get a red $5 chip. Well, in our poker room, our players have been pretty well conditioned to tip the dealer that chip whenever they crush somebody. Luckily I dealt four hands where people got knocked out and picked up an extra $20 in addition to my tournament share. (We usually make about $50 per hour to deal tourneys, which ain't too shabby, especially when you don't have to worry about tracking the amount of money in the pot or taking a rake).
On top of all this, the Bad Beat Jackpot hit again yesterday up at Santa Fe Station, for like $210,000. Once they figured out the total number of players all over Vegas sitting in on games at all of our sister properties, each player got $322 apiece, just for playing. So that made everyone happy and my cut of the hat-passing was another $30 or so. Plus one guy came up to me later while I was at the desk and slipped a $10 bill in my shirt pocket, thanking me for being his dealer when the jackpot hit.
It was so busy on Thursday, that once 5 pm rolled around, I asked them if they needed me to stay, and they said Hell yeah, you're not going anywhere--you've got another hour of cash games ahead of you!
So I stuck around, tired as I was, and loaded my pockets again. The only bummer of it was that I had registered for the T2V online poker tourney at PokerStars, and it started at 6 pm Vegas time. So I sent Doc and Dougie a text message that I'd be working OT, and that I'd likely get blinded off--Enjoy my money, bitches!
I managed to get out at 6:00 pm when three new dealers showed up, and I got home as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, a third of my stack had already been blinded off by the time I got logged in. I got no pairs, just shiatty cards all around, and went all-in with Ace-Queen once I got down to only having about $800 left. Of course I lost to pocket Kings. What else did you expect?
But I was so tired that I kept dozing at the keyboard and the only thing keeping me in the game was the annoying beeps they unleash on you when you're taking too much time to make a decision. But I was a trooper and stayed around to watch it all the way to the end, shocked as hell to see Doc Al winning the whole thing.
When I left work, I was excited that they'd told me to come in at 11:00 am instead of 9:00 am on Friday, thanking the FSM for the extra couple hours of sleep I was looking forward to. But around 10 pm, they called me back, saying to disregard the previous plan and just come in at nine like originally scheduled.
Damn.
So that's where we're at now. I've had a couple of very long days, tomorrow is going to be more of the same, I'm on call on Saturday, and then I think I may have three full days off. I'll do more writing then, in addition to finally getting all of my unpacking done.
Oh, and the final tally for Thursday's tokes, even after such a slow start? I pocketed $275 tax-free American dollars after tipping out the brush guys. Not a bad day at all, especially considering that had I been relaxing in Chinatown, sitting on my ass watching SportsCenter all night and flirting with the cocktail waitresses between hands of Pai Gow, I'd be extremely lucky to make half that...
Do I miss the Pit? Hell no! I do kinda miss the girlies though. But the money's so much better in the poker room that it eases the pain somewhat. It's kinda like Jay-Z says--I got 99 problems, but a biatch ain't one!
Mikey
No comments:
Post a Comment