Banana Chip Day

Yesterday just wasn't my day.

Today was.

You all know that I've been killing myself working six days a week, sometimes 10 hours a day, for the past three weeks or so, because that damn Bad Beat Jackpot just wouldn't hit. Hell, yesterday it got down to four-of-a-kind Threes being the qualifying hand, and I was amazed that it made it that far.

So I was scheduled to come in to work at 6:00 am this morning, but last night around 9:30 or so, I decided to call the poker room to see how busy it was, just to gauge whether or not they'd be calling me in earlier. When I talked to the floor manager on the phone, his exact words were Yeah, you better go to bed now, you'll be coming in early. Make sure your phone is turned on.

As promised, at 2:45 this morning, my phone was ringing, and they were asking me to come in ASAP. It took me a few minutes to motivate myself out of bed, but the thought of dealing a juicy no-limit game for a few hours instead of sitting around at the old-fart 4/8 table helped me get up and headed in the right direction.

Just as I came around the corner from the elevator, still about 30 yards away from the poker room, I could hear all kinds of commotion. It almost sounded like a hot craps table--I could hear people screaming Come on NINE... Give us a NINE!!! And then a huge cheer went up just as I walked in to the room, with everyone at one table jumping around, hugging and high-fiving.

Yep, the Bad Beat Jackpot had finally hit--and it hit in my poker room.

Two players had flopped trips, sevens and nines, and the guy with the nines went all-in on the flop, and he had the other player covered, requiring him to go all-in also. Now, the player with the sevens thought about it for a second, and *almost* folded, as he had no more money available to re-buy, and also figuring that he was beaten (there was a raising war before the flop). But after a minute in the tank, he figured, what the hell, and made the call.

They flipped over their cards, and the shorter-stacked guy made his quads on the turn. Now, he was happy because he figured he had the unbeatable hand--he was going to rake in a huge pot. And since the cards were face-up, everyone at the table suddenly was up out of their seats rooting for him to lose with a nine on the river. And a split-second later, the player with the four sevens realized what the stakes were and also began rooting for his own demise!

The dealer was the only one to remain seated, and I saw him tap the table twice and say Ok, here it comes, and the pandemonium that erupted when he put out the case nine was unreal. There were three tables going, but play had stopped at the other two games while everyone watched the showdown, and suddenly the whole room went absolutely apeshit.

My first order of business was to help the floorman get all the paperwork put together and have all the players accounted for. We gave everyone a jackpot chip and had each of them fill out a couple of lines of info. Of course, while this was going on, the players at the no-limit game, where the jackpot had hit, sent the waitress to go fetch shots of Jaegermeister for the entire room.

I had to push into a game a few minutes later, but it was barely a game--everyone was up running around, laughing, drinking, high-fiving, speculating on their table share amount, so trying to run a game was a lot like herding cats. Loud drunken cats. The shots kept coming, and the party was on.

On the other hand, since it was the middle of the night and there were so few players still up playing at that hour, and the jackpot was up to like $430,000, the players knew they were gonna get a huge table share--so the tips got really good, even before anyone got paid.

There were four dealers, one floorman, and three games going when the jackpot hit. The rule in our room is that if you deal the jackpot, you don't get up from the table until after it is paid out--and the dealers make the payouts on each table. That way, as a dealer, you're more likely to make a bigger share of tokes--not only does the table immediately bond, but the guys who win the big shares of the jackpot will generally take care of you.

So the dealer that put out the jackpot hand was locked down in the no-limit game, while the other three of us rotated between the two 4/8 games and helping the floorman do the paperwork and get the payoffs ready. It took almost an hour before all the other casinos reported in with their number of players, and it turns out that when the jackpot hit, there were 303 people playing Hold-em at all of our casinos combined.

The guy with the four sevens got $45,000, plus a table share.

The guy with the four nines got $30,000, plus a table share.

Every other player got a table share, which turned out to be $1172. Not bad--especially since the last two times it hit it was in the middle of the afternoon, and the table share was about $275 apiece.

I was the 'up-dealer' when the payoffs got figured, so I helped deliver all the money to the tables. We put a bucket in the middle of the layout, and have the dealer hand out the table shares. Luckily, all of our players were fairly generous--throwing lots of extra chips in the bucket for us, except for one dude who pocketed his whole stack of chips and took off as soon as he got paid. The funny thing was, all the other players berated him for being a stiff, which gave me a chuckle.

I didn't make the payoffs at the no-limit game--I was at the 4/8 tables, so I honestly don't know what the dealer made from the players for dealing the jackpot. But when I was counting up the tip buckets, the guy who won the $30,000 came over and put a thousand dollars in the bucket for us, and while that was going on, the player who won the $45,000 came over to each individual dealer and gave us each $200.

Once we got the toke buckets counted up, it turns out that our staff cut was $335 each. With the $200 I'd just pocketed from the jackpot winner, I was up over $500 for the day not including what was already in my pocket from my first hour on the 4/8 game! Woot!

Now, as soon as all the payoffs were made, both 4/8 games broke--everyone had been grinding so long that once they got paid, they all took off. The guy that had dealt the jackpot hand had also been working all night, and he wanted to go home, too. Since I was the 'fresh legs' in the room, and we were definitely *not* going to get another game going anytime soon, the floorman let all the other dealers go home (Hell, they all made $500+, so they were cool with cutting out!). So I was last man standing and stayed to deal at the single remaining drunken no-limit jackpot table.

That turned out to be a very good thing.

Since all the players were flush with cash and doing shot after shot after shot, every pot I pushed earned me at least ten bucks. But then I got random green $25 chips a few times just because. And then a few times, a couple of the players tossed me extra chips and thanked me for 'putting up with our dumb drunk asses'. Believe me, it was kind of a tough table to deal--it was loud, drunk, and slow--poker was definitely not the priority with those guys, but they played for almost three hours straight, and I was there the entire time.

I was having another one of those days where my shirt pocket wouldn't hold anymore chips--they were spilling out every time I'd lean over the table. But the problem was that my left pants pocket was so full also that it wouldn't hold anymore chips, either. Since the game was so slow, I spent whatever spare seconds I had to try and discreetly rathole chips into my other pocket. Finally, around 7:30 or so, the Boss showed up and told me I'd have relief in just a few minutes.

Not that I wanted to get off the game, but 1) the old farts had started to show up and wanted to play their 4/8 game, and 2) I really needed to take a piss and get a drink of water. I had been either dealing or doing the jackpot work for four hours straight by that point, and I was needing a break.

The eight o'clock dealer clocked in early and I managed to finally get off that table. It was lucrative, but man, it was a tough gig. Believe me, it was more babysitting that dealing, but the money was good. I went to the desk and started emptying my pockets, and about ten minutes later, I realized that I was already up over a thousand frickin' dollars for the day! And my shift was only half-way over!

I ran to the bathroom, then got a quick drink of water, and then opened the old-timer's game. By then, it was like a vacation. The old guys game pretty much runs itself--they don't get drunk, or angry, or throw cards, and all I have to do is make small talk and be friendly. Of course, it would take me a week to make a thousand dollars off of that game, so it was quite the trade-off.

It was still early, so word really hadn't gotten out that the jackpot had hit, so we had enough players to start another game after that. We had three dealers and three games, so I was still locked down. I managed to get one more 'down' at the no-limit game, but by then it was winding down. The Jager shots were starting to catch up with them, and most of the the players on that table had been there all night long. I dealt about 20 minutes before the game broke completely, and once I closed it down and cleaned up the mess, my boss was kind enough to tell me to go on and take a half-hour break, that I deserved some time away. It was true--besides a quick trip to the bathroom, I'd been going non-stop for six hours straight.

I went back to the dining room and got some breakfast, and just basically collapsed in a heap in the corner. Not only was I tired from only getting about three hours of sleep the night before, but man, jackpot days are absolute killers. I've been working for three of them, but this was the first time it hit in our poker room, so that cranked the intensity level up past eleven.

I got back at 10:30, and was happy to see two more dealers show up while I was dealing my next down. I was thinking to myself Hey, I might be able to talk my way out of here an hour early!, and I swear my boss was reading my mind, because when I got tapped out I looked over to the desk and she gave me the internationally-known throat-slash signal that means "You're done!".

Oh hell yeah... Talk about being happy to reach the end of my shift! Yeah, the time absolutely flew by, but it was a tough tough day. I cashed out for the last time, signed out, clocked out, and headed out.

With a pocket full of more cash than usual, my head was swimming with all kinds of ideas on how to spend it. But the only thing I did was stop at the gas station by my house and buy a tall fountain Coke. I came home, took a shower, and immediately passed out on the bed, not getting halfway through my drink.

I woke up a few hours later, and the realization struck me that the feast is over, and three weeks or so of famine begin again. It won't be as bad as it was in the middle of July--I'm scheduled for four full days next week--but I won't be getting any overtime and my daily take will go down quite a bit.

But I'm ok with that--it's been a great run, and I finished with quite a bang.

So the first thing I did when I woke up was to re-schedule my appointment at the spa for Friday afternoon. I'm on-call that day, but the smart money says I won't be working. Once I made the appointment, I called Beth back to tell her, and also to share the happy news about my day.

Something tells me that I'll have no problem finding ways to spend my new-found fortune. But as much as I'd love to live large with one of my favorite ladies, Vegas-style, the reality is that my tags expired three weeks ago, so tomorrow I'm going to the DMV to give them the lion's share of my score. But I'm sure I can spare a few bucks to have a little fun before it's all gone...

Mikey