Hey gang--I'm hoping y'all didn't miss me too much for taking a 48-hour sabbatical from the keyboard, but I've been working or trying to sleep ever since that last post.
I did my usual two scheduled days on Thursday and Friday, which were decent, moneywise, but nothing really to get excited about, and then early on Saturday morning (like 3:00 am), I got a call asking if I could come in at 4:00.
Come on, 4:00 am in the morning? I just knew that I'd get stuck dealing a shorthanded game and then have to do up-downs on the old farts' game later in the morning. It did not sound appealing to me at all. Besides, I was completely exhausted, having not been able to sleep at all the day before. I was in bed for probably 10 or 12 hours, but maybe got two hours of sleep total. Of course, about 45 minutes after I was finally able to fall asleep, that's when the phone rang.
When I got to the casino, I was right--there was a six-handed no-limit game going, and a five-handed 4-8 game going, and of course I had to go to the 4-8 game first. And, just my luck, it broke within 20 minutes. I hurried to close the table, but while that was going on, the no-limit game got completely full, so my prospects for a decent shift immediately improved.
On my first hand at the table, the gal in seat one raised the action to $25 and got six callers. Wow. Somebody at the table said 'fasten your seatbelt' and he wasn't kidding.
The flop came out 10-2-2, one guy bet $50, everyone folded around to the gal who originally raised, she made it $150 to go, they guy next to her called, as did the guy who bet the $50. So there was $600 in the pot after the flop. The turn was a rag, and everyone put the brakes on and checked. The river was another rag, so one guy went all-in for his last hundred-and-change, and both of the other players couldn't call fast enough.
The first guy to go all-in had four deuces, while the other two players both were unlucky enough to get full houses. I pushed a huge pot, got a $20 tip, but then suddenly I was down to eight players.
There was plenty of action after that, but the net result that one player was getting picked off every few minutes. Within the first hour, with people leaving or getting knocked out, it got down to just three players, and we assumed that the game was going to break--nobody ever wants to play three-handed, unless they are just total degenerates with no place to go, because a game must have at least four players in it to be eligible for any shares of bad-beat jackpots, either the in-house small one, or the big company-wide one. So when it gets down to just three players, everyone usually racks up and goes home.
Since that was the case, the other dealer, who was on break at the time, said fark it, and went home, and I figured I'd get an hour's worth of work in. Yay.
But the three die-hards decided to stick around and play. One gal was short-stacked--she had maybe $50 left and was playing tight as hell, waiting around for a big hand and hoping to pick off the other two players, who were drinking like booze was going to be outlawed by noon the next day. But the other two players both had about $700 each in front of them, and each one was gunning for the other's stack.
The two drunk guys wanted action--they wanted to raise the blinds or force an automatic straddle on the button, but the gal wasn't going for it. She just wanted to sit there and get her time in (3x points after 3:00 am!) and hope for a monster hand. But three-handed, the game goes fairly quickly, and just three bucks worth of blinds per round will eat through a short-stack in no time at all, so she didn't last an hour.
Finally it got down to heads up, and the two players agreed to make the blinds $5 and $10. By then, I was loving it and didn't want the game to end because one guy was a huge tipper--every pot he'd toke me either five or ten bucks, and he'd tipped four different waitresses a hundred bucks each. He was actually a co-worker of ours--he worked there at the casino, and had won some huge jackpot on a slot machine the night before and had a pimp-roll of several thousand in his pocket. So he was out celebrating and sharing the wealth. The other guy very generous too, but didn't have the same bankroll--each time he won a hand, he'd toss me either $3 or a redbird, depending on the size of the pot.
Of course, I was hoping that they'd alternate wins and keep the game going for hours--there wasn't another dealer coming in until 7:00 am, so I set my hands to 'turbo deal' and put out as many cards as humanly possible.
It turned out to be a great night for me, and they kept up the higher-stakes action for a long time. With the good, comes the not-so-good, and the old guys started showing up after 7:00 am, so me and the other dealer had to alternate between the big game, and the limpfest. One table was worth about $12 every half-hour, the other one worth about $60 every down. You can guess which table was preferred.
Another dealer was scheduled to come in at 9:00 am, so I knew that I'd be going home by ten, and of course my last table was the old guys' 4-8 game. It wasn't quite as fun as the other table, but at least it was full by then and there was a little bit of action. And the big game finally broke, anyways, so even if I were to stay, I wouldn't have gone back to them again. So I was ready to call it a day after six hours. But it was a great six hours--after tipping out two different floormen, I pocked more than three Benjamins, so yeah, I was glad my phone rang at three in the morning.
I was thinking about taking myself out to breakfast, but then I figured on a Saturday morning all of the usual spots would be packed with people out doing their Christmas shopping and such. But my gal Lori talked me in to hanging out in the sports book for awhile--she's another one of my cocktail girls who I don't see nearly enough anymore now that I'm on graveyard. She works the poker room a couple of times a week on day shift, and back when I was on that shift, she was pretty much the highlight of having to deal the old farts game. Anyhow, she works in the sports book on the weekend and once she saw me, she convinced me to stick around for a bit.
The book wasn't nearly as busy as usual--no college football to speak of this weekend, so she had a bit more time to hang out and chat. So I camped out at the seat nearest the service well, ordered a coffee and Kahlua, and pretended to watch the horse races at Calder and Tampa Bay Downs. An older gent was seated two spots down from me, and we struck up a conversation, so it was an enjoyable trip to the book.
I hung around for about an hour, but the euphoria from my good shift was wearing off. I had three coffee-Kahlua-Bailey's in my system (yeah, Lori added the Bailey's on her own, because she prefers it that way...), so I wasn't hungry, but man oh man, was I ever tired. So said goodbye to everyone and headed for the door.
Once I got outside, I couldn't believe the weather. It was freezing cold and the wind was howling at about 40 mph. It was almost as windy as that night I met the Hoya's down at Mandalay Bay when I thought my truck was gonna get flipped right there in the valet driveway. I hopped in the truck, turned on the radio, and cranked up the heater, waiting for the engine to warm up.
I came straight home, grabbed the latest package from UPS off the porch, and went straight up to my room. I talked to Amy on the phone for a bit, then took a shower and went to bed. I was completely out out of it, because I woke up at 5:30 or so (I couldn't tell--I didn't have my glasses on, and the digital clock on the cable box was kinda blurry), and I called Mamasan. Normally, we talk early on Sunday mornings, so when she answered the phone, I said something like Hey--I can't believe you're already up this morning.
Her response was Are you drunk or something? It's almost 8:00 on Saturday night!
Doh!
I guess I slept like an absolute rock for about five hours, because in my half-speed brain, it was 5:30 on Sunday morning, and I thought I'd slept all the way through. We chatted for a few more minutes, but she went back to watching her movie and I went back to sleep. I woke up around eight, starving.
I figured I needed some veggies in my system, but the only thing I have in the kitchen is a couple of onions and a jar of salsa. That wouldn't do. So I called up Pie Town Pizza and ordered a large deep dish garbage pizza with everything on it. Oh hell yeah!
Tomatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, meat, cheese, and bread--that's gotta be good for you, right? They said it would be ready in 25 minutes, so I put on some shoes and fleece jacket and headed out. The wind had died down a bit, but it was still sorta breezy and in the forties, so it seemed appropriate to be going to a Chicago-style joint to pick up my dinner. When I got there, the place was deserted, and I considered hanging around and eating in, but decided against it.
A few minutes later, I was back at the house, enjoying my pizza, and looking for something to watch on TV. I recorded It's a Wonderful Life, just because I'll need something to put me in the Christmas spirit next week (as much as I love Christmas, I am just totally not feeling it this year at all). But there was nothing on at all, and so I spent a few hours looking at online construction porn--checking out random house plans. Don't know why, but I find it strangely enjoyable.
I considered playing in a poker tourney, but I missed all the good ones at seven and eight o'clock. And I didn't want to go down to Binion's and play in their 11:00 pm one, just in case work called. So I hung around the house, not spending any money, and went back to bed around 2:00, thinking I'd get a catnap in, just in case the casino needed me again this morning.
They didn't, so I got back up sometime after four, put on a pot of coffee, and puttered around in my room. Last week, when I had my little windfall of mutual fund proceeds, I did a lot of online clothes shopping, and to avoid the sales taxes here in Nevada, I try and buy as much stuff as I can over the internet. So in the past couple of days, the packages have started trickling in. So I spent my morning unpacking everything and taking the tags off and such, and sorting them out for their first wash. Taking inventory, everything arrived except for one pair of Dockers (that color was backordered, and will be here in a week), and two tagless black t-shirts that I use for work. There was a cryptic message on the receipt saying that if anything was missing, it would be here within two weeks. I sent an email to the sales department, just to cover my bases--they charged my card for it, so I wanted it on record right away that my order wasn't complete.
Everything else, however, arrived and I've got a bunch more clothes added to the wardrobe. I'm fairly loaded now, and the only thing I'll need in the next couple of months is maybe another pair or two of those trendy black polyester work pants. But those are a staple, and even though they get abused at the casino, I wear them until they literally fall apart.
I've got no plans for today except to hang out and watch some football, maybe do a few little projects around the house. It's too cold to do anything outside--I don't think that it's going to get out of the mid-forties for a high all week, and I think we're expecting temps in the thirties and lots of wind and rain for the next few days. I may motivate myself down to the garage and dig that bottle of peppermint schnapps out of the extra booze box I have stored down there, because I've got some hot cocoa and a can of whipped cream that need to be kicked up a notch. And it sounds like the next couple of days are gonna be perfect for that.
In the meantime, y'all try and stay warm!
Mikey
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