The room is divided into three sections. There are about 25 tables for the tournament play, 20 tables for Sit N Gos, and 20 tables for live, cash games. Once a dealer is assigned to a table, he deals that table for 30 minutes (one "down"), signs the down card (a list of all the dealers who deal at that table each night) and then "pushes" to the next table offered. Pushing is when you tap a dealer on the shoulder to tell him his down is over and it's time for you to sit in his spot.
If the table you push to has a little red sticker on the dealer rack, that means that as soon as your 30 minutes is up, you get a thirty minute break. So, the general pattern is for a dealer to deal two or three "downs" and then take a break.
Anyway, back to Table 76. I was given a rack of chips, cards, a cut card, seat cards, and my down card. Taking my cushion, I set up in my chair and waited for my players to arrive.
Having been a dealer for a few years now, I am familiar with all of the procedures for running a tournament poker game. The one thing that separates me from the dealers who do this for a living is that they have learned through repetition how to pitch cards. Pitching cards is something I have been practicing in preparation for this tournament, but honestly have not yet perfected.
To pitch a card, a dealer holds the deck in his left hand, pushes the top card to the right with his thumb, then uses his three fingers on his right hand to toss the card to the correct spot on the table. If done correctly, the card will quickly spin clockwise as it travels to the player, staying airborne about half of the distance, and will be level when it reaches his hands. Also, the dealer's hands will stay close to his body and his wrists will hardly move at all.
This is a tough skill to master and one for which I am improving, but frankly have not mastered enough for my comfort level. If a card is not pitched level, it will flip over, exposing the card, and greatly angering the players.
So, I was so worried about my pitch that I made my only big error of the night in the first 5 minutes of dealing! In tournament poker, if a player is not at his seat, he still must pay the antes. A dealer will pull chips off of his stack and put them in the pot for other players to win until he returns.
When I started my table, I dealt about 8 hands of poker and forgot to "blind in" the chips of my one absent player. None of other players noticed it because I had that person's chips in my rack. Then the tournament director, a cool fellow from MS named Johnny Grooms, came over and said, "Why are there chips in your rack? You have to blind those in."
Oops. So not only did I make a mistake, but the tournament director caught it! Johnny is famous in poker circles. He ran the 2005 World Series of Poker and is generally respected as one of the best directors in the country. Johnny is also very direct and if you are out of line, whether you are a player or a dealer, he will let you know.
Still, Johnny has a reputation as a guy who backs up his dealers, never hammers them in front of the players, and is a stand-up guy if you treat him with respect.
So, once past that mistake, I fumbled around with my pitch for the rest of the down and luckily got to take a 30-minute break, which I seriously needed because my nerves were gangled.
As a dealer on Table 76, my card pitching was poor. I hadn't exposed any cards, but my cards were travelling too slowly for my taste and I was having to do too much pushing with my arms and back, rather than cooly sitting back and expertly flipping the cards around the table.
I took my break in the EDR (employee dining room) and sat with other dealers. Our main topic of conversation was the color of these Beau Rivage poker shirts. I originally called them gold. One description of the color was to imagine you'd left banana pudding out for an hour. Our final consensus is that the shirts are butterscotch. And no, I will not be bringing one home to wear around Atlanta!
Here's a photo of the shirt:
The Shirt
Back in the Magnolia Room, I started at a new table. Armando had asked me to push into a Sit N Go with only about 6 players at the table. This was perfect! The table was more open than my inital table full of ten players, so I could really work on my pitch. I shuffled, cut the cards, pitched three cards and then (BLAP!) EXPOSED A CARD! My heart skipped a beat.
Luckily, it was a deuce (a two). The players all laughed and said, "Hey Bill, you didn't want that deuce anyway!" Bill was not terribly happy to get a new card from me, but there was nothing he could do. The procedure here is that the exposed card is turned up for all to see, then burned (placed under the stack of chips and out of play).
However, the new card Bill got turned out to be a second king that matched his other card and he won a very large pot. So now Bill was quite happy about the exposed card! "Gee Bill, hthe dealer needs to expose your dueces more often," came one retort.
Once I had exposed my first card, it seemed to calm me down. I managed to go the rest of the night without exposing any more cards and over time, my pitch improved.
I worked 10 downs (about 5 hours of dealing) and with breaks, I finished at about 1:30 am. I also received $60 in tips, however those go into the dealer pot to be divided among everyone at the end of the tournament. The only tips I get to keep are from the live, cash games, which I have yet to deal.
All in all, my preparations seem to have paid off. When it came to reading hands, shuffling, and dealing with the chips, I was as fast as any dealer in the room. The players all seemed quite happy with my skills and the poker was quick and fun. Hopefully my pitch will continue to improve. It appears that I may deal in the neighborhood of 175 HOURS of poker between now and next Sunday, so it better!
Side Pots:
- Best hand of the night: I turned over three aces on the flop and a fellow took out another player who made a large stab at the pot when he already had the fourth ace. Quad aces is nearly unbeatable and he went on to win the satellite.
- Oddest question of the night: "Dealer, I want your honest opinion, am I fatter than that gentleman who is calling me 'Slim'?" I told him it was too hard to tell.
- Most famous person at my table: None, the star players are not in town yet. These are all locals and unknown gamblers from around the deep south.
- Biggest distraction of the night: Three players at my table got into a rousing discussion about SEC football. Can you imagine how hard it was for me to hold my tongue?
