Women's Event
My normal DC (dealer coordinator) is Armando, but he works the night shift. So today, for the first time, I was assigned to Dave, the day shift DC. When he started the dealer meeting he pointed to me and said, "I need you to deal downstairs."
Downstairs. Meaning that he needed me to deal in the casino's actual poker room.
Several of the tournament dealers have been needed to help out in the poker room to handle the overflow of poker players in the casino. There just aren't enough live tables upstairs to handle all the visiting players, as well as the local crowd who always play on the weekends.
The thing is, the dealers asked to deal downstairs are professionals who deal in their own casinos every day and are used to all of the procedures. Since I have never dealt in a casino before, I am not privy to those procedures.
So even though I have been handling far more money upstairs all week, those games are more informal than the rigid needs of a true poker room.
As soon as I sat down at the first table, I knew I was in big, big trouble.
In addition to the all of the dealer procedures I have been mentioning during this fortnight of blogging, here are the additional things the Beau Rivage poker room dealers must account for:
- Taking a rake: which is a percentage of every pot that goes to the casino
- Taking a jackpot: which is $1 out of every $20 pot that the players can win in the event of a jackpot hand. I'd tell you what was considered a jackpot hand, but no one told me.
- Using an auto-shuffler: which is a panel in the table that, when activated, rises out of the table to take a deck of cards to count and shuffle, while also giving the dealer a fresh deck to cut and deal.
- Handing Player's Club cards: most players bring a card to the table that must be swiped into a card reader so that they can earn comp points for things such as free meals or free hotel rooms.
- Operating the table's player indicator: which is an LED panel where you log your open seats so that the poker room manager can quickly fill empty spots.
- Additional poker games: all during the tournament, I have dealt only no-limit Texas Hold'em and pot limit Omaha Hi. In the poker room, I will have to also deal limit Texas Hold'em and pot limit Omaha Hi/Lo.
All of this I had to absorb in about 10 minutes before going right in.
The Beau Rivage Poker Room (notice the card shuffler and the player's card reader at the dealer's right hand)
I immediately started having trouble with my card pitching. Having gotten used to the clean, smooth felt of the brand new tables upstairs, these well-worn tables stuck to the cards like mud. A pitched card upstairs would skim across the table like the puck in air hockey. Down stairs, the cards were stopping way short of my intended targets.
Also, there were two major obstacles I had to deal with. First, the auto shuffler sits in a large depression on the table left center of the table. If a card is pitched into it, it'll flip over. So the cards either have to be pitched around it or be air-born over the top of it.
Second, the player's club card reader rises a full 2-inches off the table. It's close enough that I can easily pitch my cards over it, but it's so tall that my pitching hand kept hitting it, knocking the card out of my hand.
Another issue I was having is that the card shuffler puts a curve in the cards over time. This means that the card will not spin flatly when pitched, but will wobble as it catches air.
Add to this all of the extra items I had to watch and you can imagine what happened.
I worked 10 tables in five hours and exposed a card five times. I had only exposed five cards total in over 100 hours of dealing upstairs. I also committed three misdeals, forgot to take the rake and/or the jackpot a few times, and accidentally took my first break a half hour too early.
I was so frazzled that I practically hugged the downstairs DC when she said that my shift was over and I could go back upstairs.
Maybe it wasn't as bad as all of that. At least none of the players really complained (well, except for the one girl who's exposed card was an ace and her other down card was, you guessed it, another ace) and I got tipped on every hand, which is not the norm in the tournament room.
When I went back to the downstairs poker room today to thank the DC for being so understanding, she begged me to go throw on a uniform and work another shift because she was short-handed (I didn't because I already had to work upstairs). I guess this means I passed inspection.
Side Pots:
- The Main Event is down to the final six players for the broadcast and none of them are the known poker pros. Those six are basically all qualifiers, locals, and unknown businessmen with money. It makes me wonder if the Travel Channel will air the final event at all, given its lack of star power.
And no, I didn't get asked to deal the final table. No big shock.
- The tenth place finisher in the ladies tournament was a 90-year old woman!
- Players all week have been getting comped with free passes to the all-you-can-eat buffet. The funny thing is that players from MS and Louisiana pronounce it "BOO-fay"
- I am exhausted. I am having to work today because several dealers have already been sent home or they simply left on their own. I was I was going home too. One more day...
