As I took the floor for the evening shift of Day 3, I could see that the room is starting to fill up nicely. Almost all 65 tables were full of players and with the weekend looming, it looks like a good start for the dealers.
The thing I am learning about these folks is that they work very hard for their money. Players who do not tip dealers just do not understand how difficult it is to maintain the intense concentration of dealing a tournament-level poker game. Your attention to every move of the ten players at your table can be as nerve-wracking as any job I have ever had. Add to that the fact that players who are losing their money often take out their frustrations on the dealer, and you can imagine how tough it can be.
What I didn't expect was the physical toll. Aside from being weary from a lack of sleep, my hands are already getting beaten up. After only three of the twelve days of dealing, I have dealt 56 "downs" of poker. Since a down is 30 minutes, I am averaging about a hand every 90 seconds, and each hand requires four shuffles, I estimate that I have shuffled the cards over 4,500 times.
As a result, both of my left pinkies are bruised and my right thumb has a piece of felt under the nail. On one pinky finger, the skin is actually pulling away from the nail bed. This may not seem like much but let me tell you it HURTS! Time for a band-aid, I think.
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After three days of steadily improving my skills, I finally had a bad down at a table. I was already flustered because I'd mistakenly taken a break when I wasn't supposed to and it caused a dealer to have to take back-to-back downs on the same table, which is a no-no.
So I sat down, shuffled the cards, turned to pitch the very first card off the deck and SPLAT!, it flipped over. And, of course, it was the ace of spades. In tournament play, aces are like gold. So for the player to lose one is literally like taking money out of his pocket.
The procedure here is to leave that card exposed and continue pitching them around the table and then give him a second card at the end. However, he caught the next card out because I dealt it too close to him and he looked at it, meaning that the entire hand was misdealt and I would have to start over. The caused a huge groan because the next guy also had an ace.
Then, about 5 minutes later, I made my worst error of the tournament at the same table. Two players were involved in a hand and when they flipped the cards over a third player said, "Nice straight!" and pointed to one of the players. I was still flustered from the earlier mistake, so I just pushed the pot to him without stopping to read the hands and "mucked" all the cards (threw them into a pile with all the discards).
Suddenly, the other player yells "He didn't have a straight!" and two other players agreed. But we couldn't look because the cards were already irretrievable! He sneered, "Dealer, are you going to just let other players call the hands??" Luckily the original player admitted he had no straight and pushed the pot to the right guy. My embarrassment lasted until the end of my down when I could leave these testy players and slink away. Sigh
The good news is that that was the one low-light of the night. I have become proficient at dealing the cash games, where I make a lot more money, and the pit bosses have seen this, giving me extra work in that area.
Side Pots:
- Worst bad beat of the night: A fellow made a huge bet when he flopped an ace-high flush, and his opponent got runner-runner tens for a full house. Then, two hands later, the same poor guy bet all-in on three-of-a-kind aces only to see his tournament life end when his opponent got runner-runner for a straight. (runner-runner means that a player got exactly the cards he needed on both the turn and the river)
- Funniest drunk of the night: A rather drunk and very loud player was pretending to be drunker than he really was by faking a fall to the floor as he went to the bathroom. He did it again when he returned. However, a Beau Rivage official not affiliated with the tournament saw this and demanded that the player be removed from the facility. The player then turned to the man and slurred, "Sir, how much can I bribe you to let me keep playing?"
- Funniest quote of the night: I had an Omaha Pot Limit table that was breaking up and the chiprunner came over and asked if the players needed racks for their chips. These players all had huge stacks of hundred-dollar bills and were hardly using their chips, so I retorted, "No, they need money clips", which brought out laughter from the entire group.
