It was a lighter night in the Magnolia Room as the holiday gamblers had now gone home and the professional superstars had yet to arrive. No one left but the dealers, the locals, and the gambling addicts.
The poker room is divided into three distinct areas (tournaments, satellites, and cash games) and the personality of the players in those areas ranges greatly...
In the first section, you have the players in the main or second-chance tournaments. The main tournament usually has about 600 players and takes two days to play. The second-chance tournament starts at 7:00 pm, usually has 300 players, and ends at around 4 am in the same session.
These tournament players are wound as tight as a drum. If they can reach the final table, they can win thousands or maybe tens of thousands of dollars, so they take every hand and every chip seriously. There is no tipping of dealers (the players usually tip when they get the cash at the end and that cash is included in the downs payout at the end of the entire championship event) and the gamblers will jump down a dealer's throat over the slightest error.
In the middle section of satellite tables, the players are way more laid back. They have far less money at stake (usually a $45, $85, or $125 buy-in) enjoy the camaraderie of staying at one table for 90 minutes with the same opponents, and are not afraid to talk, joke, and generally enjoy playing poker. These games end when there are two players left, and having two winners split the winnings makes for a friendlier game.
Then you have the cash games. The cash games are like the Wild Wild West. You see all forms of poker procedure...straddle bets, Mississippi straddle bets, buying the button, buying the blinds, as well as all manner of games. The hands are very fast, much faster than the other two areas. These gamblers know their craft, can quickly evaluate their positions, and are not worried about making a mistake that would end their night in the tournaments or satellites. Here, if you lose a big pot just pull out your money roll and peel off another $1000 in hundreds.
Unless you don't have a money roll. And if you don't, you are in the wrong place, my friend. Every once in a while, you will see a player come to the table and buy-in for the table minimum. These are the guys who do not have a big money roll, and even though they may be good players, they are at a disadvantage at a table where the big fish eat the minnows. When faced with seven other chip stacks far greater than your own, you can be muscled by a strong hand on almost every pot. Just like the scene from Rounders, it doesn't take long for those players to lose their money and leave the table.
The cash game players can and will gamble on everything. Side bets are constantly flying around. "I'll bet you ten bucks that Joe is gonna show us a pair lower than nines." A young lady went to the bathroom and they bet $100 she'd say "give me some lightning on the flop!" within the next three hands she played. Sure enough, she said it on the next hand.
One gentleman commented that there seemed to be a lot of eights coming up on the board (the five community cards) and another said he was crazy and that the card distribution over time was the same. This sparked a wager where he would pay two other players $100 each for every flopped eight, while they would each pay him $100 for every seven. The next hand I flopped was 8-8-4, which drew two whoops of joy and one disgusted snort. In the end, we saw 9 eights and only 3 sevens. Maybe he was right about the eights? They made me switch decks and another eight was flopped on the very next hand. Hehe, gotta love that poker karma.
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Back to the tournament tables, I was witness to a very disturbing scene. I was pushing into a table just as the players were about to take a 15-minute break. A dude in a cowboy hat and Skoal in his mouth went all-in to try to buy a relatively small last pot. After hemming and hawing, a woman called his bet. He was way ahead in the hand, but she pegged runner-runner to make a straight and win the hand, leaving him with a cripplingly low number of chips.
The guy flipped out. He started cursing and berated the woman for being such a stupid player. He claimed that only an idiot would have called his bet in that spot and that she was a lucky b****. The chip leader, who was an African-American man, tried to get him to calm down. As the players left the table, and as I sat down, I heard the cowboy curse and say the N-word loudly twice. The chip leader was already out of earshot but several other people heard the remark.
During the break, the woman who'd been berated burst into tears in the hall and almost quit the tournament. The tournament director came over to ask the previous dealer and me to recount what had happened.
In tournaments, berating any player or dealer is prohibited and usually results in the guilty player losing his playing privileges for 15 minutes, during which time his blinds are posted and his chip stack dwindles. The director took the cowboy aside and I could see from the body language that the riot act was being read. Nonetheless, the cowboy was allowed to return to the table after the break, which frankly surprised me greatly.
When everyone was seated, the cowboy had the nerve to take one more passive-aggressive swat at the woman by saying, "Ma'am, I am really sorry. I guess I lost my temper over your stupid playing, and I am really sorry. It won't happen again." What a jerk.
But then, poker karma took over.
The first hand, the cowboy pushed all-in with his meager chip stack, got three callers, and managed to quadruple-up by winning the hand on the river. The second hand, the cowboy again pushed all-in and won the blinds and antes without a caller. Now he had a reasonable amount of working chips again.
But on the third hand, the insulted woman made a small bet and he happily pushed all-in for a third time, thinking she'd fold and he'd take some of her chips.
However, she smiled, called, and flipped over pocket aces against his ace-six. She won the hand and enjoyed the pleasure of taking all of her attacker's chips and knocking him out of the tournament only three spots out of the money.
Take that, buddy.
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Speaking of poker karma, one of my best friends amongst the dealers is a fellow I met this week named Jim. Jim had decided to play in the second-chance tournament rather than dealing in it (dealers are allowed to do this when they are not working and Jim works the day shift). So when I pushed away from the bigoted cowboy's former-table and moved to the next table in the rotation, there sat Jim with a good-sized stack of chips and a smile on his face. "Give me some good cards, dealer!" grinned Jim.
As I was dealing the first hand, I was literally praying not be the dealer who would deal the cards that would knock Jim out. "Aces...aces...aces," I silently wished. As the hand progressed, Jim was heads-up with a player who went all-in. A loss would cripple Jim and lead to his tournament ouster. "Fold, Jim, fold!" I thought.
Fortunately, Jim is a much better poker player than I am. Jim took his time, analyzed the hand, and called. His superior hand held up and Jim won a very large pot. By the time I'd left the table, Jim's chip stack was far greater than when I arrived and he went on to finish in the money!
Side Pots:
- Funniest line of the night: A young girl was at a satellite and said after a loss in a hand, "Ouch, that was painful! I mean, I like a little pain sometimes, but not like that!" To which a gentleman still in the hand folded and said, "well, you sure distracted me with THAT remark!"
- Mr. Muscle Award: I was dealing a cash table where one player with a bunch of chips was slumped over and receiving a chair massage during play. He'd been folding all of his hands and looked disinterested. A new player came in that I'd recognized from earlier in the tournament as a very aggressive cash player who likes to bully others out of pots. The pots had all been in the $100 range but on the first hand, he raised the pot behind four limpers (players who try to only pay the minimum bet) to a hefty $500, the biggest bet in a long time.
The slumped-over player glanced at his cards and nonchalantly tossed a pair of $5000 chips into the pot! In the entire week, the biggest chip I had seen on any table was a $1000 chip. Faced with losing a ALL of his money on the first hand, the formerly aggressive player blinked twice and folded. Lesson learned, kids...know where the real juice is at a cash table before being aggressive.
