Celeb 7 Stud Pros

What a treat to deal the 7 Card Stud High-Low tournament. I deal so much Texas Hold'em that it really was a refreshing change to deal a 7 Card Stud game. It seems I also got the poker celebrity table. Occassionally, I will get a well known poker player at my table when dealing a tournament but last night my initial table had three players that have been frequently seen on my television screen: Cyndy Violette, Annie Duke and Berry Johnston (pictured above) were in my seats 1, 2 and 4. All three have won WSOP Bracelets and Berry has five including the 1985 Main Event. They have all been profiled in ESPN World Series broadcasts and been seen on NBC's Poker After Dark.

Both Cyndy and Annie have in the past been credited with having won the largest prize ever by a woman playing poker.

It was actually a really fun table to deal. The mood was pretty light as Annie seemed delighted to be seated next to Cyndy. While Cyndy smiled and nodded, Annie provided a monologue of her recent activities and opinions and both seemed to be really enjoying sitting next to one another. Annie was also my dealer coach. Nothing gets past her as she seemed to count the change and the antes every hand and sometimes directed the action prompting Berry to start needling her.

Annie also had a special request. One of the duties of a dealer in split pot games is to stack the pot during the hand to facilitate the split once the hand is complete. Annie, in the 1 seat, asked that I not stack the pot whenever she was in a hand because it made it difficult for her to see the other players - especially those in the 7 and 8 seats. It was okay for me to stack the pot and speed up play for all the other hands, but if she was involved in a hand, I could worry about splitting it later. Not an unreasonable request. I know that I dislike playing from the 1 seat because of the restricted view.

After a while our entire table, dealer and all, was moved from the Amazon room to the Brazilia room where the main body of players for the tournament was located. I was then pushed on and made my way dealing down the row of tables with no other celebs to amuse me.

Checking the results on the WSOP web site I see that as of the end of day one, Berry and Cyndy are hanging in there with average stacks of around 7,000 but Annie is no longer on the board.

Results of all the tournaments can be found at worldseriesof poker.com.

Desert Golf

Portrait of Dan, half my age but still my poker guru, instructor, friend and now Dealer Coordinator. Law school will be taking Dan's career in a new direction soon.

Rio Secco Golf Club is situated high in the hills overlooking the Las Vegas Strip. It is where Butch Harmon has his golf school and where Tiger Woods once honed his game. Tiger's course record scores are printed hole by hole on the scorecard. Employees of Harrah's get to play it for a deeply discounted employee rate, but tee times are limited to late afternoon, the hottest part of the day. Our daytime high temperature was 104 degrees. The course was beautiful but it was hot. In the middle of the round I think I was getting a touch of heat stroke and my game fell apart. I wasn't as worried about missing fairways as I was about my rapid heartbeat and feeling a bit dizzy. It is no wonder that we were the only ones out there. I had two bottles of water and a quart and a half of Gatorade and was still getting dehydrated.

Despite all that I played some good golf in spurts. After the sun lost its sting I was able to birdie the spectacular 18th hole, my second bird of the day. Someplace along the way I also made an eleven, but we failed to calculate a grand total at the end. Dan and I were playing match play and he had me four down by the turn. Blue Moons are on me!

PLO Celeb Dealing

The game is Pot Limit Omaha. A.K.A. PLO. The initial stakes are seemingly innocent with a small blind of $25 and a big blind of $50 but this game sweetens the pot with a mandatory "Straddle" ( Blind raise) of $100 on the button. The action in this game, on Table #32 Red is the biggest in the Amazon Room. And there are no other rooms with cash games like this at the Rio. Hundred dollar bills are strapped into $5000 wads sometimes held together with rubber bands. Easier to deal with are the $1000 and $5000 chips from the Rio. Bellagio's $5000 and $10,000 chips are also universally accepted at this table.

Pictured above are three of the more recognizable poker professionals. All World Series of Poker Bracelet winners: David "Devilfish" Ulliot, David Williams and Nenad Medic. They were all at the table when yours truly, the rookie dealer, stepped into the box last night. The first words heard were from Ulliot on my immediate left asking if I had ever dealt Pot Limit Omaha before because, "We can call the floor and get another dealer if you want."

I told him, "I'd like the challenge. I'll give it a go." After all, I dealt it twice last week.

The challenge of dealing PLO is that the bets and raises are determined by the size of the pot. The dealer is supposed to be keeping track to be able to tell players what the maximum bets and raises are. Here is an example from last night:

After an initial raise to $300 and a re-raise to $600 there are three callers. The blinds have folded. I put out the three card flop and Ulliot asks me, "How much in the pot?"

I respond, "Twenty four Seventy-five, call it twenty-five hundred."

Devilfish pushes a stack of 25 black and purple $100 chips forward, cutting them neatly into five stacks of five chips each. Two players fold and David Williams, after checking how much Ulliot was playing (i.e. how much he had left) raises to $5000 and Ulliot responds with "Raise the Pot" which would be a call of $5000 plus a raise of $15,000 (the then size of the pot) but before any chips are moved, Williams folds and I push the pot to David Ulliot.

On it went all night. Thousands of dollars go back and forth for which the Rio collects precisely $72 per half hour. The $8 per player is usually paid by one player who is reimbursed by whoever wins the next pot. Some of the players bristle at this because they want the dealer to just wait and take the payment directly out of the next pot, but we have been instructed to follow the procedure and deal with irritated players. Such is life in the Amazon Room.

Dealing PLO for the big names was pretty cool and now if anyone asks me if I can deal Pot Limit Omaha I can tell them that I've dealt it for some of the biggest players in Vegas.

Lack of work

This is a problem I didn't think I would encounter during my tour as a dealer at the Series. Lack of work. While there are more poker tables filled with players than anyone has ever seen anywhere, they have hired more than enough dealers to handle it. Case in point was last night. I got to work at six and my first assignment for the $1500 Hold'em tournament that began at noon was to go on break until 6:55 then push into the tournament. When I got there, the players had left for their 90 minute dinner break, so my job was to sit at the table and guard the players' chips. Two tables of guard duty, another break and the players returned. I came back from my break and dealt about five or six hands and my table got broken. This meant that I didn't have a table to deal. Checking with the Dealer Coordinator, there was no other work for me. I was given an "Early out".

Note: Breaking tables - in a tournament, as players bust out throughout the tournament, their seats are filled by breaking a table at the end and sending all of the players from that table to fill the empty seats all around the tournament. That way, the tables melt down to the ultimate single "Final Table" in an orderly fashion. A dealer at a table that is broken is taken out of the rotation and reassigned if there is work available.

What to do? I've only been at work for a few hours and my housemate is in the same situation. We decided to go home, change clothes and go play Poker at the Orleans Casino. We had heard rumors that they have a pretty lively Poker Room over there and figured to give it a shot. We played $1 - $2 No Limit Hold'em at different tables. Interestingly, we both had similar nights, getting down over a hundred and then playing the rest of the night to claw back to even and walk away with a small profit for the evening. Breakfast at Denny's at 2 AM.

Oops! Got myself in trouble!

All right. Here's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I pushed into table #37, an Omaha High-Low (Eight or better) $10-$20 game with a $15 kill (i.e. the stakes go up if a player scoops a big pot.) Omaha is a notoriously difficult game to deal. OK, it's not all that difficult for an experienced dealer, but for us rookies, there is a lot going on. You have to count the well when you get to the table, make change and take a $4 rake every hand during the play of the hand and stack the pot (with your one free hand) every hand because High-Low means that the highest hand gets half the pot and the lowest hand gets half the pot. Because each player is dealt four cards it is also possible that one player can make both the highest and the lowest hands using different combinations of cards from their hand and the board. All this means is that as a dealer, there is a lot to do and a lot to think about. Easy for a veteran, somewhat tougher for a rookie.

The other problem for us rookies is that sometimes players get a little testy because they want the game to go fast, especially if they are the kind of player that uses a tight strategy to make money at the game. A tight player only plays the best starting hands and plays them very aggressively with the idea that they will push their edge, and make money because they'll win big pots and just fold away the rest of them. Because they only play one out of five or six hands, they often "encourage" the dealer to move the game along as they fold and fold awaiting a good starting hand.

Last night, when I arrived at table #37, the previous dealer had left the well a mess. Typically, the chips in the well are neatly organized. Chips are counted in stacks of twenty and plastic spacers called "lammers" are used to separate the stacks. This makes it easy to count. A stack of white chips is twenty dollars, a stack of blue - forty and a stack of red is a hundred. This well was a mess. On the left was a big stack of 50 or 60 white chips, there were two partial stacks of blue and the reds were uneven. The dealer is responsible for the money. Dealers have to make up shortages out of their pocket and can be terminated if their well is found consistently short.

So I sat down and dug in my heels because I knew it was going to take a few minutes to straighten this out. The player in seat 8 was impatient. "Come on, deal!" "Let's go." "What are you doing dealer? Let's get the cards out." His harassment made me want to take even greater care straightening out this well. I lammered off the chips and got it where there was only a single "working" stack of white, blue and red chips and then counted them quickly and seeing that they were right (or maybe two dollars over). His harassment continued. Although he folded four out of five hands he followed all the action. "Stack that pot up." "Come on." "Let's go" "That's it, split 'em up. Do it!" "Wait! - No! - He get's half the low. Come on dealer, split 'em up!" "What's the problem?" "DEAL."

He finally plays a hand at the end of my half hour session. It is a big one. It is raised and re-raised before and after the flop with four players in it. It was likely the largest pot of my session. The board read 5-6-K-J-9 with all four suits showing. The lady in seat 3 shows her cards and declares, "Straight!" with a proud smile. She held a 7 and an 8 in her hand. Two others mucked but seat 8 just sat and stared at his cards. Then he stared at the board, shaking his head seemingly trying to figure out where he went wrong. Still shaking his head he slowly stood up putting his hand over his cards and stared at the board some more. Then he picked up his cards again, looked at them and showed them to someone standing behind him, said something and then turned back to the game, looked at the board and stared at his cards. Everybody at the table was rolling their eyes and shaking their head waiting for him to show or muck his cards.

"They're not gonna change." said the dealer.

Oops. That's not really the right thing to say in this situation. That's a smart-ass comment from an irritated dealer giving back a little needle to a guy who he thinks might have deserved it.

He erupted into a tirade. I didn't really listen to what he was saying. I just worked on getting this huge pot pushed over to the winner, collecting the cards and setting up to leave the table. "New dealer coming in! Thank you all for your tokes and good luck to everybody."

After I moved to the next table where I had to again straighten out a well that was a wreck, I was relieved early by a dealer telling me that I needed to go talk to the Dealer Coordinator i.e. the boss. Oops.

"What happened?"

After telling my story, he assured me that I had not handled the situation in the best manner and that I should not let it happen again. He gave me the option to leave or to deal some more at another table, but it was after 1 AM and I had been there since 6. I took the option to clock out.

Best Dressed

They say you'll see all kinds at the poker table. They are correct. Tee shirts, sweat shirts and occassionally, a flowing cocktail dress looking elegantly chic at the table.

I could't really get a good photo, but trust me, she was wearing a very pretty dress. I couldn't tell you if she was winning, but she seemed to be spending a good deal of time counting her chips.

John Phan wins the $3k No Limit

Some of the events, make that most of the events are not recorded or televised by ESPN. The grandstand area is not used and the final table is one of the many tables used in the sea of poker in the Amazon Room in the Rio's Convention Center. One of the few cameras around for this final table was my cell phone (which I am not supposed to use while in uniform).

I finished my tour about 1:30 AM and noticed a crowd around the Green table section. It was the final of the $3000 No Limit Hold'em event. The final two players, John Phan and Jonny Neckar had been playing heads up for over six hours. This is very unusual. Yes, heads up for the title takes much longer than it seems on TV, but six hours is a very long heads up battle. The players were getting a little punchy. John Phan had convinced Johnny Neckar to play the next hand "All in blind" and Neckar agreed. Phan had more chips and therefore less to lose because if Neckar loses, he is busted, loses the title and takes second place money. Neckar wins and takes over the chip lead. Again they play a hand betting all the chips without looking at their cards. All the chips go in the middle, the cards are turned face up, then the dealer puts out the Flop, Turn and River cards to decide the winner. Phan wins and regains the chip lead. The third time they decide to play "No Peek" and go All In, see the Flop, Turn and River, then look at their cards, squeezing them out and turning them up one at a time. Neckar wins and the chip count is back to nearly exactly what it was three hands ago.

At this point I am standing on a chair trying to get a view of the table to see these guys apparently tossing a coin for the $160,000 difference between first and second place. That's when I got this picture, just about when I heard the announcer say that the players were going to go back to playing poker. Two hands later, all the money went in and John Phan came out the winner with a World Series of Poker Bracelet and $434,789. Johnny Neckar won $277, 452. You will never see this one on ESPN.

Time Pots

What are "Time Pots"?

For some of the higher limit games, rather than the dealer making change and taking $4 out of every pot, the players are charged a straight fee ($8 per half hour at WSOP) that is collected every half hour.

When I played at Motor City Casino or at the Majestic, every player would put their $8 in front of them and the dealer would collect it, color it up and put it on the rake slide until a supervisor approved it.

Apparently, this is not the norm in Vegas or California casinos. Here, the players expect the dealers to just continue to deal hands once the supervisor has announced for dealers to collect time. They assume the dealer will just take the time fee out of the next pot. They seem to think that it would be a waste of time if everybody at the table has $25 chips and hundred dollar bills to have the dealer make change for $8 for each one of them. Problem is, it was announced that any dealer caught dealing time pots rather than collecting the rake could be fired. This means that we can anticipate having arguments with our players. I can still hear it, "Just DEAL! Don't worry about it!"

The only solution I can see is to tell the players (let's assume 6 players at the table) that I need $48 for time before I can deal another hand. Then I can either take $8 from each player or one player can step up and toss the $48 into the middle. Chances are a player will toss out two green $25 chips and I will break one, giving the player $2 change and put the rest on the slide until the supervisor says I can drop it. Whether or not the winner of the next pot reimburses the player for the time would not be the dealer's worry. I sure hope our Dealer Coordinators don't define that procedure as a "Time Pot" or I'll be in trouble!

Live Action

The Amazon Room is a large convention hall and maybe the largest room in the Rio's Convention Center. It is divided into four sections and color coded Orange, Green, Blue and Red. Each section has about 50 poker tables except green which has some outer tables and houses the ESPN Final Table stadium complete with bleachers, overhead video monitors and camera booms.

In addition to the 55 tournaments that are being held for the WSOP, there is also a lot of other Poker action. Every night there is a Mega-Satellite where people can win their way into the Main Event and a nightly No Limit tournament paying cash which usually attracts a few hundred participants. There is even a Satellite Room as large as most casinos' poker rooms dedicated to running single table satellite tournaments. Prizes are $500 Tournament entry tokens. They look like $500 chips but they can only be used for entry into satellites and tournaments at the 2008 WSOP. That is a lot of tournament action.

Tournament action isn't everything. There is also "Live Action". The Red section of the Amazon Room is cordoned off with some four foot high barriers to provide a little separation between players and spectators. Note: it is not all that effective. There is also a group of four tables in the middle sectioned off for the "High Limit" games. "Live Action" is the euphemism for cash games. Most tables are variations of Hold'em and Omaha, but 7 Card Stud is spread as well as some of the more esoteric games like Triple Draw Lowball or Badugi. Consequently, this is the toughest area to be a dealer in.

As a dealer, you have to really be on your toes in Live Action. Dealers rotate or "Push" tables every half hour. This means that every half hour a dealer is replaced by a new dealer and moves to the next table in the row. The next table will usually have a different game and/or a different limit structure. Dealers need to know the structure of each game, Limit or No Limit or Pot Limit and be able to adjust immediately. We are also responsible for the Well, the chips used to make change. Shortages are made up out of your tips and can lead to reprimands or termination if you can't keep it right. Live action dealers also have to take the rake, the casino's cut of each pot. It's either 10% of each pot up to four dollars or a time rake, which is a simpler eight dollars per player per half hour. There is also the need to communicate with the Floor Staff to keep seats filled and get the attention of chip runners and cocktail waitresses to meet the needs of the players. Players constantly drift in and out sometimes with chips, sometimes not. Compare all this responsibility to dealing a tournament. In tournaments, you deal one game with one set of rules over and over. Players only leave if they bust out. There is no rake to take and no well to worry about. Tournaments are a lot easier to deal than live action.

Our compensation system doesn't align well with the work required resulting in a lot of disgruntled dealers. It seems we make about twice as much per hour dealing tournaments than we make dealing live action. Seeing that there is a lot more work dealing live action you would think that management would find a way to adjust for this. Funny how this business is no different from other businesses: The compensation structure drives behavior. I hear the supervisors complaining that dealers who need a day off or call in sick always seem to need those days on the days they are scheduled to deal live action. Hmmm. If they figured out a way to compensate dealers for the greater challenge of dealing live action they wouldn't have that problem. They would also have a more positively motivated dealer staff.

Just think if WSOP management decided to "sweeten the pot" for the live action dealers by tossing in an extra $$ toke for every table a dealer worked - or simply increased the hourly base for live action assignments. Dealers would be excited to meet the challenges of these, the toughest tables. They would be competing to get Live Action assignments. The scuttlebutt around the break room would run toward how they handled a situation rather than concentrating on how some player won pot worth thousands and stiffed them on the tip. In my opinion, in any workforce management situation, the compensation system need to be structured so that the workforce can see that they are compensated best for those things requiring the most skill and/or the greatest effort. To do otherwise, it has been seen over and over, leads to a disgruntled workforce that operates at a far lower than optimal level of efficiency. Perhaps, this should be the subject of a strongly worded email to the WSOP management. Think? Okay, maybe they'll read my blog instead.

What has motivated me to write this? The last two days I was assigned to deal in Live Action both days. First thought: Who did I piss off?

In the High Limit area Mimi Tran was throwing a fit. The game was a mixed game that included Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Lowball, Razz and Badugi. Apparently, the dealer was arguing with Mimi about how the game should be dealt, Mimi was upset and the supervisor had to step in and start dealing. The dealer coordinator asked me to go "rescue" the supervisor. Oops. Wrong place, wrong time for the rookie.

As I approached the table, the supervisor was getting a lesson on how to deal Triple Draw. I sat in, replacing the supervisor at the end of the hand. As soon as I touched the cards I was being given instructions on what to do and all I could do was say, "Whatever you want, just let me know." One of the problems was that they wanted it dealt differently than how we were taught in regard to handling the discards. Next, to count how many hands of each game are dealt, chips are used. For each hand that is dealt, a chip is moved from one pile to another so a count is kept. After eight hands, the game changes to the next game. So at the end of the hand I moved a chip. All hell broke loose. "No! You don't do that! Move the chip when you cut! Only when you cut! Because you stop and then everybody sees it." Next hand I shuffle, shuffle, box, shuffle and set the cards for the cut. Then I reached over and picked up a counting chip, held it high in the air for everyone to see and place it ritualistically on the count pile. Laughter erupted from the table. The tension was broken. The game continued but the mood of the table was considerably lighter than it had been. Then we changed to Badugi. I messed up. I dealt to the button first instead of last or something resulting in a misdeal. I was getting upset with myself and our lighter mood was fading. I needed to collect the time rake of $5 per player. I could feel the attitude when I told the table I needed $5 from each of them. One player tossed me a $25 chip and when no one else moved I started to make change. "No no no no no! That's for everybody. Just deal. Just deal!" Oh. Five person table. $25 chip. One player paying for the table. Cool. I wish I would have known that a few seconds earlier. A new dealer then came over to push me out and I was saved any further embarrassments. Whew! Too bad I couldn't just stay at the table for a while. Just after I started dealing things the way they wanted they get a new dealer that was going to try to deal things the way were trained. I didn't stick around to see what happened. It was late and time for me to call it a night.

What do dealers do on break?

They play cards, of course!

This is a "Behind-the-scenes" look at what goes on in the dealer's break room. I don't know about you, but I find it amusing that after dealing cards for hours on end, the dealers would choose to pass the time on break by playing cards.

Crazy Game

Event 18 is the No Limit, Deuce-to-7 Lowball with Re-buys event. This event is for gamblers. There is only one draw, so two rounds of betting, but the betting is No Limit so people are pushing all the chips in to put maximum pressure on their opponent. This results in a lot of bust-outs and, consequently, a lot of re-buys.

How many re-buys is a lot? There were 85 players entered into the tournament. There were 272 re-buys. The total prize pool is over $1.7 million. The winner will get over $600k. The player that just squeaks into the money in fourteenth place will pocket over $26k. On average each player invested $21k into entry/re-buy fees. That is one entry and 3.2 re-buys per player.

I wish I would have seen some of it. It started on my day off and today, as it continues, I will be in the Satellite Room dealing Single Table Satellites all evening. On my day off, I stayed away from the Rio. My housemate, Tim and I headed up to the Stratosphere for their daily 1 PM tournament.

At one point in the tournament I was down to less than 25% of my starting stack, then things started to go right. I was all in under-the-gun (first to act) with Ace-King and got two callers. I caught a King and tripled up just before having to pay the blinds. After a few timely folds and a couple of double ups I found myself at the final table along with Tim. Three times I either went all in or called an all in bet before the flop and all three times my hand held up to bust the other player. At that point, I had a pretty massive chip lead and people started talking about chopping up the prize pool. Tim said something about $250 and then the player next to him said, "Hell, I'd be happy with $200 and give the rest to the chip leader." Tim then made a case to the table that this was a good deal and we should all take it.

Now, chip leads are good things, but in No Limit Poker they can disappear as fast as they were built. Without even doing the math on it, but knowing that "the rest" would be over three times the $200 I agreed - as long as everyone else agreed to leave $10 for the dealers. After some resistance from one single player who eventually capitulated, the deal was done. My share turned out to be even more than I thought as I got $790 and left $40 for the dealers. Later, I tossed Tim one of the $100 chips for negotiating such a good deal at the final table.

We also decided that in the future, when we played tournaments together, I would "buy" half of his entry and he would "buy" half of mine. That way if we cashed, we would split the profits. Stay tuned to see how this works out.

Brent

On Sunday I was assigned for Tournaments and drew second day of the $2500 No Limit Hold'em Event #13. The event had begun on Saturday with 1397 entries. I believe they played down to the money bubble on Saturday leaving 99 players to restart Sunday evening.

As I arrived there were 9 tables of players remaining. I pushed into a table, dealt for half an hour then got pushed out and went on break, came back and pushed into the end of a row. This time I got three tables in a row to deal without a break. This deal one, break, deal one break is a nice easy pace, but I really only make money when I actually deal. Break doesn't pay much.

Surveying the field I noticed that there just weren't very many big names remaining in the event. No Phil Gordons or Phil Hellmuths. Just a few semi-familiar faces some of whom I remember dealing to earlier either in satellites or in the cash games. When I pushed into Table 47 I saw a familiar face but I couldn't place it. He was in seat four.

He looked at me and said, "Your name tag is Harrison but you go by Buz, don't you?" "...Brent, from Wysteria."

OMG. Back a few years ago when I lived in Ann Arbor I occasionally played in a game at Brent's apartment. I was just learning to play the No Limit game. We had hooked up via the A2Poker group on Yahoo! when he had sent an open invitation to the group. We played No Limit Hold'em with blinds at twenty-five and fifty cents in his dining room. Of course, Brent didn't have a dining room table, he had a poker table in his dining room. I brought the beer.

How cool was this? Here I am dealing at the WSOP and I find at one of my tables a guy I used to play Poker with for quarters.

After a few hours of the tournament, we had gotten down to four or five tables and I pushed into Brent's table. This time he was in seat seven. Play is pretty intense at this point in the tournament. Players have made the money but there is a huge difference between 36th place and the final table payouts. Tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands if a player made the top three. Antes are now $1000 per hand and the blinds are $5,000 and $10,000. Brent is first to act and he calls the $10,000. This is kind of unusual because most players are raising when they enter a pot, hoping to either win the blinds and antes without a fight or get heads up with someone and win a big pot. Also, Brent doesn't have a very large stack, so you would think that he would want to apply maximum pressure by raising, rather than just limping along. Jason Sanders in seat nine raises it to $30,000. All the other players fold and it's back to Brent to decide to fold, call or raise.

Brent said, "Raise. I'm all in."

Jason Sanders has about three times the number of chips Brent has making this a big decision on his part. On the one hand he risks losing a third of his stack, on the other, he could move near the chip lead and eliminate another player if successful.

Jason shook his head saying, "That's an Aces move. It's either Aces or a small pair."

He anguished over it for a full three minutes before making up his mind saying, "All right. I call." As he flips over a pair of Queens.

All eyes on Brent as he turns over, not Aces, but a pair of Fours. He looked at me and said, "Come on Buz, you can do it."

Brent was a 4 to 1 underdog. He needed a Four. And no Queens. Unless he catches a Four, Brent would be eliminated, out of the tournament in 36th place. I burned a card and slid it under a few chips at the edge of the pot then peeled off the three flop cards, face down in front of me. I picked them up and moved them to the center of the table. As I flipped them over to spread them on the board I could see it. The Four of Spades right in the window. The first card you could see. No Queens show up. Brent doubles up and now has enough chips to work with to get to the final table.

After a few more downs dealing, players are eliminated and when there are only two tables left, they only need three dealers and it's my turn to call it a night.

Later that night, after I left, Brent caught a Five to make three-of-a-kind Fives and coasted into the final table sixth in chips out of the nine remaining players.

The next day, Brent busted out in eighth place, good for over $80,000 in his first and only appearance at the World Series of Poker.

Observations

Celebrity sightings: Shannon Elizabeth drew a big spectator crowd around her table, Gabe Kaplan not so much.

The day before last I dealt hands to "Miami" John Cernudo, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and several others that I recognized but wasn't absolutely certain who they were.

The Limit Hold'em Championship seemed to have every big name poker professional you have ever heard of entered in it. Day 1 was yesterday, but I was dealing the 7 PM Nightly No Limit Hold'em Tournament. It is a $340 buy-in tournament that, as the name suggests, runs nightly at 7 PM. No big names in that one. They were all in the "Bracelet" events, so called because the winner gets a jeweled, engraved bracelet to go along with the pile of cash.


Observation:
If I keep up the pace I had last night, I might not make expenses for this trip. We get paid a minimal hourly wage just to show up, then keep our tips from cash games we deal and when we deal tournaments, there is a percentage held back from the entry fees as well as tips left at the cashier from the winners that make up a tip pool. The pool is divided among the dealers according to how many "downs" (half hour segments) each dealer dealt. The more downs you get to deal, the more money you make. Last night I showed up at 6 PM and started the tournament at 7. I dealt two tables, i.e. two downs, then went on break and dealt two more downs and hit another break table. Back from break, the table I would have gone to had been broken (players sent to other tables to fill in where people had busted out) and that left me with no game to deal. I checked with the Dealer Coordinator and was added to the list of dealers without an assignment. He had 8 dealers on the list and it was growing despite the fact that he also was taking volunteers for "Early Out". With prospects slim for getting an assignment anytime in the next few hours I took the EO rather than hang around and try to milk the clock for $6 an hour. As I told my boss, I figure there are some dealers that are desperate for the money and I'd let them take the extra down because they need it much more than me. He thanked me for being a team player. Just two hours of work in an eight hour shift is not going to pay the room and board.

Satellites are cool!
There is a separate room at the Rio Convention Center dedicated to WSOP Satellites. What's a Satellite? It is a tournament that pays the winner(s) in seats at larger buy-in tournaments. For example: The buy-in for the WSOP Main Event NLH Tournament is $10,000. Pretty pricey for your average Joe, but Joe can enter a single table satellite for $1,060 and the winner gets a seat in the main event. The math is pretty simple. Ten players each put up $1,060, total of entry fees is $10,600. The house takes its cut to pay dealers and staff and the winner gets a certificate good for entry into the Main Event.
The Satellite room is dedicated to Single Table Satellites. Not all of them lead to the Main Event. Remember, there are 55 events in the Series and players might like to use satellites to get into any of them. WSOP management takes care of that by paying the winners of these satellites with $500 chips that were made up special just for the purpose. They are "No Cash Value" chips that can only be used to pay $500 worth of entry fees into events at the 2008 WSOP including other, bigger buy-in satellites. The chips are transferable and easily sold if its owner would rather have cash than tournament entry. Last night I could hear someone hawking satellite chips just outside the satellite room. I suppose you would sell the $500 chip for something less than $500 but why would somebody play in these satellites if they just wanted cash? I would think they would just go play in the cash games or in tournaments that pay cash rather than entry tokens. On the other hand, I suppose if someone considers themself a single table tournament specialist and is very skilled at short-handed play they might believe they could clean up in the satellite room and sell all the tokes they amass for cash.

I think the satellites are cool. They play like final tables of the big tournaments and my tips have been pretty good. Not everyone in the dealer community shares that opinion. Sometimes the winners forget to "take care of the dealer" and that hurts. Deal a table for two hours and get stiffed on the tip and you quickly develop a bad taste for satellites.
How much do people tip? It varies widely. How much should people tip? I'm not sure what the custom around here, but as a dealer, it would be nice to be able to make twenty to thirty tip dollars an hour dealing satellites. Maybe a little more when the buy-ins and the prizes are higher. (You gotta have a goal, right?) Remember, although we have an eight hour work day, we never deal for eight hours. We have to make up for all the time spent setting up, breaking down or just waiting for an opportunity to deal a table.

My buddy Tim says, "Screw dealing, I wanna pass out water! These guys are loading up a tray with ten bottles of water (free to the players) and walking around passing them out. The players give them a buck every time they get a water. How many waters do you think you can give out in an hour?" Hmmm.

Tournaments versus Cash

I have noticed a significant difference between the atmosphere at the cash tables and that of the tournaments. They are both very intense and while the small stakes Limit games are more "low stress fun" games than any of the No Limit games, there is a noticible difference between the atmosphere of the cash games and that of the tournaments. While the intensity is high for both varieties, it is a different kind of intensity. Cash games are louder and more raw. At the middle limits where pots are often several thousand dollars each you can feel the friction between players when one gets deep into another's pocket. On the other hand, in the tournaments, the intensity is more masked. The emotions are being held in check but they are there, under the surface. Sometimes it seems they are tightly bottled up, ready to explode.

Last night I was scheduled for the Nightly No Limit Tournament, but due to the fact that they began the tournament with twenty-four dealers but only fourteen tables, my services were not immediately required. After sitting in the Dealer Break Room for a few hours I finally received an alternate assignment in the $2000 No Limit Hold'em event #7.

The event had started at noon with over 1500 players and I was pushing into a table at 9:00 PM. After nine hours of play almost 90% of the field had gone bust. The plan was to play down to the money bubble. 152 players will get paid for their play in this event. While first place is worth over half a million, a player finishing 152nd will just about double his $2000 entry fee. Finishing 153rd gets a player nothing. Nada. Goose egg. Nobody wants to go out on the bubble. Play usually tightens up considerably at this point in a poker tournament. Table #27 was no exception. It was quiet and intense.

A typical player would sit, one hand near the chip stack, one on the cards in front. Perfectly still staring intently at the center of the table or looking sidelong at other players, considering the action. Sliding cards (another fold) into the middle of the table with the flick of a single finger.

The action last night, although there were 9 or ten players at each table, was usually heads-up i.e. a direct confrontation between two players while all other folded their hands. An oft repeated scene was a single, silently confident player raising by moving a small stack of yellow thousand dollar chips toward the center of the table and being eyeballed by the player in the Big Blind who had the most to lose to this raiser. Then after deciding that the raiser actually had a winning hand the Big picks up his cards, looks at them, shakes his head and with one last sigh tosses them forward, folding his hand, admitting defeat. Hand after hand I pushed the blinds and antes to the player bold enough risk chips in that first round of betting before the flop. They call it "Stealing the Blinds" and it plays out like that more and more often as players get even more conservative approaching the money bubble.

Around midnight there were 153 players remaining at 17 tables. 152 were going to win money. The next player eliminated would get nothing. Play was "Hand for Hand". All seventeen tables would play one hand and not begin another until each table had completed that hand. Eventually, a player got broke. A big cheer went up when this was announced because all remaing players had made the money. Play was halted for the night. Players received plastic bags to store their chips in along with their official recorded chip count receipts.

Even though many other events were still going on and the cash games play 24 hours a day, my day was done. Time to punch out.

Day off (already)

After one day back I am scheduled for a day off. What does a rookie dealer do on his day off? Play Poker of course!

Seeing that it was Monday, I figured I wouldn't get hold of Shawn at my club and he wouldn't be able to contact the Golf Pro at the club in Vegas that I was hoping to be able to play while I was here. Monday is the traditional day off for Golf Pros.

I slept in, fixed myself breakfast (having slept through the meal provided by my B&B host), did laundry and studied another chapter on pre-flop play in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide - Tournament Edition. Then I decided to get some excercise by taking the 1.5 mile hike to the Stratosphere Casino.

After I got there, I thought I would drop into the Poker Room and see if I could play a little $3-$6 Hold'em but there were no cash games going on. The entire room was tournament tables. This was their Monday tournament and they were already at the third level. I checked with the desk and discovered that I could still get in but the late buy-in period would end in 10 minutes. Buy in was only $60 and there were no other games so I figured I should give it a shot.

The $60 bought me $4000 in tournament chips and I was able to play about 2 hands before the break. After we came back from the break, The blinds were $200 and $400. Hmmm. I was already short stacked and I had only seen three hands! I played by the book and just looked for good cards and when they came declared, "All In!" Soon I had doubled up and could play a more normal game of raising two to four times the size of the Big Blind when I wanted to enter a pot. Most of my raises got respect. When I was in the Big Blind, the Small Blind made a small raise, to $800. I looked down at A-J, looked at his stack which was less than half of mine and declared, "All in!" He hemmed and hawed and struggled with his decision, looked at me staring at the center of the table with my flip-up sunglasses now flipped down and asked, 'Can you beat Ace - Jack?" I just stared at the pot and didn't respond. He folded and pushed the chips toward me. "Ace - Jack, you say? That was really impressive. Take a look." I flipped my hand face up so he could see that I had precisely the Ace-Jack that he had called.

Many pundits recommend not showing an uncalled hand ever but I thought the coincidence of his calling out Ace-Jack was too special not to show. If his statement was truthful, we would have most likely split the pot with both of us holding the same hand. And I didn't mind showing the table that when I raise I have some power to back it up. I'm not just trying to steal pots by bluffing every time.

I worked my starting chips into a stack of about $50,000 by the time we got down to the final table. Because there were over ninety entrants, the tournament would pay nine places, one for every ten paid entries. After tenth place busted out there was talk of a nine way chop i.e. split the prize money nine ways, about $500 each but a few players weren't interested just yet. Ninth place busted out. Eighth place busts and now a chop would be $718 for each of us. We call the supervisor over for a review of the payouts according to the tournament sheet. The payout is very top-heavy for first place. Second place only pays $680. In order to do better than chopping the money seven ways a player would have to win the tournament outright. The last holdout finally realized that because he doesn't have a dominating chip lead, in fact he is only about third in chips, his is better off chopping. That is how it ended. A seven way chop and a nice profit for my day off.

I left a $60 tip for the dealers to split and headed back out for the mile and a half walk back to the house.

Congratulations, Mary!

My daughter graduated from high school over the weekend, so I left Vegas on Friday night, attended the graduation along with family and returned Sunday night. I am just blown away at how this little girl has grown up and is ready to go off to college this fall.

Back to the Tables

The schedule is changed again and I am on Tournaments. Today is "Day 1B" for the $1500 Buy-in No Limit Hold'em event. There were so many entries that two "Day One's" were needed. I think over 4000 players paid the entry into the tournament.

Talk about a slow start, how's this: I push (relieve the dealer) into a table at 6:55 PM. At 7 PM the players go on a 90 minute dinner break. When the players go to dinner, the dealers sit at the empty tables and guard the chips. It's kind of a strange sight. A hundred tables in a corner of this huge convention hall each with a dealer and no players. At 7:25 we push i.e. at each table as a new dealer comes in the current dealer is relieved and goes to the next table, that dealer to the next table, and to the next until they hit a "Break" table to go on break rather than pushing into the next table.

My third table of guarding chips is a break table. After sitting at tables doing essentially nothing for 90 minutes I get to go on break. Things change when I get back from break.

My first tournament table with players includes one of the most recognizable poker celeberties at the Series, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson is pleasant, soft spoken and for the half hour I dealt, very tight. "Tight" in the poker sense that he folds often and only plays premium hands. I am not sure if I can remember him voluntarily putting money in the pot the entire time I was at the table. He may have raised once and got no action, winning the blinds and antes.

At my next table, Daniel Alaei is in seat 5. I have seen Dan play on TV on "High Stakes Poker". Daniel seems to run the table. I get a feeling he is a former dealer. He is into every hand, every situation where change is needed, checking every ante. A more experienced dealer my have bristed at the involvement, but I didn't mind. It was actually nice to have someone at the table that was dependably paying attention whether he was in the hand or folded. If something went horribly wrong I would have a witness that was all over every detail. On the other hand, it added some pressure like the feeling I would have if I were dealing a table that one of my former instructers were sitting at. Every little fumble of chips or messy shuffle was worth a knowing glance from Dan Alaei. Most other players are in their own little world. Alaei is wired into the entire table. Predictably, he was chip leader at the table, played many hands and took every opportunity to steal pots. I think all the players at the table felt a constant sense of pressure coming from seat 5. Any weakness was going to be pounced upon.

After another break I return to find a table in the process being broken i.e. its players are being assigned seats at other tables to fill in the empty seats where previous players busted out. It leaves me with a need for reassignment. We have more than enough dealers and with no new action beginning for the rest of the evening, my services are no longer needed.