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.
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