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.