Wednesday, Dealer Review Day

On Wednesday the crews were still building the tables in the Pavilion Room in the Rio’s convention center. This will be the first year for WSOP to use the Pavilion Room. It is the largest room in the center. In past years it has been occupied by a Poker themed trade show displaying all manner of Poker supplies and paraphernalia. This year it will be a football field size expanse of Poker tables. Okay, well maybe it’s not the size of a football field, but it is close. It is huge.

(Note: actually I stepped it off and it is 110 paces front to back!)

We were running a practice/review session for dealers who felt they needed a little refresher on some of the games that are dealt less often like Pot Limit Omaha and Deuce to Seven Lowball Triple Draw. Probably only a hundred of the one thousand WSOP dealers showed up for the session. Seeing that I hadn’t dealt a hand of Pot Limit or Draw Poker since last year, I figured I would show up.

Pot limit betting rules are a little quirky until you get used to them. Cash game rules are different than tournament rules and calculating a pot sized re-raise after the flop can really put the hurt on ones arithmetic muscles. Dealers not only need to know how much is in the pot but also do the math to calculate the amount needed to raise after a bet or raise has already been made. It’s a lot of numbers to keep in your head.

Draw Poker has its own quirks also. At home, if you play Draw, you don’t even think about it. Players toss their cards in and the dealer gives them however many cards they need. At the WSOP there are some specific procedural rules the dealer needs to follow. What the procedures do is first, give anyone looking at the table (like a supervisor or a security camera) the ability to determine which betting round you are on and second, assure that if you run out of cards for the draw, there will be no possibility a player will get the same cards back that he just discarded. To do this, the dealer keeps separate the muck (the folded hands), the discards and the burn cards for each draw/betting round. Keeping the discards separate from the muck assures that if you run out of cards for the draw, a player will not be drawing from a deck that contains his own discards. By burning a card before each draw, anyone can see which betting round you are on. If there are three burn cards sitting there, you know that there is not going to be another draw. Now you may think that in Triple Draw it should be pretty easy to count to three but in the heat of some controversy with a lot of money on the table and emotions running hot it is easy to lose track of where you are and when the Floor Supervisor comes over, it is nice to have something tangible like a stack of burn cards to prove where you are in the hand.

After the review session I had dinner in the Employee Dining Room with one of the rookie dealers, Jeff, a former golf pro from Mississippi who gave up tournament golf for real estate and Poker. Now, after the real estate bust, he has learned to deal to make a little money. After dinner I headed over to the Stratosphere for the 8 PM tournament.

Oops. 17 players and I busted out fifth.

I couldn’t get any traction early and my chips dwindled down to about half the starting stack. Then I got “Pocket Rockets”. I got a customer for my all in re-raise and when my aces held, I doubled my stack back to a playable size. I made the final table but by the time five players were left, I was the short stack. Only the top three would be paid. My stack was large enough to play but not big enough to beg for a five way chop.

On the button, I tried to steal the blinds with a raise a little less than half my stack but the Big Blind called. The flop came out K-6-2 and when my opponent checked I pushed all my remaining chips in. My thinking was that if he didn’t spike the king on that flop he would have to fold. He called. I was trapped. He had the king. The Turn and River cards were no help and I was out in fifth.

It was too early to call it a night. Although that Baldacci novel up in my room was still only half read, I decided to see if I could win back the entry fee I just lost by playing in the cash game. After all, there was an open seat.

The next two hours I was able to stay around even, sometimes $50 ahead, sometimes a little behind. Three players limped into the pot, calling the $2 Big Blind. I was on the button with a pair of deuces in the hole. I called. The player in the Small Blind next to me, an Englishman on holiday, raised it to $12. This is an interesting number because it matches the total currently in the pot i.e. the Big Blind’s $2 plus the four callers’ bets. This is a pretty strong raise especially coming from one of the blinds where the raiser will have to act first on every betting round, a disadvantageous position.

I recall my old friend Ray in Newport, MI telling me that in a cash game, good players rarely raised from the blinds and when they do, you can expect them to showdown a very strong hand. Often, it will be AA, KK or QQ. Sometimes AK from an overly aggressive player, but mostly, especially if it is a re-raise, it’s AA, KK or QQ. Because of this tip he gave me, I am always very wary of calling any raise that comes from a player in the Small or Big Blind.

I decided that with my 22 I could afford to see a flop. If I caught a deuce, I could win a big pot. If I missed, I could simply throw it away. The others folded and I called the additional $10. The dealer then spread out one of the prettiest flops you will ever see for the situation. 3-3-2. I flopped a full house. I’m sure I just sat and stared at it because I was stunned. The Englishman led out with $15. I am sure he was very confident that this flop could not have helped my hand in the least, just as I was confident he wasn’t holding any cards that resembled 2 or 3. I shot a disgusted glance over at him that tried to say, “You don’t have shit. Your bet is just an irritation.” I tossed $15 into the pot. The dealer put a king out on the Turn. He bet another $15. Could he have AK? Could he have AA? Could this be a nightmare with him holding KK?

I raised to $45 and pretty quickly he said, “All in.” He pushed forward two stacks of red $5 chips followed by a handful of white $1 chips.

Very excited, but still a little worried he would show me kings full of treys I said, “I call.”

The dealer said, “Turn’em up!”

Because he bet and I called, the etiquette is that he shows his hand first. He picked his cards up off the table and as he did I could see the ace of diamonds. Yes! Even before the cards hit the table I knew he couldn’t have the kings, he could only have AA or AK and I was way ahead. The cards separated when they hit the table showing his two aces. I had the deuces full and he was drawing to only 2 outs, the two aces remaining in the deck. Any other card made me a winner. The dealer put out the River card. Not an ace! No, it was not an ace. The total pot was about $350. The chips were pushed toward me.

To the guys I will be dealing to in a few days, a $350 pot will be miniscule. There will be $5000 bundles of hundred dollar bills being tossed into pots, thousand dollar chips in stacks of twenty on the tables in front of players but to me, this $350 pot is really sweet.

That’s probably why I am dealing rather than playing in the World Series of Poker.