Go Big or Go Home

All of the big name poker players I dealt to on day one of the $1500 have been eliminated except one - the great one, the "Poker Brat" Phil Hellmuth.  At the end of day two, Phil is sitting on a stack of a half million in chips and is in fifth place in the tournament.  There are 25 players remaining of the original field of 2,341 players.  Phil got his nickname because he has been prone to some unsportsmanlike displays of emotion after being on the losing end of a poker game.

I just thought of a new joke to tell Norm Chad, the ESPN Announcer for the World Series.

Back in Phil Hellmuth's home state of Wisconsin, there's a casino snack bar where you can get a "Poker Brät".  It's served with whine!

Latecomer Celebrities

If you watch Poker on TV, you have seen a lot of the famous Poker players that registered late for Wednesday's $1500 No Limit Hold'em tournament.  Players are allowed to register for WSOP tournaments up to 2 hours after they start.  They are given a full stack of chips even though they may face others who have been playing for a while.  Officials have decided that players who registered between noon and one o'clock will all start at one o'clock and those who registered between one and two o'clock will start at two o'clock at their own tables which were added to accommodate these additional players.

I drew an assignment to deal at a table in this area.  I was amazed when I saw who was being seated at my tables.

Here is a partial list of "famous" players I dealt to at the first three tables I pushed into:

Dan Heimiller - Won over a million dollars just in WSOP events
Men Nguyen - 6 WSOP Bracelets, "All you can eat, baby."
Chau Giang - Doyle's buddy in the "Big Game", 3 WSOP bracelets
Jonny Chan -  Featured in the movie Rounders and twice winner of the WSOP Main Event
Dewey Tomko - 3 Bracelets, Poker Hall of Fame 2008
Michael Binger - WPT star and won over $5 million in WSOP events
Phil Hellmuth - Holds WSOP record for winning Bracelets (12). Current number one
Allen Cunningham - five-time WSOP bracelet winner, Player of the Year at the 2005 WSOP
Jeff Shulman - 2009 Final Table WSOP Main Event and Editor of Cardplayer Magazine
John Phan - 2 WSOP Bracelets and 4 WPT televised final  tables.

Apparently, these players do not put much value in playing the first level of the tournament when the pots are very small and do not have a big impact on the outcome of the tournament.  In fact Phil Hellmuth is famous for buying into the Main Event and not showing up to play for the first hour or two, then making a grand entrance complete with costumes and television cameras.

Many of these late registrants also subscribe to the strategy of "Go big or go home" where they play extremely agressively and they either build a huge chip stack that can carry them to the top of the leaderboard or bust out quickly and not spend a lot of time in a tournament they will not make money in.  Proof of this is that in the first five hands I dealt, three players busted out of the tournament.  For two of those players, they busted out on the first hand they voluntarily put money into.  Just lit a match to $1500!

Working - Pitchin' Cards and Pushin' Pots

Yes, I am working.  No I am not simply spending all of my time playing Poker and writing up the results.

Saturday I dealt Day 1a of the $1000 Buy-in No Limit Tournament.  Turnout was lower than projected and Sunday I spent my entire day in the live cash games.  Monday I dealt the $1500 buy-in Day 1 start.

Lots of Hold'em.

Already I am a little bored dealing No Limit Hold'em to tournament players.  The cash games are a little more interesting.  In tournaments, there will be hand after hand after hand of fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, raise, fold fold. Push. Shuffle. Deal. Fold, fold, fold...etc.

People play a lot looser in cash games.  They figure they can try to get in cheap, get lucky and if they miss, lose a small pot or reload and try again.  Due to the fact that people usually play cash games with very deep stacks of chips relative to the opening bets, there is more "play."  By that I mean there are more hands where there is a decision on every street.  Every turn of a card changes the situation, changes the odds of winning, changes the information a player makes decisions with.

Also, in cash games, a.k.a. "Live" or "Live Action" games as a dealer you have to keep track of the pot.  In smaller games you need to count the pot and take the 10% rake (up to $5). In the popular Pot Limit games, you need to always know how much is in the pot to verify that a player is making a legal bet.  In Pot Limit it is typical for a player to ask the dealer how much is in the Pot or, "How much can I Pot it for?"  This also gets tricky when there has been one or more bets and a player says, "How much if I raise Pot?"  You feel like a mathlete after a few Pot Limit tables.  But it also makes dealing more interesting and challenging.

One disappointment in working day shift is that the majority of the noon events are straight No Limit Hold'em and most of the Stud, Lowball and Pot Limit events are scheduled for a 5 o'clock start.  Hmmm.

Maybe next year I will request to be on the 4 PM shift.  That way I will catch all of the mixed game events.  Both eight game mixed events and all three H.O.R.S.E. events on the 2010 schedule have a 5 o'clock start.  BTW:  H.O.R.S.E. is Hold'em / Omaha-8 / Razz (Lowball 7 Card Stud)/ 7 Card Stud / 7 Card Stud High-Low 8 or better. They switch games every hour.

On Sunday I dealt a cash game I had never seen spread before: 5 Card Pot Limit Omaha-8 Hi/Lo.  Omaha is usually played with 4 cards.  The Hi/Lo version is usually a limit rather thana Pot Limit game.  Dealing 5 cards limits the table to 8 players.  They also played it with small blind $5, Big Blind $10 and a $20 optional straddle (These are all bets made before cards are dealt).  The table had a maniac in seat one, immediately to the left of the dealer.  He wasn't a maniac in how he made his bets, just a maniac in the sense that he was hopped up on something.  He couldn't stay in his chair.  He was jumping around and he never stopped talking or yelling for the entire half hour I dealt.  He had two arguements with another player that I needed to call a supervisor to settle - and it was the exact same arguement both times and with the same player!  Then a new dealer came to the table and pushed me from the wrong side.  The toke box where the tips are collected is on the left, so if a dealer approaches from the right, the exiting dealer stands up right in front of the box and can retrieve the tips from the box.  By pushing in from the left, I exited to the right and walked away leaving my tips in the toke box.  It only took me a minute to figure out that something was missing and I went back to collect my tips.

The maniac said to me, "Hey Buz.  Thanks for putting up with all of my shit, you did a great job.  I never got a chance to tip you because I NEVER WON A DAMN POT! So here." And he tossed a five dollar tip into my toke box.

Busman's Holiday - Part two

We found two seats open on the $1-$2 No Limit table. I bought $200 worth of chips and told the waitress to bring me a Jack Daniels Manhattan with extra cherries. The idea was to just play tight, sip on my drink and relax. If I wanted to I could simply fold every hand, pay my $3 in blinds every ten hands, watch ESPN on the big screen behind the table and drink for free.

Yeah, right.

Instead of the nitty game with small pot after small pot being pushed, the betting was getting a little wild. A player, who introduced himself as Jerry, was making oversize bets at seemingly every pot he played. For example, he called a $7 raise. After the flop, he led out with a $30 bet (mind that the pot at this point is only $14). He got called, then after the Turn he bet $70. His opponent raises “All in” and Jerry calls.

Jerry is this big galoot with a bald head, an Amish style beard sans mustache, arms covered in tattoos and a kind of dopey demeanor which may have been related to the stuff he said he had been smoking up in his room.

After the “All in” call Jerry showed a flush draw against his opponent’s pocket pair. He missed his draw, shrugged his shoulders and counted $300 out to the dealer from a bankroll that looked like a stack of crisp new twenties three-quarters of an inch thick.

That betting sequence didn’t just happen once. Most hands that Jerry was involved in went like that. He won a lot of small pots when opponents just folded to his oversize bully bets, but when he was beat, his opponent would raise and if he had a pair or a draw, he would call it down to the river. In the meantime, I sat and sipped on my Jack Manhattan.

I raised before the flop with pocket eights and got a couple callers, but not from Jerry. The flop came out 6-8-K all different suits. Figuring someone probably had a king I led out about half the pot, which has become my standard “Continuation bet”. One player called. He led out after the turn card was dealt and I raised. A lot of money went into the pot and at the end, my three-of-a-kind eights held up.

I noticed that in this game, maybe because of Jerry’s maniacal play, my continuation bets weren’t getting any respect. I would have a “raising” hand like AK or AQ, raise it before the flop, miss the flop, lead out and invariably get called by one or two players acting as sheriff. I didn’t have to give up on too many of these hands to put a nice dent in my chip stack.

Then I looked down and found two lovely red Aces in my hand. I got one caller with a bigger than normal re-raise and a typical half-pot continuation bet. The board paired on the turn and a third spade showed up on the river. My opponent made a small “value” bet on the river and I called. He showed two pair, the queen in his hand matched one on the board. Then, with my best Al Pacino-as-Scarface Cuban accent showed my aces and said, “Say hello to my little friends.” No I didn’t. That would be really rude - to show someone up like that. At the Poker table I usually try to avoid angering my opponents. I don’t want them to resolve to play better against me.

A couple of hours of staying about even and I raised with AK. When after a call I flopped top two pair I slow-played, checking and calling the flop and the turn. My opponent had a shorter stack and he was pot committed by the river. He called my final bet with the last of his chips and I simply said, “Top two.” and turned over my ace and king. Resigned to his fate he slumped his shoulders, sighed and tossed his hand into the muck.

At this point I had built a stack of some $490. For me, this is a nice session of Poker. That is when I got into it with Jerry. He had changed seats and was now sitting on my immediate right. This was a good thing for me because it means that he must act first in almost every hand. Advantage Buz. It put me in a position where I could just fold to his oversize bets and lose the minimum while coming over the top of him to win a large bet when I felt I was ahead.

Jerry raised pre-flop and I called with a pocket pair of threes. It is a simple strategy: Call a raise with a small pocket pair and if you pick up a “set” (a hidden Three-of-a-kind) you can win big. Miss and you simply fold. No set, no bet. With two threes remaining in the deck my chances of spiking the set on the flop is about 12%.

Sure enough the flop came 3-9-8 and Jerry made an oversize bet of $30. I raised to $100 and without moving any chips and using a deep voice that came out like a bear growl Jerry responded, “All in.” He had close to $600 in front of him. He had me covered. There was a lot of ways I could lose this hand holding bottom set. I decided that it smelled like another big bluff and called. I flipped over my threes and he showed a ten and jack for a two way straight draw. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion. It may have been the situation but the Manhattans certainly contributed. The dealer put a queen on the turn and just as I was recognizing that it completed Jerry’s straight he put out another nine giving me the winning full house. Whew! Talk about your emotional roller coaster.

After that, I avoided getting involved in any big hands, lost about $50 and cashed out for $940. It was my biggest winning day ever in a poker game.  :-)

Busman's Holiday

Barry and I were standing in the parking lot talking about the day’s events and mainly how poorly the dealers are managed. I was repeating my running joke about how during orientation they overly stressed their policy of embracing diversity and inclusion – right before telling us that because we were WSOP dealers we would be treated differently i.e. we were not allowed to use the regular employee entrance nor park in the employee parking lot. WSOP dealers park in the “lower employee lot”. Surprisingly, the Employee Dining Room did not have separate lunch counters for us.


Despite the facts that participation in the WSOP tournaments continues to grow and the structure of the tournaments provides longer play for most of the players, we continually face the challenge of having too many dealers and not enough work. I think it is understandable. The single fatal error that would cost our Dealer Manager her job would be a dealer shortage. It is unthinkable that we would have chips, cards, tables and players and no one to deal the cards. Solution? Overstaff and over schedule and give those who want it a last minute day off. As the tournament progresses and players leave, offer “early out” for those dealers who want to avoid moving over to the more challenging cash tables. But we still have too many dealers. I do not see it changing. If I were Dealer Manager I would make sure I had a cushion of excess dealers and I would make sure to set the expectations accordingly.

As the day started I had seemingly won the dealer lottery. They began assigning tables alphabetically starting with dealers whose last name begins with “L”. Thank you very much. I was assigned table 9 in a section of 60 tables. This meant that it was unlikely that I would find myself homeless as I “pushed” up through the tables and the tournament melted down the tables from high to low.

I had a full day. 11:00 dealer meeting. 11:30 set up for tournament. Noon to 6:30 PM deal Texas Hold’em with three 30 minute breaks. That is a good day’s work for a dealer.

In the parking lot after a leisurely baked chicken dinner in the EDR (Employee Dining Room) I told Barry I needed alcohol. It was far too early to go to bed for fear I would wake up at 5 AM but I really didn’t want to go out and “Party” I wanted to relax. Barry suggested we go find a cheap Pai Gow table where we can play slowly, chit chat and drink for free if we break even.

We decided on the Stratosphere. It is easy to get to, parking is available and close and the atmosphere is pretty laid back. Problem was it was Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend, the casino was packed and the Pai Gow table had a $10 minimum.

“The hell with it, let’s play poker. We’ll play really tight, drink for free and just relax.”

Can you imagine? Here are two guys who just spent their entire day dealing Texas Hold’em and what do they wind up doing to relax? Playing Poker.

The game that night proved to be interesting.

My Dinner with BJ

My nephew BJ, son of my sister Diane, showed up in Vegas yesterday and gave me a call.  We dined, along with his business partner Juan, at the Voo Doo Steakhouse on the 50th floor of the Rio.

More later...

Later:

Dinner at the Voo Doo begins with the elevator ride up the outside of the 50 story Rio tower in a floor-to-ceiling windowed elevator car. It is a spectacular view.

In the restaurant we were seated right on the window facing the Strip.  As we dined on dry aged and prime steaks the sun set and the lights illuminated the Strip.  Good company, great food, spectacular view, what could be better?

BJ and Juan are in town for the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) Fan Expo at Mandalay Bay.  Juan and BJ represent one of the UFC fighters that Juan hooked up with through a friend.  Las Vegas:  a great place to mix business with pleasure.

After dinner we did a quick tour of the shops in the Masquerade Village which included a sports memorabilia store with lots of autographed baseballs, football helmets and framed celebrity photos.

BJ was thinking the clubs would be hopping by eleven or midnight and he wanted to put his feet up for a little while before they hit the nightclub scene.  Seeing that midnight is 3 AM back in Columbus, I wonder if they ever made it?  Oh yeah, they're young.

Me?  I just headed home and crashed.

Texas Hold'em

In the event you are are reading this and need a refresher on Texas Hold'em and its terminology, click oh this link:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_hold_%27em 

for Wikipedia's description of the game and its origins.