Ray J in New Orleans

My friend Ray J went from the gig in Hollywood to the WSOP Circuit event in New Orleans.  I had to miss it, but Ray wanted the folks back home to know what was going on there.  It sounds like they are a lot busier in New Orleans than we were at the Hard Rock despite the fact that, according to Matt Savage, the WPT event was the largest prize pool in the history of Poker in Florida.

Ray J sent an email to his list of friends that went like this:

Hi, been a while....
Here is a link to the events scheduled at Harrah's New Orleans......tourneydetails . With news of the Mississippi River cresting, the super stars of poker have been dribbling in all week so far......
Most of us dealers are coming in at 11:20 am, dealer meeting, table assignment, pick up the chips, decks, and be ready to start exactly at noon.......
The noon tournaments run till 2am, then we bag the players chips, clean up, and clock out at about 3 am.........Then down to the French Quarter (24 hr bars) to unwind....Those players come back at 2pm the next day to finish....Meanwhile, that same day we have the previous days "restart" plus a 9pm nighly tournament that ususally runs till 5am...Live cashgamesare max'd out, super busy and if I am let go early, I sometimes deal out in the casino at thelive poker games....it is crazy busy....Usually every 2 hours of dealing we have a 30 min break...Sometimes I don't even see the day light once at work, lol.......or know what day it is or what city I'm in....cause a room full of 90 poker tables is the same city after city..lol.......

Well, just wanted to give you an idea of what work is like out on the circuit....we do have a nationally televised event comimg up this week, tape delayed i'm sure, and then off to Vegas.....R&R and work..lol.....


Best to you..Ray

I bought an iPhone

During my previous gig at the Chicago Poker Classic I was able to visit my daughter, Mary, who is attending Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame.  She had her new iPhone with her.  She loves it.  She told me, "Get an iPhone.  It will change your life."

My wife bought one and was hinting that I might want one, too, "We can have video calls with each other while you are in Vegas!"

So I broke down and bought an iPhone.  It came in very handy during my Seminole Hard Rock gig.  This iPhone is very cool.  The camera in the iPhone is very good. It even has a flash. It also works as an iPod music player and syncs up with my computer. I played it through my car stereo all the way from Hollywood to Tampa and had all kinds of battery left over.  Text messaging is on it is just elegant. It saves the messages in a thread with your replies so that you can easily see messages going back and forth to someone. Each person you text starts its own thread. It also does email really well - for a phone. I was surprised at how well and easily it handled email. I can see people just doing all of their email on the iPhone as long as they aren't like me writing 400 word notes to people. You can even browse the web, Google information, get stock quotes, access your financial accounts, and it even has a GPS map to provide directions and nearby points of interest. It has a compass. It has an appointment calendar that syncs with your PC. It functions as an alarm clock. It works as a pocket calculator, a very nice one basic straight up or turn it on its side and it becomes a scientific calculator with trig functions and exponents, etc. It has a voice recorder so you can make yourself voice notes and a nice simple notepad for jotting down things when you don't have a pen or paper. I added the Nook app and I can read all the ebooks I purchased.  Whew! It's the Swiss Army Knife of electronic devices.

Just think. You go out of town and forget everything and you leave home without your laptop/netbook for email, your compass, your Garmin (GPS), your appointment book, your alarm clock, your pocket calculator, your eReader, your legal pad, your favorite pen, your tape recorder and your camera. But if you have an iPhone, you have them all with you.

People think an iPhone is expensive, but if you avoid buying a Garmin, an alarm clock, a calculator, a tape recorder, an appointment calendar and an MP3 player, it's cheap.

It is a huge step up from the candy bar phone I have used for the last few years.

Please note:  This is not a paid advertisement for Apple.  I suppose you can do everything above with a Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia or other Android or Windows phone.  Our family just happens to have settled on  Apples.

Dealer Chairs

If Poker dealers had a union, they would bargain for a working conditions requirement that the dealer chairs be height adjustable to within 3 inches of the table bottom, or some similar rule that would have the house provide dealer chairs that go up to an appropriate height.

At the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL, the dealer chairs were height adjustable but they only went down, never high enough.  Every dealer chair in the place was fully extended upward and most dealers were sitting on multiple seat cushions in an attempt to raise themselves up to a comfortable position to deal from. 

The optimal position puts the thighs just touching the underside of the table.  As you can see in the photo, even with the aide of a cushion, the seat is about 4" too low.

I thought it was a shame that the Seminoles purchased such  beautiful chairs with custom logos on the backs and deep cushioned leather seats but simply too short to be good dealer chairs.  Notably, they also provided the players with cushioned folding chairs that were too low.  Every day we heard complaints from the players that the chairs were too low and that they hated sitting at a table that came up to their armpits.

BTW, in the photos, dealers are sitting at the ends of the tables rather than the middle because the pics were taken during the Heads Up Tournament when we place two matches at each table with a dealer at each end.  The chair situation is the same at either position.

Hard Rockin' Jacks

Table 13, Main Event of the WPT, dealing the table with Mike Sexton (host of the televised WPT events) in seat 6 and after putting out a flop I notice that the Jack of Diamonds looks a little odd.  He's holding a guitar, wearing sungalsses and flashing a left-handed ASL, "I love you."

Sexton says, "Hey! You're at the Hard Rock.  You gotta expect the Jack to be a rocker."

For all the other tournaments we have used the normal, every day, Copag cards used by the Hard Rock in their Poker Room.  For the $10,000 WPT Main Event, the Seminoles went to the trouble to have custom cards manufactured.

The custom cards are very different. First, they are narrow, 2.25" wide "Bridge size" instead of  2.5" wide "Poker size".  These are easier to pitch.  They are also significantly thicker and stiffer than the Copags.  This helps them retain their shape - they stay flat and don't curl up with use - which also makes them easier to pitch.  Being so much stiffer, they are a lot harder to shuffle.  One of our dealers was seen in the break room frantically filing her nails saying, "I can't shuffle these cards.  I just can't bend them!"  They also are a little heavier, so when they are pitched across the table, they stay flat and have less of a chance of being flipped by a blast from the A/C vent or the wake from someone running past the table.  Hopefully they will continue to retain their shape after days of heavy tournament use.  All in all, kudos to the Hard Rock manager that decided to buy these new cards for the tournament.  Good choices for size, weight and design.

WPT in Hollywood

Hollywood, Florida

The FBI doesn't need to look in my iPhone to see where I've been, just follow my blog!

The Seminole Indians have built a truly spectacular resort down here in south Florida.  Not only is it a hotel and casino with a huge theatre, it also has a shopping mall with a bevy of restaurants, bars and night clubs.  This is thee place to be on Saturday nights.

This is the first WPT (World Poker Tour) event to be held here since they changed the laws to allow a more "Las Vegas" like casino experience here in Florida. 

The WPT is similar to the WSOP Circuit in that they will have events during the year at different venues with a series of poker tournaments featuring a "Main Event" with a $10,000 buy-in and a multi-million dollar prize pool. 

I suppose it is testament to the popularity of No Limit Hold'em that of the 34 tournaments in the "Seminole Hard Rock Showdown" all but 4 are No Limit Hold'em.  There are two Omaha 8 or Better High-Low tournaments, one Pot Limit Omaha tournament and one mixed game tournament, H.O.R.S.E. (Hold'em (limit), Omaha 8, Razz, 7 Card Stud, Stud 8.  The H.O.R.S.E. tournament is the only event that plays any 7 Card Stud. 

I was rather disappointed when I looked at the schedule and realized that after today (day four since I started) I would have no opportunity to deal anything but No Limit Hold'em for the rest of the job.  It is just more interesting and challenging to deal the other games.  Deal Pot Limit and you, the dealer, needs to keep track of the pot on every betting round and also do the calculations for how much the raises will be limited to.  For Omaha 8 you need to stack the pot during the course of the hand, read the four-card hands and then split the pot for the high and the low hand winners.  And because 7 Stud players each get dealt their own down cards and up cards, it is a very different dealing experience from Hold'em or Omaha.  Variety is the spice of life.  Oh well.  When in Vegas for the WSOP,  I will ask for the afternoon shift that deals all the different tournaments.

The plan is for the WPT to run another tournament here in Hollywood in August and if they are successful, they may also add a tournament or two at the Seminole Hard Rock in Tampa.  Yipee!  I might get to deal a professional Poker tournament without having to travel or rent a hotel room! Cool.

So far, lots of locals, lots of WSOP grinders but not too many celebrities for the preliminary events.  I think John Racener (last year's WSOP Main Event runner-up from Tampa) is here and I saw "Miami John" Cernuto and Allen Kessler playing the Omaha event.  All those guys have multi-millions in tournament winnings.  I wonder if they were able to hang onto them?

Chicago Poker Classic

Spent Feb 23 to March 7th just outside Chicago in The Horseshoe Casino - Hammond, IN dealing the tournaments.  Had a great time and made a little money.

Bayou Poker

The 2010 Bayou Poker Challenge turnout was a little bit of a disappointment for some folks.  The Poker Tournament was scheduled opposite the WSOP Circuit Event in Atlantic City which is a "Regional Championship" carrying Player of the Year Points coveted by the top players.  Harrah's (owners of the WSOP brand) decided that they didn't want the Bayou to compete with AC so they didn't support it with any advertising money.  They didn't even include it on the WSOP Circuit schedule posted at the official WSOP web site.  I found it interesting that Nolan Dalla, the Media Director for the WSOP spent his time in New Orleans rather than AC.  He sat in a booth in the middle of the tournament area pounding out press releases during the event.

However, the week was not without well known knicknamed celebrities such as "Miami" John Cernuto and defending champion Alan "Chainsaw" Kessler.

Miami John used to be an air traffic controller at Miami-Dade airport, but I haven't figured out how Kessler got his knickname.  He is more of a nebbish than a "Dog the Bounty Hunter" type, but he sure can play poker.  He won this tournament last year and defended his title this year making the final table and finishing 8th.  He has won about $2 million playing in poker tournaments according to Bluff Magazine.

There were also several players that I recognized, but couldn't name, from the World Series of Poker tables over the last few years.

There were 15 events and 4 Super Satellites with between 75 and 200 entries into each event.  First Prize for many events was over $10,000 plus a championship WSOP ring and the Main Event winner, Tyler Smith took home $66,488 for his excellent play.

We started with too many dealers for the size of the fields but after limiting the use of the local "On call" casino dealers and some attrition from circuit dealers who could see that hours might be limited, we got a reasonable amount of work.  The supervisors tried to even out the hours when it made sense and I wound up working a full day most of the time.  I had one really short day and one day where I dealt 13 hours before breaking a table and calling it quits.

In all it was an enjoyable work experience.  Management was fair, food in the Employee Dining Room was good as well as inexpensive and I had some time to take in a little of the sights of the city.  While I missed getting a Po Boy at Mother's, I was able to treat myself to an order the famous Cafe du Monde Beignets.