Week 4: The end is near
Every night at work was a struggle, but none more than what turned out to be the last.
I was struggling due to the lower back pain and it looked like I was about to get to go home. Satellites were dying down and it was already about 4 a.m., reaching the 8-hour mark of the night.
Of course, at the WSOP, 8 hours is merely a guideline.
I get moved from satellites and told to ask the dealer coordinator in cash games if he needs me. So, being a good soldier this night, I do. Why, yes, you can tap into this table in 10 minutes. After all, dealers who started well before me are now on OT and deserve to go home, too, right?
Anyway, I think I dealt cash that night for about 1.5 hours. As I was standing up from the final table, my right leg wilted. I didn't quite fall to the ground, but it was obvious to the floor person who saw it that something wasn't right. He immediately told me to go home and make sure I got the back issue taken care of.
I was off the next night. I probably should have stayed home and rested, but I can do that when I'm dead. There's less stress on the back playing so I went and played.
The pain never subsided for the next few days. Even though I consider myself a writer, I can't really describe the feeling other than a very sharp pain that was accentuated every time I moved in certain ways.
I wake up Monday and things are no better. I pick up the phone and call the dealer callout number. I leave a message, asking for a return phone call. I never hear back.
Tuesday is a repeat. I call, leave the message, ask to get a call back. They don't call.
At this point, I am pretty sure I have reached the max of 5 points ... except that they have only acknowledged 1 point so far. Being new to the business I wasn't exactly sure how things worked. I had signed a piece of paper when I got my first point.
Wednesday, since no one has called me back I get dressed and go to work. I will sign the E.O. (early out) list and pray that I only have to work a few hours. I get to work and sit in the nightly meeting. I ask for satellites and get them. That's good because I can basically work as hard as I want to - I can actually just sit there for 8 hours and not deal a hand if I really wanted to. After my request, the dealer coordinator says 'see me.' I know this is about the points but am hopeful that I still have a job.
Unfortunately, when I go to see her she says: 'You know you have been terminated, right?' Well, no. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have shown up for work and then sat through the meeting if I knew I was no longer employed. So I sign the papers and walk out the door.
I actually sat in the hallway for about an hour trying to decide what to do next. When I left Philadelphia, I didn't book a return flight. I had thought about renting a car and driving from Vegas to Philly. I would have stopped in Denver to see a baseball game and then crossed Wrigley Field off the bucket list.
I had originally planned to use the WSOP as my personal bankroll builder. The estimates of making $12K plus in 6-7 weeks meant I thought I could save about $4K and get back to playing more than working when I returned home.
I wasn't anywhere close to that number. And now I wasn't going to be.
Someone suggested making a call to Planet Hollywood and Venetian to see if I could jump in there with their tournament series going on. With the way my back was feeling, I knew there was no way I could just jump right in to either of those job.
So I decided I would stay in Vegas through Monday and see how playing went. If the back felt better, I would call Planet Hollywood on Monday. Same for Venetian.
I wound up speaking to a few people over the next few days. The back didn't feel much better by Monday. I contacted PH and could probably have gotten hired there to at least make
some money. When I crunched the numbers, I decided that even though I might make more there than I could playing, the upside to playing and the downside to dealing and going through the back pain I decided to play.
I just hoped I would run good.
Back to the felt
Things didn't get better quickly after the $1,700ish downswing. I booked two OK wins, then lost about $100 more than I won in those two sessions at the Bellagio.
I booked a very small $24 win at Planet Hollywood, lost a little at Bally's, won at PH. It was up and down as it often is for stretches of time.
My friend and roommate was in town for his annual excursion. He was playing at the Excalibur and I went and met up with him there. I lost again playing $1/$2, then decided to play some $2/$6 spread limit just for the hell of it. That was a lot of fun (and profitable).
He likes to shoot craps so we went to the craps table and I watched him do that for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, people smoke like chimneys at table games. I hate smoke with a passion. Spending too much time almost always makes me sick and this was no different.
The next night was the EPIC Live Low Stakes in Vegas $1/$1 meetup game at the MGM, which featured tons of drinking. We made it a dealer's choice game and allowed each dealer who sat down to deal whatever game they chose. It was a variety of turbo NLHE (I think our clock was 5 seconds IIRC), crazy pineapple and PLO. Since I was in the 1 seat, even though I was getting drunk I spent most of the PLO half hours helping the dealers calculate the pot.
After the night of poker a few of us - Feel Wrath, BiteMeFish, BigSkip, Lapidator and Lapidatrix - decided to get something to eat and headed to Hash House at the Linc.
http://imgur.com/1ZjNJBU
That was my burger and fries. The burger included mashed potatoes. I somehow finished it.
http://imgur.com/n6lEAoQ
Feel Wrath's pancakes were massive as well.
All in all a great night of fun and probably exactly what I needed to head into the grind portion of our trip.
P.S. Not sure why the images didn't show up so I posted them as links. If anyone knows how to get the imgur images in the thread, I will use them in the future.