Quote:
Originally Posted by pokerroomdude
I knew Mickey when I dealt at Bellagio. Nice guy always had a Poker Palace Jacket on.
At 6 PM on Monday nights, I was tasked with phoning Mickey at home, to tell him what side we needed in the Monday Night Football game that was about to kick off. We had the following conversation each week:
MICKEY: Hello?
ME: Hey Mickey, it's Bobby.
MICKEY: So, who we need?
ME: Same as every week, Mick. If it comes "favorite and over", we lose a lot. If it comes anything else, we win a little.
MICKEY: What? How can that be? (remember, this would surprise him every single week). Didn't you move the line?
ME: I've got the highest spread and the highest total in town, by a full point each. But I can't stop them from parlaying "favorite and over".
MICKEY: Look, there are four possible outcomes. Fav/over, fav/under, dog/over, dog/under. Now, there should be two of those that win for us, and two that lose for us.
ME: I don't know how you come up with that, Mick. Ideally, we should win on all four, and if you just look at our straight bets, we would! But parlays just aren't as manageable, you can't balance parlays when everyone is predisposed to bet fav/over.
MICKEY: (sees the game starting on his tv) OK, I've got to go, but we'll talk about this later!
ME: (thinking, "I took this ultra-low-paying job to learn this business, and *I'm* teaching *them* more than they're teaching me!") OK, have a good night, sir.
Finally, about halfway through the season, two juggernaut teams met on MNF, I forget who, but it was a huge marquee matchup, the line was pick-em, and the total was 42.
MICKEY: Hello?
ME: Hey, Mick.
MICKEY: (reluctantly, knowing we're about to argue again) Who do we need?
ME: We're perfectly balanced. No matter how it turns out, we win about $X.
MICKEY: (stunned) Really???
ME: That's what I've been trying to tell you all season. This game had no favorite, so the parlays stayed in line.
MICKEY: (still shocked) OK, great, I guess.
After that, he never argued about this with me again.
It could have been worse. My old boss Jay Kornegay's first year running the IP Race/Sportsbook was 1998, the year the Yankees won about 115 games, the Astros and Braves won over 100 each, the Padres almost did too with 98 wins...and if that isn't bad enough, the fire-sale Marlins lost 108 games, and the Diamondbacks, Tigers, and Devil Rays each came close to losing 100 (97, 97, and 99, respectively).
The sportsbooks were getting KILLED at a rate that no one had ever seen before. We were paying out six-teamers like we were giving out candy. Day after day after day, we'd get absolutely demolished by parlay play (the deadliest kind when they hit), and there was nothing we could do about it. Maddux should be -210 today, we'll make him -240 because we know he's going to be on every parlay ticket we write, but it doesn't stop anybody.
(Besides the teams I mentioned, I should add that Clemens won 20 for Toronto that year; Pedro won 19 for BOS, and Aaron Sele threw in 19 more for TEX)
I don't mean it went on for a week or two, I'm talking MONTHS. And it doesn't happen once a week, like football, it happens every single day. Like the Poker Palace, the IP was privately owned by one guy, and Jay was the one who had to upstairs and explain to the owner why the sportsbook was a gushing hemorrhage of money that summer. You've never seen body language behind the counter like you did that summer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by psandman
the poker palace dealing gig is now 2 hours a day. They have a single tourney. No cash game except friday night. $2 blind nl with a $40 buyin. I live in the area and occasionally play the tournament when I'm boored.
That saddens me for some reason.
Then again, it was 1993 when I worked there, all those regular players I knew are probably dead now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by psandman
The worst jobs for me are small locals rooms where there is 1 or two games. The problem is that I tend to hate the routine of dealing hour after hour day after day to the same people sitting in the same seats saying the same stupid ****.
Quote:
Speaking of quarters, I was locked in, dealing 1-5 stud heads up to 2 drunks (one of whom was the dealer coming in the morning to relieve me). They both ran out of chips at the same time, but they both had a slot bucket full of quarters on the table. So they dumped out their buckets, ands I was now dealing heads up 1-5 stud, being played with quarters, counted out by drunks.
^^^Two good LOLs there.
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Originally Posted by Dealer-Guy
Our room manager walked up to 3 or 4 of us chatting one day and said he was asking for approval to spread 7 stud with a 10 cent ante. I knew he was joking but no one else got it right away. Finally he expalined it would put silver in the dealer banks and it dawned on the others how bad an idea that was.
The first time I played stud in a casino was in Reno, $1-3 spread limit stud/8 with a 10-cent ante. 1992.