YTF, I lost my dad six weeks ago, but I can't even imagine the pain of losing a child. So very sorry.

Good luck to you. I've never worked as an event dealer but it seems like there are a lot of perks that could make the job a lot of fun.

Getting to see the country and picking and choosing your work schedule is a great benefit. And I've always enjoyed my tournament downs for the most part when they show up on my string.

Thanks, buddy. Back at ya.

Have fun on the road. You'll never get rich, and it's lonely out there...but embrace it for what it is, for as long as you like it. It's great experience and a great networking opportunity, to help you land a job at one of those places in the future.

Two different tables last night:

1. Tourney player, whom I need to chase and hound every time he's supposed to ante, is ON IT when his neighbor steps away. Once he's appointed himself "in charge" of getting his neighbor's antes in there, suddenly speeding up the ante process is important.

2. Cash game player, who stops the game for a full minute before every check or fold, pointing at the first player to act before I've finished spreading the flop.

***

Both guys: slowest guy at the table, thinks everyone ELSE should be quicker.

Player orders a beer. Waitress asks to see his ID. He happily complies. After she leaves, he laughs about being 30 years old and being carded.

This leads to ten minutes of stories from around the table about being asked for an ID, and ALL of these stories were uninteresting and terrible. The closest one to interesting was the guy who said, "I got into a fight at the airport with TSA, because they wouldn't accept my (I forget what he said, it was something like fishing license or pistol permit or something similar). I said it's got my photo, and it's a state-issued ID! But they wouldn't take it!"

He then pulled this ID from his wallet, and passed it around the table. Most player agreed that TSA was wrong not to accept it.

I never speak while dealing, but I could hold my tongue no longer. "You guys are hilarious. Do you really believe you know TSA rules better than TSA does? There are DRIVERS LICENSES from some states that TSA won't accept--and THIS is one of those states!"

Nobody knew what I was talking about, but one of the players backed me up: there are 3-4 states that were told by the Feds to overhaul the design of their DL's to meet some sort of national standard for security, because at a certain deadline, TSA will no longer accept them. Hope you've got a passport, Minnesotans and Louisianans, and a few others!

But since they wanted interesting ID-check stories, I dared to bring up my own:

"When you buy booze at WalMart, the scanner immediately locks up until the cashier answers the following question: 'Does the customer appear to be under 40 years old? Y/N.' I know this, because I moonlighted there for a short time.

"So one day I'm buying beer, and as soon as the cashier scans it, she stops and reads the question...then looks at me...then looks unsure....and I'm thinking, 'I've got a grey beard. She's not gonna card me, is she?' Finally, she says to me--"

"Dealer, I'm gonna move to that seat!" The player next to me is almost tugging on my sleeve to tell me this. He had to say it right then, just as I got to the punch line. "That seat" has been open for the past 20 minutes, there's no list, there's no urgency at all, except in his own mind.

God, I hate poker players.

No, I'm not gonna finish the WalMart story now. I'm mad all over again, just typing this.

Oh, all right.



See how the interruption ruined a pretty good story? Now it's not nearly as good as you can see it could/should have been!

I'll be missing my wife like crazy because she is my world. But my understanding is that the traveling dealers are like a family, sharing rides, lodging, meals, etc. So it might not be as "lonely" as one might think. Or maybe it will be. I will find out. By the end of the year (with two and possibly three tours under my belt) I will either hate it, know that I suck at it, or love it.

Pushed into a tournament table this evening. A youngish reg was there. He is very quiet but plays relatively often. When I pushed in he wasn't there and I took his big blind while he was away from the table. It seemed like he was on a phone call, whatever.

He gets back and posts his small blind and as I deal I see a woman coming to the table. She looks older than him but like an older girlfriend. She goes behind him as he is fumbling with his phone and looking at it and she yells something about how he is texting some other woman and from behind she hits him on the side of the head.

It wasn't a little slap. In fact she might have even had something in her hand like a purse but you heard a massive "THOCK!" like an action bubble in a comic strip indicating Spiderman just beat the living crap out of someone and his head violently twisted with the blow.

The whole table was like, whoa...

I immediately called for security but she was already leaving and he just said, "Don't worry about it, she's leaving, it's over." Um, okay. Never mind then. I'll just deal. A hand or two later he apologized for what happened. I wanted to say "It's not your fault she slugged you," but thought better of it and the whole table kind of murmured.

He wound up chopping the tournament and he was talking with some security people. I was out of there as soon as the tournament table broke so I didn't get any gossip but it seems that security was involved. Whether my floor person summoned them or surveillance saw the altercation or it was a continuation of something they were already dealing with I couldn't say.

I have seen dudes threaten each other, I have seen shoving but I never saw a solid blow landed like that at the poker table and I never had a woman involved before.

Have fun filling out that incident report when you get to work tomorrow.

This is a real hot-button subject for me. I know a man whose life was just about ruined by his physically (and verbally, and emotionally) abusive wife. With young children in the house... If a woman in that situation takes the children and leaves, society applauds her (rightly so) for her bravery, and provides shelters, and other support, to assist her. If a man in that situation does the same, he is charged with kidnapping. The shelters turn him away because...well, because what if his wife showed up, needing help, then they would have a conflict of interest.

The statistics about gender roles in domestic violence are nowhere near as one-sided as you would think, based on what gets publicized and how the issue is almost universally framed.

You have a wife??? So you plan to return home after each event, instead of bee-lining from one to the next?

Dude, find a job at your local cardroom. If the place where I work is hiring break-in dealers (they never did before this year), I imagine everyone else is, too.

Yeah what YTF said.

Some marriages work better from a distance.

The game drops to five handed.

Player A: Can we get a rake reduction?
Me: Sure. (Calls over floor and they arrive promptly. Floor okays 5 handed rake and then leaves.) Big Blind please.
Player A: I don't want to play five handed.

How in the **** do these people operate motor vehicles and make it to the cardroom?

Even better if it was in a time game!

Just classic live poker player

I' not sure why, but this reminded me of a story of a well known (at the time) player playing in my room. His wife wanted him to leave. He asked that I have security get rid of her because she was bothering him.

Up until 6 months ago I was a traveling dealer. It has obvious downsides but several upsides as well. You get significant stretches of time off, you get to try out a bunch of different casinos you may want to work at in the future, and you get a constantly rotating set of players and bosses. If you don't like a boss at one stop, don't go back. When a player is being unreasonable, you can just assume they're having a bad day and put it out of your head. When you're working with the same people every day you find out that they have a lot of bad days and bad bosses tend to stay put for a very long time.

I'm making similar money now in a regular casino job, though my expenses are MUCH lower so I'm able to pump more into savings.

Mind sharing a bit more about the the money/expenses? I'm currently at a regular casino job where I'm on pace to make ~60k working almost a full 40 hours every week (only taken 2 weeks of PTO this year) and the cost of living isn't bad (1k rent for a decent place in a nice neighborhood), but I've been having lots of bad days lately because of bad bosses that aren't leaving anytime soon. Really just burnt out and want something different.

That's about what I made the last 2 years. My expenses were a bit higher than most because I drove between stops and stayed in AirBNBs by myself rather than share a motel room and rental car with 3 other dealers. I didn't have an actual home during that time, I just lived on the road. Some expenses are unavoidable - every new state requires a gaming license which can mean up to $500. Some states the license gets deactivated every time you finish a stop so you have to pay to reactivate it when you go back. Every stop requires black pants/shoes/socks, some require black or white shirt.

Most casinos big enough to have a circuit stop have a reasonable EDR though often you can only go through once a day so you have to figure out the rest of your food needs, which can be more expensive and less healthy than cooking at home.

Work is fairly sporadic. You might not work at all for 6 weeks then you work 10-12 hour days for 2 weeks straight, then 2 days of travel/orientation, then another 10 days straight. Other times they over-hire and you don't make much money on a stop. You usually don't know how much you've made on a stop until well after the event is over.

Most dealers get on umployment between jobs. I avoided doing that for a while but it was too much money to pass up. New Jersey is popular for it because the benefits are high and it's easy to qualify.

I would say give it a shot if full time jobs weren't so hard to come by in this industry. You could try to see if you can get a leave of absence to go try it out once or twice.

Player sits down at my table. I ask him if he wants to wait for the button to pass him or if he wants to be dealt in, he just says "Yes".

Okay.

I deal him in, he goes "NO NO NO NO", no big deal, I immediately move the cards over to the next player.

As I'm finishing the deal, he gets up and says "You know what, **** this, you look at me funny, I don't like the way you're looking at me, you always give me problems I want a table change."

Mind you I've never even dealt to this guy.

So I say, "Okay, sir, thanks have a good evening, bye."

He comes back 10 seconds later, and says to me, "What the hell did you call me?"

I say, I said, "Thanks, have a good evening, bye.". He demands to call the floor immediately. As I press the floor button, he says to me, "I'm gonna get your ass fired."

??????? I'm confused as hell at this point

Floor comes over, the guy says to the floor, "Your dealer called me a fuc**ing bi**h."

The ENTIRE table goes, "WOAH WOAH WOAH NOT A CHANCE, THAT'S A COMPLETE LIE. Not even close to what happened, the dealer was nothing but polite and this dude is making up lies."


Can you believe some people?

Yes I have a wife and no, it isn't a relationship that works better from a distance. We are both dreading the separations tbh, and that may prove to be unbearable for us. But the nearest casino is almost 5 hours away. I am self-employed so I have a lot of flexibility with when/how often to go away for one of these two week stints. But I do need the income, and having the option to go away for two weeks and come back with a chunk of money is pretty important to us.

Yes. Poker attracts the socially disabled for some reason.

It's a solo, non-team-oriented game, and it's played for money and prestige. That will attract lots of people with social disfunction.

Hey, at least the table was outraged instead of indifferent.