I'll bite.

Until you get around to typing it up, I'll fill the time by recanting a story from that book about cheating that I'm always pimping:

A "Mitt Man", or a "hold-out artist", was playing lowball draw in Gardena back in the day when it was the only legal poker outside of Nevada. The games were dealt by the players, so mucking four cards and holding onto a "baby" that might come in handy later was trivially easy. He held out the 4 of hearts, and slipped it into his shirt pocket as he pulled out his pack of cigarettes.

Later, a huge pot breaks out, and our guy needs a four to make a wheel, so of course it's time to break out the pocketed four. Only problem was, he had forgotten that he had been to the post office earlier in the day, and had some postage stamps in that same pocket.

At showdown, he proudly turned up his wheel, only when he spread his cards to be read, one had a postage stamp on its face.

After a moment of stunned silence, where time seemed to stop, one of the old ladies at the table (the rooms were full of old ladies back then) remarked in her New York (read: Jewish) accent, "So, someone mailed you the four of hearts?"

Here goes.

I'm dealing 4/8 Omaha 8. So the type of players we're talking about needs no further description.

New lady stumbles into the 3 seat and wants to be dealt in. Gives me her players card, etc, while I'm dealing out the cards. She was UTG or UTG +1.

Before any action on the hand

"I only have 3 cards!"

Hmm... really? So we go through the dance. Check under the rail, check under your rack of chips you just set down, players next to you got 4 cards. Well shoot, I guess I missed you on a round somehow. Bring em back everyone. Misdeal. I throw the cards in Shufflemaster, grab the other deck and deal out another hand.

30 seconds later... flashing red light

"Missing 1 card"

Ruh Roh.

Hand in play finishes and now it's investigation time. I pull the deck in question out of the shuffler and count it down by hand. 51 cards.

Double Ruh Roh.

So now just for verification, I spread the other deck that was just used (whose count came up fine by the shuffler) hoping the extra card wasn't lodged in there somehow...
Nope. Not there either.

Floor call time. And now let's REALLLLY look for that card. Pull the rail off the table, check the floor around the table, there's nothing up Quadstriker's sleeves (they're short sleeves anyway). Now we got a mystery.

And to make things more fun, I'm getting tapped out. The floor pulls the decks and there's a new setup in. I'm told that it will be handled, keep pushing - it's a busy weekend night. The floor runs up the deck and let's me know that the Eight of Spades is missing as I"m pushing into my next game.

What. The. ****. Is. Going. On.

Yeah so you can guess the only thing I'm thinking of while dealing 8/16.

At one point during my next down I notice 2 floormen and 2 suits (Gaming ldo) at the table in question. Gulp.

Finally after what seems like 15 hours, I'm pushed out by the dealer. "Bartholomew*, did they find out wtf happened?"
"Yeah... She put it in her purse."
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?????
When she gave you her players card, she pulled a whole mess of them out from every casino in the southwestern united states and put them on the table, when she went to put them back in her purse, she scooped up the 8 of spades right along with it.

Well since I noticed her playing in the game 2 hours later, I can only assume the video evidence shows it to be unintentional.

Just goes to show you in this business, you may see a lot, but you have NEVER seen it all.

Buddy of mine at a different casino had this happen one day.

Deck in the shuffler comes up short one card, after suiting the deck, it's the Jack of diamonds.

The last hand that had been played with that deck had involved the Jack so it had been on the table before the next hand was dealt.

They looked under the rail and found the Jack in front of the 6 seat, which was empty since the six seat had busted when his Jacks were beat.

They ran the video just to see how the card got there.

The chip in the gator didn't drop all the way before the slide closed and it shot the chip across the table. It hit the rail in front of the 6 seat and was pulled back and dropped. The chip hit the card and drove it under the rail so fast, no one noticed it.

I've had that happen and the chip went flying and hit the player in the 6 seat right in the chest - who just happened to be a jerk. If only there was a way to accurately reproduce the effect I'd have a pretty handy weapon.

That's incredible. I probably would have reacted the same way upon hearing it was the 8.

Wow! This story is sooo nearly identical to mine. Except I was in the 5 or 6 seat at TI when the gator fired a chip across the table and smacked some cards. The Deckmate redlighted a minute later and when we pulled the rail up, there was a card right in front of me. The dealer lost his smile and was staring at me and appeared to be teetering on the edge of accusing me of something (I think he'd gotten out the words "how did...") when I remembered the gator incident. OHHHHhhhhh!

I've had the drop-slide launch chips before, but never for such comedic value. Glad Bav came in with his example, I was having trouble believing that something so unlikely could happen.

The worst is when the tip rolls in there while it is open. In las Vegas is was 50 cents so I didn't worry about it. In LA it was a yellow, I got that back.

I've seen the small blind roll into the automatic shuffler and get irretrievably lodged inside. Fortunately the reg was cool and just posted another.

If you lift the shuffler out of the table and shake it, the chip (along with other stuff) will come out.

You doubted what you read on an internet forum was less than the pure truth?

I can understand that...

Guess I'm the only one that hasn't happened to.

But then I don't let the slide go so it slams shut.

I do it quietly so it doesn't bring the rake to the attention of the table every hand.

I also don't slap the chip onto the slide during the hand, I place it there quietly.

I had a player in the 1 seat seat drop 4 red birds down the jackpot drop because he thought that was for my tips ......

Ouch!

5-10 game in Vegas, guy rolls a $10 chip into the shufflemaster. We can't get it out, it's underneath the elevators. So we switch machines and take it into the back office and shake it. Out comes the $10 chip, along with a second $20 chip! Magic!

And yes, we had both light blue $10 chips (5-10) and gray $20 chips (10-20).

My first cay in the poker room, I was told to get a white $1 chip out of a shuffle master. We tried shaking it but it was stuck in there. I tried for 10 miutes and a floor person came over to help, it took us another 10 minutes and a long shaft screwdriver to dislodge it so it would shake out. I offered the shift a dollar out of my pocket to leave it there but he wouldn't go for it.

After that, if it won't shake out, the machine goes on the shelf for the tech to remove it.

two guys with bachelor degress and it took 20 minutes to get a $1 chip out.

True, but if whoever is in charge gets it stuck in their head that the chip could eventually ruin their $10k shuffler, it's worth it to them.

I've hit the button on the shuffler just as a player launched a tip my way and had the door reject the tip back at the guy like a catapult when it opened... Haven't had any chips go IN the shuffler yet though.

That would suck if he didn't see that and thought you tossed it back.

The value of the chip is irrelevant.

Two hot girls approach me on a deadspread tonight as they were passing by the poker room towards the restrooms.

"Why do people wear headphones when they play here?"

"They don't want to talk to the people they're sitting with."

The girls thought I was kidding.

Me neither. The launching occurs when my fingers slip off the handle before the chip has fallen past the slide.

Another way it can happen is to have the slide break leaving a piece in the dealer's hand that is no longer attached. Important note to anyone installing these: the screws that hold the handle in place are not tightened when you receive the drop slide; tighten them before installing the drop slide.

By the way, once the girls realized I wasn't kidding, they thought it was sad. Smart girls. But then they laughed at the sad losers.

Girls.

(Another post that probably nobody but me will find funny.)

I got to use a line from Deadwood tonight. I love working those into conversation!

A $2-4 limit game, and as I sit, I see a player with four green $25 chips, two red $5 chips, and two blue $1 chips. Everyone else at the table has all $1 blue chips, of course. There's no need for any non-blue chip at this table. Great, one of those guys who calls for a color up, not because he has a huge, unmanageable stack, but because he likes to snap his fingers and give orders to chip runners. I'm not even in my chair yet, and he's already giving me the two red chips, asking for ten $1's.

Soon, he's lost all his blue, and he has to call a $4 bet with a green, which I dutifully change out of the game. But don't worry, as soon as he wins a pot and gets his stack over $100, he's sending me 25 blue chips to get his green one back, even though that only leaves him about three blue chips to play with.

As he ships me the 25 blues and asks for the green, I hit him with the line Adams used on Swearengen, when Swearengen instructed Adams to turn down a $50k bribe:

Was reminded of another Deadwood line earlier, in yet another $2-4 game. Every time a player took a moment to deliberate his action, the old man in Seat 5 was on 'em! "Hey, it's your turn!", he'd bark at anyone who took more than two seconds to act.

Surprisingly, nobody told him to STFU. If I were playing and he barked at me like that, I'd hit him with my favorite Seth Bullock line: