"OOOhh!! OOOOHHH!! I'll do it!"

picks up phone:

"Orange and cranberry today, we ran out of prune"

"As many as you can win"

"Just a kiddie wader one."

"As long as it takes for you to win"

"Let's see.... it's Tuesday, at the beginning of the month..... our noon tourney starts at 5:43 p.m"

"For you, $1.33"

"We haven't finished dragging the cowards out of the bushes yet, I'll have to let you know later, when it starts"

"Sure! Just give me your MAC number and PIN, please. My name is Elvis, btw"


"As soon as you come to the desk and give me my reservation fee, certainly."

"Nine other strangers will be thrilled to have known you"

Anyone who ever asks me this is immediately sorted into the Idiot pile.

Come on in, we'll give you 100k in chips!

Great!

Dealers, blinds start at 10k-20k, shuffle up and deal! (two minutes later) Blinds are up! 40k-80k!

When I spread a $220 buy-in when $50 buy-ins were big some of these idiots tried to tell me they weren't getting enough chips for $220. Of course they didn't bother to look at the blind structure.

This btw is why tournaments now start with thousands of chips starting at 25-25 or 25-50 and they used to be 500 chips starting at 5-10

Funny thing is, the same thing happened in my home tourneys. Once we moved up to the big stacks (with corresponding blinds), people got upset when I decided to use my lonely red chips and run a T500, 100BB tourney.

Back they went, gathering dust...

Yes, but packing your own lunch would take, you know, effort.

I wasn't around before the pre-2004 TV era, but do you think a lot of this has to do with new players having the illusion of playing for "thousands" like the big shots on TV.

It might. In the old days the big tournaments had chips at par, if it was a $10k buy in everyone started with 10k. In smaller daily tournaments 500 chips was a very normal starting stack. When I was in Vegas we were one of the first places (not the first) to have a dealer add on. Our tournaments were a $33 ($30+$3) and you received 500 in starting chips. You could pay an extra $2 for the dealers and receive and extra 100 in chips. eventually places started having more chips. Shortly they realized their tournaments took too long so they changed the structure to get them over faster.

Well I'm about to spend a few days at gila river wild horse pass and plan to post a trip report. I might post some chatter here too, especially if I have commentary on the dealers/floor/room that doesn't make it into the main thread, but is worthy of mentioning.

As for tournament structure, the ante was invented no doubt by the house to get the tournaments over faster.

I thought the jump from 200/400 to 500/1000 was designed for that purpose

That was the same guy who invented both.

I need to buy that guy a drink.

Our room is a bit slow these days. The guys across the street have a giant BBJ.

Anyway, one of our regulars comes in and says to me "Ya know, I don't give a sh*t what the bad beat beat is over there. You guys know what you're doing and have always treated me right. I'm not going anywhere else."

Made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

There is another room "close " to us, it's over 50 miles away but the next closer B&M is in Shreveport, over 5 hours away.

The other room is very nice, they built a new casino, brand new poker room, great chairs, every thing is top notch. Except the action. Someone described it as the nicest empty poker room in Oklahoma.

I heard about a daily tournament they had at the other room, 12 players showed up. They only paid 3 spots but they had to get down to a "final table" first so when they were down to 10 players, they began playing "hand for hand" until the meaningless bubble burst. This was in level 3, 75/150.

A visiting player (VP) from the other room came over to our room for the first time and played a daily tournament with us.

When he asked how many player we expected, the TD told him about 80 to 90.

VP: "No, not for the big tournament next month, I mean today at 1PM"

TD: "Oh, today, then that would be about 80 to 90."

VP: "But we never get more than about 25 to 30 over there."

TD: "I know, and 20 of them are our dealers."

***************

Real phone call I took one day.

D-G: " Poker room, how can I help you?"

caller: "Will you be spreading 10/20 ,limit hold em tonight?"

D-G: "If we get enough players to start a game, yes we will."

Caller: "But it's your featured game on Fridays."

D-G: "Yes sir, but to spread a game we need a dealer, a table, and enough players to start the game. How many is enough is up to the players. If we have 2 players who want to play the game and agree to play heads up and there is an available dealer and an empty table, we will spread any hold em or Omaha game you request. That's true any day or anytime."

Caller: "So you're not going to spread the 10/20 tonight then, right?"

I used to deal the ole dozen person afternoon daily tournaments at my old job. We didn't go hand for hand to get to 1 table though. However, it was still bad enough to make me want to kill myself on a daily basis.

Some of these stories are great.
Sooo after reading the piss story, it reminded me of a situation a few nights ago.
big samoan guy playing very lag(straddling huge) has no personal hygiene burping at the table shouting out "NO FEAR OWWWL IN" then farting.
As a dealer what would you do?

any aussie dealers (crown? star city)

I finally, finally decided to take a long hard look at quadstriker's avatar, because I've always wondered, "What the hell IS that?"

I've been looking at it wrong, all this time. Here's what I've always seen:



blue = eye
red = beak?
yellow = comb?
green = neck?
remainder = ?????

I mean, look at just the lines I drew, disregarding the pic. Looks like a mean bird, right?

Worst tournament structure ever was where I used to work at a now defunct poker room.
Dealer had lammers in the rack (1-9) and had to keep track of the number of hands and the blinds would double every 9 hands. The dealer was stuck at the table until it that game broke and if you were at the final table of the 3 table tourny then you were stuck until the tournament was over.

Tonight I had the pleasure of asking a Russian gentleman to take a break...via Google Translate on my Iphone. The English version was:

"Would you please return to your hotel and take a shower".

I have no idea if the translation was exact, but it worked and off he went. First time for everything.

Ha! We keep a can of spray deodorant in the cabinet and occasionally give it to someone when they go for a pee break. They are almost always shocked that they stink.

You mean it's not? What is it then? I always thought a mean bird, too, except the big gray blob on the lower left is a thicker beak than what you drew. It's a shot from above a bit, not a profile.

Regarding that list of questions... not to be a kill-joy, but most of those seem fairly reasonable. Taken together, that's what I want to know regarding a tourney. If you run a regular game, you should have a sense of typical attendance, prize pool, and length.

Damn, a good day today. As a break in dealer, I am definitely never sure of where I stand... sure I think I am doing well, but I have no real way to measure how I am performing. (Warning: Lame brag coming) So yesterday at the end of my shift, I have about ten minutes left, one of my supervisors says "Hey, Owl, is 12345 your payroll number?" I told him it was, and was a little concerned. Generally if they're writing down your number, as far as I know, you're getting written up.

So I wasn't sure what was up, so after I get tapped out, I ask the supervisor if everything is okay. He said, "Oh yeah, definitely, we have to always report when people screw up, I thought I would actually report that I thought you did a great job today."

I am so pathetic, this totally made my day.

Nice! Being a green dealer can be quite stressful, especially if you have to deal higher limit games, where they take great pleasure in torturing the dealers.

Brief comments re: gila river, wild horse pass ...

Darryl at the brush station, swing shift totally kicks ass. That guy was ON TOP of things and the tables/new games etc were handled in the most professional way I've seen in a while. The day manager was pretty cool too and everyone seemed to have it pretty well together all day.

Got to watch Quadstriker deal some hands... no deficiencies that I could detect. He was fast, friendly, accurate, essentially a class act of a dealer. Not all the dealers in the room were nearly so good either, tho I really don't have any complaints about anyone on their staff.

From the front desk to the host, casino, and poker room this place has been a really nice casino to stay and play in.

Hung out with palimax and drank some beers ... wandered the casino and eventually made it back to the poker room where he wound up in an omaha game and I played hold'em (again).

You have a good boss there. He is a decent human being.
You should repay him by acting similarly to others when the chance arises.

Quadstriker should refrain from pointing at people with an extended finger when signaling to them

Daryl is great, but sometimes he likes to hear his voice over the loudspeaker and he just...doesn't...shut...up. Forgiving him that, he's the most personable brush ever - and he knows and remembers everyone.

Thanks for the beers. The Omaha game broke at 4:30 or so.

It is a bird guys. A really mean bird. Specifically from the video game World of Warcraft (don't hate). He'll bite your face off if you make fun.


BWAHAHAHA I remember dealing that "tournament".


lol I knew as soon as I did that you were going to jump all over me! Usually I open palm it, but I was distracted by two ravishing looking gentlemen ogling my game. Just be glad I didn't break out any other fingers. Where's my pai gow trip report?