Haha, DMV visits are always a nice wakeup call... I sometimes feel like I walked into the Jerry Springer show.

Small town Wal-Marts are also pretty interesting.

Lol no, I'm not wealthy, I just don't waste money on fast food. I do go to the DMV whenever I have to, but I try to do as much online as possible.
I figured the richest people would have someone else go for them.
And that they would go to nicer restaurants than McDonald's.

no way you thought rich people didn't have to identify themselves at the DMV. i suppose they could send a paid doppelganger in to do the job...

Several years ago, I'm walking into the poker room and I get seated immediately. I had to go to the cage to get chips at this cardroom, so as I'm standing in line, these 2 rather large gentleman start having a disagreement about $500 right behind me. I'm trying to ignore them and not pay them any attention. It's not my business.

"GIVE ME MY F'N MONEY" shouts Large bearded man #1.

"YOU'LL GET IT TOMORROW" says Large bearded man #2

"YOU LYING SACK OF ****, DON'T MAKE ME..."

and that's when Large Bearded Man #2 is pushed into me, while large bearded man #1 pounced on number 2. I fell to the ground, having a rather large man pushed into me while my back is facing them.

Security shows up, one dude is detained and arrested/cops are called... Other dude is taken out on a stretcher. Poker room has about 8-10 tables going, everything stops and everyone is rubber necking the situation for approximately 30-60 seconds, then the games resume.

Security asks me if I'm okay, I'm fine.. I start flexing my hand as if it were sore from me breaking my fall. Poker room manager prints me out a comp for the steakhouse as a goodwill gesture. I accept it.

I skip poker, take my buddy to the steak house, i get the biggest, most expensive cut on the menu... and we called it a night.

That's the best I got. Not a winner, but I got a steak dinner.

"winner, winner, steak dinner!" imo

I can't imagine people like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos going to the DMV. Maybe they do have to get their photos taken though, unless they just never drive themselves. Also can't imagine Donald Trump has been to the DMV in a very long time, though maybe I just don't have a good imagination.

Damn, I only ever get a chicken dinner!

Good story, glad you survived.

I still say re-raise like the robot did.

We have an ongoing joke in our private game about how the black guys dominate in February, since it's black history month. Someone even set up a timer with a countdown to Feb. 1st. Hilarious.

Saw a drunk dude get a bad beat and flip the table over. The little side drink tables, that is.

Saw a fight at Philly live last summer.. 2-2 PLO game, was pretty violent. Security didn’t intervene for quite some time

Coming back from break in a tournament, a friend and I saw a shouting altercation that escalated to one guy pulling out a fork and stabbing the other in the face. Not crazy hard, but it definitely broke the skin.

When I sat back down, the stabber had been moved to our table and explained he did it because the dude was wearing a turban and it was a big no-no for their religion to do that while playing. Stabee was a couple tables over and they got into a shouting match shortly after.

Sounds like a no-no to even be gambling in said religion if this is the case...

Craziest thing I have seen was someone berating a middle aged woman for blind raising 20x 1 full orbit in a 5/10 game. Shortly after, her husband came over and told her he won some invite only Aria high roller tournament (freeroll) to the original One Drop. He was the dude who gave Helmuth his seat. Original berator then said something along the lines of "oh so you REALLY don't care about money" - kinda funny

These people have drivers

I'll provide some balance in this thread by posting a strange but positive scene I witnessed earlier today at the Bellagio.

A new 200-400 Ace-to-Five lowball game was starting in the elevated high stakes section.

I heard the U.S. national anthem playing on one of the player's phones. The players and dealer were all standing for the song. At the end, they applauded like at a sporting event.

Has anybody seen that in a poker room before?

Someone stabbed another player in the face with a fork, and they didn't even throw him out?? I can't imagine why the police wouldn't have been called! Seriously wondering what kinds of places you guys are playing.

My banker tells me I'm wealthy and yet I will still get up at 6 AM and go thru the drive through at Macs to get my breakfast. In fact I think I will go right now!

But if you use the drive through, you're not mixing with the poor people!

I'd say you're both on it. Gzesh is correct that you can find all walks of life at other such places like the DMV or the airport. It's not unique to a poker room.

But more philosophically, I like 5thStreet's observation. Unlike the DMV or the airport, I'm far more likely to strike up a random conversation with someone at my poker table than I am with a person waiting for a mobile order in a McD's. And that's the difference: the interaction.

Then again, I would assume the stakes matter. I'm a low-stakes guy who plays $3/6 or $4/8 limit or as small as $1/3 no-limit. So while there might be a huge range of people in the room, the scope of those in my "social proximity" is narrower.

I'm glad you mentioned the courtroom, as I find jury duty to be another one of these environments. While I'm not as likely to converse with a stranger on a one-to-one basis, the nature of the process is that many of the potential jurors are instructed to reveal parts of their background. This is something that does not happen at, say, O'Hare Terminal 5. Discovering the vastness of this one sample of your community is pretty eye-opening, especially if you live in an area that is not that large (my county has about 200K people).

There was an upper middle class white guy who used to be a regular (donator) in the higher stakes games at one particular casino. He had some sort of well-paid tech job, but was overall miserable about his life. He used to make rude comments all the time when someone would beat him in a pot, but the winning players tolerated him and even invited him to private games because he was a big loser at the poker table.

Anyway one night he made a comment to the wrong guy at the casino, and within seconds the guy had his arms around his neck choking him out. Security got there fairly quickly, pried the choker off of him and escorted the choker out with a lifetime ban.

The chokee was uninjured other than a bloody lip from the melee. I will never forget the stunned and terrified look on his face though. Getting choked out over a rude comment was clearly something he had never even considered could happen, given his past experiences.

He was much nicer to play with after that. Hahaha.

Happened yesterday, this guy sits down and immediately I know there is a high likelihood of something popping off because this guy is one of the most antagonistic players I've ever seen. It's like he thinks poker is all about intimidation and **** talking. Very heavy bravado and egotistical, always wanting the last word.

Anyways he bluffs off his whole stack in the first hand in the most punting type of way and gets snapped off by third pair all the way and then starts trying to verbally bully everyone else at the table and one of the older gentlemen finally says F you and F off and they trade a whole bunch of F bombs back and forth and threats to fight and what not. Floor gets called and he gets a final warning to calm down and he just can't help himself and keeps backtalking the floor so he gets kicked out and then he accuses the floor of favoring the regulars (he comes in fairly often so not sure what he meant by that) and he starts threatening people some more lol

The Taj Mahal in AC used to be the Wild West.

There were always stories about people being stabbed over seat change buttons, robbed in the bathroom, etc.

The worst incident that i personally witnessed was (7 card stud was pretty much the only game back then):

Guy loses a 7 stud hand when he's dealt AAA, first 3 cards.

On 7th street, he knows he's beat but he calls anyway.

He turns bright red, dealer says "don't do it" "don't do it"

He proceeds to rip the 3 Aces in half and throw them at the dealer (back then the cards were easier to rip).

His punishment? 24 hr. ban. LOL

I'm pretty much entirely non-violent these days (barring an extreme provocation), but in my younger days had the privilege of breaking a couple FAFO-cherry's from dudes who hadobviously lived lives where they acted a certain way, but had been mostly insulated from the types of people who would belt them for it and I kinda prided myself on being 'that guy'.

Honestly, its rewarding and you get why some people don't hesitate to serve up the smoke in those spots, but you can't really keep doing that once you have assets to seize.

This was a pretty entertaining video a few months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E915AkRO60A

Is that Conor McGregor? LOL

Lesson learned, don't **** with a guy that knows Jiu Jitsu