Day 13-15: Wedding and Lots More Poker

On Saturday morning I got up at 5:00 to fly back to Sacramento for Sean and Natalie's wedding.  Jessica picked me up at the airport and we drove up to Lake Tahoe.  The wedding was at 3:00PM, the buffet was at 5:00, and the reception was at 7:00.  We had a lot of fun, but we had to leave the reception early to drive back to Sacramento.  A few hours of sleep later, I was boarding another plane to fly back to Vegas.

Matt and I had both volunteered to work Sunday, so I had just enough time to shower and eat breakfast before heading to the Rio.  Sunday was Day 1B of the $1,000 No Limit Hold 'em event and the Rio was jammed with players.  There were an insane number of dealers at the morning meeting, and Amy used almost everybody to open up the tournament which started at 12:00PM.  Somehow my name hadn't made it onto her list (Matt's did and we were right next to each other on the sign up sheet), so I had to wait until 12:30 to push onto my first table.  Amy tried to hook me up by getting me to push into an area where the tables wouldn't break for a long time.  Breaking a table means the tournament coordinator shuts down the table and all the players get new seat assignments to replace eliminated players.  This shrinks the number of tables in play, while keeping the tables in play as full as possible.  Unfortunately, they decided to break tables in my area anyway.  I had dealt six straight tables (three hours straight in the box) and was about to finally go on my break when they broke my table.  So I went to Amy to get a new assignment and hopefully a break first, but she needed three dealers to go to cash immediately and sent me over to Armani, the cash game dealer coordinator.

Armani needed me to step in immediately, and to make matters worse, I was sent to the high limit area.  The dealers all call this area the pit, and the players in high limit are notoriously awful tippers.  They also have a reputation for being rude and impatient with dealers.  Great!  They were starting a new game, so at least the $500 till was easy to count!  The floor man unlocked the till and walked away.  I had no idea what to do!  The players were still getting chips and figuring out who was higher on the list for the game, but some looked at me impatiently and told me to get the game started.  I didn't even know what game to deal!  One of the players told me that it was $75/$150 Limit Omaha High/Low Split and I started dealing.

Having never dealt a high limit game, I was a little lost for a bit.  New players were joining the game, and others were leaving almost every hand.  Players were tabling their hands after the river and calling for the pot, or half of it, before I could even read their hand.  It probably didn't help that I was pretty exhausted from not having a break in over three hours and also being short on sleep over the last couple of days.  When I was finally pushed, I sat down into another table of the same game.  I was getting the hang of it, so that down wasn't as bad as the last one, but I was sure happy to get my break after getting pushed again!

I dealt a $25/$50 Pot-Limit Omaha with a mandatory $100 button straddle after my break.  A button straddle is a blind raise by the player on the button.  Action starts with the SB (small blind) instead of the player under the gun.  J.C. Tran was in the game and won quite a few of the pots.  One player lost his whole stack of around $4,000 in my first hand at the table.  Yikes!

I moved after that to a table where the dealer was just sitting with the deck spread in front of him.  There were a few people there, but they were just talking.  Turns out, one player was playing heads-up with a guy who was out smoking.  I was happy that he came back though because they had missed their rake.  Players in the high limit games pay somewhere between $7 and $9 every half hour for their seat.  When the guy came back, his opponent slid a stack of about ten red chips worth $5 each, and told me to take $18 for the rake and keep the rest.  And since the time rake was due again before my down was over, the smoker passed me another stack of reds right before my down ended and asked me to repeat the procedure.  I must have made $65 on that table in tips!

From there I went to a $75/$150 Seven Card Stud Hi/Low Split table where I dealt to Karina Jett.  I only got $4 on that down, which is pretty awful.  Apparently, the Stud players are the worst tippers of them all.  But I was still pretty happy about the previous table, so it didn't bother me much.  After another Limit Omaha Hi/Low table I finally got to go home for the day.

Monday was the $1,500 6-handed No Limit Hold 'em tournament at 12:00 which had 1,920 entrants.  With only six players per table, that was a lot of tables in play.  The cash and satellite tables were non-existent; they needed every table in the house for the tournament!  They even compacted tables after players were eliminated and started late registering players at 2:00 on the vacated tables.  I was sent to the satellite section to deal, meaning that if my table were to break I would stay and deal satellites.  Much better than dealing cash any day!  I ended up dealing to John Duthie, Nenad Medic, Mark Seif, Tex Barch, and Scott Seiver.  I gave Seiver a brutal bad beat around 4:00 to knock him out of the tournament, and the hand was actually written up on PokerNews.com.  Seiver was all-in w/ A-Q and called by A-3.  I ran out a board of K-5-2-Q-4 to give his opponent a straight on the river.  It was pretty ugly.

A while later, my table finally broke and I got to deal my first single table satellite.  I dealt out quite a few bad beats, but nothing overly ridiculous.  There was a young kid playing and I knew I didn't want him to win because the internet players tip abysmally.  He ended up chopping it with a lady.  She threw me $20, he threw me $5.  Big surprise.  Oh well, at least I didn't get stiffed, which I've heard happens sometimes.

Time to hit the sack; I'm working again tomorrow.  The $1,500 Triple Chance No Limit Hold 'em is tomorrow.  Hopefully I get to deal it all day!