Day 49-50: A Couple of Awesome Days!

As expected, Sunday (Day 1D) had the biggest turnout of the Main Event so far with 2,802 players, to bring the total number of players for the event to 6,865.  Consequently, for the first time in the Main Event, the dealers were spread a little thin.  I began in the Purple section of the Amazon Room at the beginning of a five table row.  I dealt to Men "The Master" Nguyen and Grant Hinkle, though my day was pretty uneventful.  I was pretty sick for days 1B and 1C, and I woke up still feeling sick on Sunday, but around 10:30AM I started feeling a lot better.  I felt so good that when I was pushed out of my rotation at 6:30PM, I went to the dealer coordinator desk and asked to work overtime.  I was sent to the Yellow section of the Pavilion and dealt about six hands before the players went on dinner break.

No pushes came on dinner break, it was just ninety minutes of getting paid to babysit an empty table.  After dinner the pushes came again, but I was at the beginning of five consecutive tables.  The last table in the chain was super strong.  The players were raising and re-raising so much that it bordered on reckless.  One player had on a Santa Claus costume and I found out afterwards that his name was Jay Houston.  He had already impressed me and so did an Englishman at the table who turned out to be James Bord, the 2010 WSOP Europe Main Event winner.  The table broke around 10:30PM, and I was sent home after setting a personal high with 20 downs!

On Monday, Day 2A, I was assigned to the White section of the Pavilion, which would be the second section to break.  I dealt to "Jovial Gent" Yevgeniy Timoshenko and Ryan Laplante.  I watched a hand between the two of them while I waited to push into the table.  Laplante was contemplating a 17,000 chip call on the river with a board of J♠ 8♦ 6♥ 3♠ 4♣ showing.  He called with A♥ J♦ and Timoshenko showed 8♥ 8♣ for the winning set.  Shortly afterward my table broke and I went to find Jimmy, the Monday dealer coordinator, for a new assignment.

Jimmy told me to come back at 4:25 for my new assignment, but fortunately I showed up early because he was looking for someone to replace another dealer immediately.  When the WSOP eliminates the small denomination chips from the table, they require one player at the table to trade higher denomination chips with the other players to buy all the lower denomination chips on the table.  Some high denomination chips are brought to the table, placed in the chip well, and the dealer is instructed not to touch them.  The floorperson verifies the amount of small denomination chips and uses the large denomination chips in the well to, in the presence of the dealer, buy the small chips from the player.  The procedure is in the Dealer Handbook and announcements are made over the loudspeaker as well.  The dealer that I was sent to replace had ignored all instructions, and was using the yellow 1,000 denomination chips in the well to buy the black 100 and green 25 denomination chips and was placing them in the well.  I relieved him and was instructed by the floorperson to count the chips in the well as soon as the players went on break.  The other dealer was probably sent home for the remainder of the WSOP, or at least sent to the cash games.  Luckily the well still had 20,000 chips, but instead of 20 yellow chips, there were 18 yellow, 10 black, and 40 green chips.

My next table had Scotty Nguyen and Marco Traniello.  I think Scotty had just doubled through Marco, because Scotty kept apologizing to Marco and seemed to feel pretty bad for him.  Marco was down to 8,000 chips or so, while Scotty had around 45,000.  A big stacked middle aged gentleman in seat one raised Scotty's big blind to 3,000 at the 400/800/75 level and Scotty called, saying "This is my favorite hand, baby!"  I put out a flop of J♦ 9♣ 4♦ and Scotty checked.  Seat one bet 6,000 and Scotty check-raised to 15,000.  Seat one asked, "Do I still get a picture if I put you all-in?"  Scotty just smiled and seat one moved all-in.  Scotty called and an ESPN exec quickly got my attention and told me to hold up.  While we waited for the cameras to show up, I had Scotty count his chips and he had 42,600.  Seat one's hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't even handle his chips, so I put his chips into the pot for him.  The cameras got in place and Scotty finally turned over J♥ 9♥ for top two pair.  But seat one turned over J♠ J♣ for top set and Scotty was drawing all but dead.  I looked around for someone to tell me to deal the turn; they tell the dealer when to deal the turn and river when a player is all-in, but nobody seemed to be around.  I finally found a floorperson, Charlie, and he mouthed "Go!" pretty urgently.  I put the 4♥ on the turn and Scotty's tournament was over.

There was no overtime on Monday, so I had to be content with eleven downs and a good story.  I think I'll probably look pretty stupid just sitting there looking around on the ESPN coverage, but the good news is that I should be on TV when they show Day 2A!