I forgot to mention during my Chaos at Commerce post that at the table over from me this guy just took a major digger. All of a sudden this guy just hits the floor and he’s out cold. Dead cold. Security and a bunch of people surrounded him and he stayed flat out for a few minutes before finally coming to. He didn’t look drunk after he got up and there wasn’t much there for him to trip over so I’m wondering if he just blacked-out due to some medical condition.
Saturday morning I realized that I had forgotten to pick up a copy of Card Player and having flipped through a few pages while waiting for a table at Commerce I had noticed that Evelyn Ng was mentioned in one of the featurettes so, being a warm blooded male, my interest was piqued. I went by Hollywood Park to pick up a copy but they were out. Heck, I’m already there so why not play a little poker, right?
Friday night: Down $60 playing $1/$2 over about six hours.
Saturday night: Up $133 playing $2/$4 over five hours.
Not exactly an hourly rate that makes me want to quit my day job but at least I was able to prove that I wasn’t crazy in terms of my perceptions about the differences between $2/$4 and $1/$2 play. There were almost no family pots at $2/$4 while playing $1/$2 it was almost the norm. Several players would see the river with you at $1/$2 while few hands had more than one caller on the river at $2/$4. It just goes to show you that sometimes you need to make some major adjustments to your game depending on the table. I didn’t do that well Friday night but I will going forward.
My first hand Sat. night really set the stage for the evening. I have AQo in late position. Called to me and I raise. We lose a few and we have four players seeing the flop. I hit an ace on the flop and I bet it. We lose one player so three of us see the turn which is a blank but gives a four flush draw. I bet it and both players call. I’m thinking a wired lower pair in the hole or second pair on the table for these guys. River brings the third suited card and the first player checks. The second player to my right quickly bets out. I’m still a little shell-shocked from the previous night with everybody hitting miracle hands so I pause to think it over. I finally figure that she wouldn’t have seen the pre-flop raise or the call on the flop with just two suited cards and if she did I’m going to note that and make her pay through the nose the rest of the night. The checked player calls and we all show aces. Queen kicker takes the pot. The river bettor smiles at me and says “I knew you had the aces but I had to put you to the test on the river to see if you would lay it down.” I guess I passed because she backed off after that.
It really was a beautiful table though. I would say there were 3 good players and the rest were just calling stations. They would call any hand until the turn and sometimes they would go to the river but they would finally give up and show you bottom pair. We even had this one guy who was so stoned out of his mind that he couldn’t even understand the betting. If it was $2 to him to call he would put in $3. If it was $4 to him he would put in $2. The guy sitting next to me was a pretty solid player and I leaned over to him and said “The thing that pisses me off is that I can’t get a solid hand. This guy is giving away money and I’m getting 93o.” He laughed and said he was itching to take this guy’s money too. He eventually caught a pocket pair and beat this guy down. He had pocket kings and the stoned guy is raising and betting his high pair on the board (queens). It would have been sad if it wasn’t so funny.
We had one hand that was quite strange though. I’m sitting to the right of the dealer. I forget the exact hand or how exactly it went down but, in short, the dealer didn’t see my cards and passed right by me when everybody else folded to a bet from the player sitting next to the dealer on his left. He grabbed her cards and I said, “Wait! I’m calling.” The dealer doesn’t even try to explain and immediately calls for a floor man and honestly admits he passed by me because he didn’t see my cards. The floorman tells the lady to the dealer’s left that it’s unfortunate but the cards are mucked and that I won. I asked her what she had and she told me and even though I had the better kicker I asked the floorman if we could split the pot. He said whatever I wanted to do with my money was ok and we did just that. I hate it when you get worked over because of a dealer mistake and I was trying to bank some karma points for the next time it happens to me. Besides, we hadn’t even seen the turn so there wasn’t a ton of money in the pot to begin with. Would anybody have said “tough luck” and kept the pot? Just curious.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I would like to think that I may be the nice guy here, but honestly, I’m not sure. Yeah, it sucks that it was the dealers fault, but the key is that it wasn’t your fault (unless you were purposely hiding your cards or something, and I’m not saying you were). It was the “good” thing to do and hopefully the karma will come back to you sometime :)
No, totally honest mistake. I wasn’t hiding the cards. In fact, the dealer prior to that one had almost passed me by as well. When you’re sitting directly to the right of the dealer, your “area” is almost behind him. This is especially true at HP because they have the card shuffling machine to the dealer’s left so you have to share space with the machine too. I think looking to the right is more natural than looking to the far left for most people though which makes it even more likely to happen.
Mistakes happen all the time. Dealers are human. I would not have been so nice, Bill. I would have kept the pot!
you didn’t have to – dealer error.
if i had thought about it, which i likely wouldn’t, i woulda split it. karma points are good there and may encourage someone to softplay you because of it…