There are of course many parts to my life, many chapters. One long chapter is about being a poker dealer. A job I always had a love/hate relationship with. From reading blogs of other dealers, I assume it is pretty much the same with all dealers. Some days you love the job, other days you wonder what the hell you did to deserve this hell on earth. When the hell on earth days out numbered the good days...it was time to bail and find a different road to travel.
In 1980 I was fresh off the divorce train and back home in N. CA looking to start life over at 27. I was in a menial dead end job when a friend suggested I apply for a job at the local Card Room. It wasn't a casino, poker club or any fancy name, just the Round-Up Card room.
Being young and cute but terribly shy, I waited until an evening I had a little "liquid courage" in my system and went to the Card Room. Outside I met with the owner and his friend/fellow card player Terry C. who were on the sidewalk talking. I was hired after telling the owner, sure I had no experience, but I was no dummy and could learn, so try me for 30 days and if it doesn't work out, no hard feelings, I will quit. That night led to the next 18 years of dealing off & on at different places. Guess I worked out after all.
The first thing the owner, Kenny, told me was "don't watch my dealer, he doesn't do anything right". Great!! So who the hell was I going to learn from? Kenny was no dealer, and as much as I wanted to deal like he wanted me too, I knew I needed to learn the right way, not the "Kenny way" because some day I may need to work somewhere else at a real club. So after a week of shuffling, stacking chips and pitching to chairs at an empty table, I was thrown in the box to deal for 10 minutes every hour while Mike, the dealer, was on break. The game? Great for a rookie...No Limit Low Ball.
When I say no Limit, take it literally. There were very few hands that someone wasn't going all-in. If I said I was paraplegic while in the box, it wouldn't come close to describing it. Especially if "Sandi" was in the game. She was the previous owner and a hell cat when she was drinking, and she never played unless she drank. No one on earth ever did anything as good as "Sandi" did and she was never wrong. Her favorite saying was "I may not always be right but I am never wrong" and that was her to a T. Any dealers out there gets the gist of what I went through I am sure. She intimidated me, terrorized me and made my life hell while I was in the box. I could sail through a 15 minute down after a week fairly well IF Sandi wasn't in the game, then I made up for all those good downs with mistake after mistake. When you deal an action no limit game, any mistake can be huge. The one blunder I remember was of course with Sandi in the game. NL Low Ball, The pot was straddled, $100 to go, Big Bob was UTG and went all-in, 3 players called with Sandi of course being one of them, she was on the button. There were 2 side pots. Big Bob rapped pat, next was Gail who took 1, Woody the straddler took 2 and Sandi discarded 1. As I pitched Sandi's card it flipped up, an 8. I sat frozen, knowing I was really in for it. The owner came over and told me what to do, and give her another card. Believe it or not this was a 1st for me, exposing a draw card. To my total shock Sandi never said a word. The pot is about $1200 and she is silent as a mouse. Since everyone was all-in except Big Bob, he shows down a 8-6 and the other 3 fold. I apologized profusely to Sandi and all she said was "it's ok, you gave me an 8 right back, I drew to a 7".
Now many years later after watching Sandi play for years, I would bet my house that she was drawing to way worse than a 7. Maybe a 9-7, IF that good. So what I was sure was going to be the worst tongue lashing from a player ever, turned out to be nothing and I was safe. I remember it now because I was so damn scared of what I was sure was going to happen but didn't. Maybe that motto is "don't worry about shit till you step in it"!
On my days off I spent the next few months visiting poker rooms in CA and casinos in Reno watching dealers. The problem with the Reno dealers is they were dealing Stud and something called Hold-em and in CA we could only play 5 card draw games like Low Ball, Hi-Low split and Draw.
It wasn't long before we started hearing the rumors about the clubs in Gardena in Southern CA and how they were shut down for playing Hold-em. Then the story about the clubs putting a restraining order on the police until the courts decided the case. This I found facinating, could they do that? A restraining order on police? Wow, what a concept! The judges allowed Hold-em eventually because the old 1800's law that made "Stud horse poker" illegal was so ambigious they couldn't figure out exactly what "Stud Horse poker" was. This is the story we got anyway. We had no Poker News, Poker Player magazine, etc. in those days, stories were word of mouth.
Legal or not, I never dealt Hold-em until 1990 when I went to the Casino Club in Redding. While at the 2 table joints I dealt at during the 80's it was all draw and 99% of it was NL Low Ball.
Considering the average age of our regulars was 60+ the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" comes to mind. These players knew the draw games (and stud which we couldn't play yet)and no way were they going to try anything new.
Years later, I dealt to some of them in Redding and they lost their shirts, they never could grasp the concepts of Hold-em. Sad. I hope I never get to old to be afraid to try new things. The world changes daily, we have to change with it or be left behind.
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