Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The Best Laid Plans

So, umm, yeah. Not so much follow through on posting here...

The first two days of this gig were definitely the hardest, as far as suddenly working ridiculously long hours in a pretty wacked-out atmosphere. After a few days, though, you pretty quickly develop a routine and get used to the drill, even if it's a completely different drill than any you've been accustomed to before.

We're still working pretty damn long hours but we're covering fewer and fewer PokerRoom.com players, so it's getting easier as the days unreel. I've managed to lose any and all sense of what day it is, how many days until I get to go home, and other similar stuff.

Covering the tables, though, is getting harder and hard, as space is limited anyway and as players drop out and tables consolidate, there's just not much room to move around in, when you toss in media, floor people, staff, and players. I don't really mind the spectators so much but it's actually been the floor that I've had the most run-ins (literally) with.

Have to give some grudging credit to Harrah's, as so far I've been impressed with how they've handled things. They've mostly kept the spectator crush in check and there haven't been many incidents such as in the past with mucked up chip counts and other shenanigans. Well, shenanigans that we know about so far, that is.

Haven't had any time at all to play poker myself, as I'm pretty exhausted at night when work is done and not fit to do much other than play some mindless -EV blackjack. I did sit at a pretty crazy blackjack table the other night with your sterotypical loud, drunk Texans from Corpus Christi. One of their buddies stumbled out from the high limit area with a single 1,000 chip, and spent the next half hour telling and re-telling the story about how he lost $10,000 playing in their but got paid $1,000 at the end by some sophisicated, suave Euro type if the guy would just leave the high limit area and not come back. He tried to run it up to $5,000 so he could return and demand more money to leave, but only got as high as $3,000 or so before giving it all back.

He got pretty upset when the pit boss wouldn't let him keep two drinks simultaneously in front of him at the table, as he was double-fisting with a vokda and ginger ale (I have no idea why) and a glass of red win (again, no clue). The cocktail waitress was about to take one away, when I saw his eyes light up (he was sitting next to me) with his drunken brilliance, when he called her back and told her she'd taken my drink. So I was his surrogate drink holder for the rest of the night, and he'd pay me a green chip everytime the cocktail waitress brought a re-fill.

Right before he left, though, he did manage to steer some ridiculously attractive very young Greek girl with an British accent to the table, when she made the mistake of approaching slightly too close to his field of gravity. I would have laid many American dollars on the "hooker" side of the line, as she was wearing knee-high calf-skin boots and a mini-skirt that had about three square inches of fabric total, but apparently she wasn't, as her equally-young Greek-looking boyfriend wandered over at some point, left, and she started talking about what a terrible gambler he was, why she'd never marry him because of it, etc.

One of the Texans nearly stroked out when she called someone a "cheeky bastard", and paid her $25 every time she said "cheeky bastard" for the next hour, as he seemed to like the combination of the accent/delivery. To give her credit, she didn't really milk it for all it was potentially worth, pocketing about $200 the hour or so I played, before dragging myself off to bed and passing out.

No comments: