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Cheaters, drunks, hand lotion, tissues: Long TR + Cliff Notes

The wife and I arrived at Grand Casino Mille Lacs (pronounced: Millax) for a 1-day vacation away from kids at about 3:30. Being that we are 40+ and fat, I will edit out all references to sexytime (the reader may assume all unaccounted for time was sexytime, however). The room was clean and comfortable. Nothing special, but exactly what was needed. Moderately comfortable hotel-room standard bed and furnishings.

On the way to dinner at about 5:00, we wandered by the poker room, only to find they had three tables running, a 2/4, a 3/6 and a 3/6 kill. Darryl, the disinterested floor guy, who looked more “Bouncer” than “Poker Room Manager” told me there was a 2-10 list, but didn’t seem to care much whether
it went. He told me he doubted any higher game would go, what with the jackpot at nearby Hinckley “about to go off,” which was siphoning off the regulars. I decided not to educate him on probabilities, and headed off to the buffet.
The buffet was godawful bad. The “Prime Rib” was dry and the desserts marginally edible. Oddly they served NO ALCOHOL. Anywhere! In fact, when I asked about alcohol, the waitress responded as if I’d asked her if she’s sell me some crack, or perhaps a [censored] behind the pie cart. Weird. Gambling without drinking? While I never drink while playing, I certainly like others too. Bleh.

Went back to the room, watched Knocked Up on Pay Per View. Damn thing started 5 mins into the movie, and the Front Desk had no idea how to fix it. Fine. Whatever. Movie was pretty good. Afterwards, the wife jumped into her book, and I headed to the poker room.

Got to the PR, and Darryl added me to the 2-10 list. There was a game going, and a short list. Played 15 minutes of smoky blackjack, winning $15. Whoo-hoo. Got called and sat in the 2-10. It was immediately clear that the tourists were bad and the regulars worse. I won 3 of the first 4 hands I was dealt, which brightened my mood, then went card dead for two hours.

Hit the men’s room, where I saw the strangest damn thing I’d ever seen in a casino men’s room. Okay, hand lotion is sometimes supplied in swankier places. Similarly, tissues are a rarity that are sometimes found in nicer hotel men’s rooms, but I don’t frequent the sort of places that supply both, in convenient wall-mounted dispensers. Yet here they are, affixed to the wall right next to one another. Not sure if the local clientele likes to hit the men’s room to rub a quick one out in between slot machine pulls or not, but this looked really strange. You can’t read the dispenser on this crappy cell phone pic, but it says “Moisturizer.”

http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b1...lotion-wtf.jpg
Back to the game, and the dealer finds a marked K. It has what looks like a fingernail mark creased down the center of the card, slightly offset. This is NOT from the shuffler, or from players squeezing their cards for a peek. This is a crease, intentionally placed. The card is replaced, and the next hand I’m dealt a similarly marked card. This card is replaced and the dealer fans the remaining deck. Two more marked cards are found, another A and a Q. We get a setup.
Disinterested Darryl brings a setup, out of which 5 cards are marked. Three of these are scuffed on the edges, in what looks like shufflemaster damage. They have recently changed brands of cards, and likely have not re-calibrated the machine. Two have creases down the center. These are an A and a K. The floor pronounces the shufflemaster to blame and we play on.

Drunk guy sits next to me and starts raising every hand to $10. I pickup K9s (the bad mutha) and cold-call. At this table NOBODY EVER FOLDS once they have a “big hand.” This means that your rivered flush that you’ve obviously been drawing to will get called and overcalled by two-pair and TPTK. Plus I’m up a few hundred, on vacation, and have the table a bit tilty since I’ve just taken two huge pots with flopped sets vs. KK and JJ on raggy boards. I love getting four-bet by JJ on a 468 board with 88 in my hand. Anyway, I call with K9s, as do three other players. The flop comes Q99. SB bets, EP raises, Drunk three-bets and I four-ball it. EP and Drunk call. Turn is a blank. EP checks, drunk bets $10, I raise to $10, EP finally realizes that AQ is no good but calls anyway. Drunk says he can’t believe he’s going to lose “with this hand again,” and calls. They both check-call the river and drunk says many bad words when he rolls over AA to my flopped trips. Had a phenomenal bowl of chicken and rice soup to celebrate. Creamy goodness almost made up for the crappy prime rib earlier.

A few hands later, I see another marked card (more subtle than the previous, it was likely missed earlier, but who knows). It is an A, of course, and the graveyard floor guy gets another setup for us. Drunk guy accuses me of marking the cards. I suggest to him that my plan all along is to mark a whole bunch of aces and kings, then point out to the table where the marks are. He counters with the argument that I have the largest stack at the table, so I must be guilty. A few people roll their eyes, but two of the worst players at the table pause from their chip-bleeding to look concerned and nod their heads slowly. [censored]. Now the morons think I’m trying to cheat and am just pointing out marked cards to throw the casino off my scent. Only fair, since these two are in the area for the opening of deer season. While I’m not usually one to worry, I’m not real fond of the idea that these gun-toting fellows think I’m a cheat.

The new floor guy now pulls all the decks he has and spends the next hour or so looking at all the cards. He comes back and says the cards marked were random, and that there is no pattern to which cards are bad. While this is technically true, it is also total crap. The shufflemaster-damaged cards were random. The creased cards were all Aces and paint. He forbids dealers from using shufflemasters the rest of the night. The dealer says the last time this happened, they shut down the games for a while. I’m immediately dealt A3o, with a marked A. [censored] it. I muck (of course) and say nothing. I’m on my [censored] vacation, and don’t want any more drama. Nor do I feel like going to bed or playing blackjack, so I play on with the marked card in the deck. If someone at the table was marking the cards, it clearly wasn’t helping him.

Got cold-decked again, and left at 4:00, only up $302. As I left, I asked night floor guy for my comps because I wanted to get a sandwich. I’d earned some $0.50/hour, and had only two ones and a bunch of Benjamins in my pocket. He tells me I never logged in. I tell him I gave my card to disinterested Darryl. At this point one of the dealers who was standing around said, “he came in about 8:30, I remember him giving Darryl his card to log him in.” Floor guy says, “I can log you in now and leave you in a couple hours, but nothing else.” While four bucks is no biggie, I really don’t like this guy’s attitude. I tell him I did what I was supposed to, and I wanted my comp. He said, “it wasn’t my mistake, this one’s on Darryl, you’ll have to talk with him.” [censored] it. This is not worth my frustration, and this guy is never going to understand the twin facts, a) he is a [censored] floor, and b) he is a moron.

Cliff notes: Mille Lacs is a poorly run poker room, where there are very bad players, cheats and an incompetent floor. Also, the food is hit or miss, and the men’s room is well-stocked if you like to masturbate in casino bathrooms.