I Went To Commerce

[PokerBob]

And wrote about it in my blog, but no one reads that so here it is.

I have been in LA at the Commerce Casino for the past few days. It is always a bit of culture shock when I get back here. In Minnesota we have to be kind to each other and to the dealers at the poker table. Raise your voice; use the F-bomb; toss a card; do any of these and you’re getting warned. If the floorperson has to talk to you again, you’re probably getting tossed for at least 24 hours. This is not the case at Commerce. Berating each other is commonplace, and verbally assaulting the dealer in a variety of tongues happens so frequently that most dealers and players have become numb to it.

It seems that many view the dealer as some klutzy messenger for the Goddess of Luck (who, according to what I can glean from a 3 second Google search, is called ‘Fortuna’). When they lose a pot, it is not because (a) they play bad or (b) Fortuna determined that another person was to win that pot or (c) they just play really bad. No. It is because the dealer put the wrong cards out there. Why the dealer put the wrong cards out there is not known, but they surely messed up somewhere along the line. When these people win, well, it is only because the dealer did not screw up Fortuna’s intention. They seem to feel that they are supposed to win every single pot.

When the dealers are constantly screwing up Fortuna’s will, the player is not without hope. He has a variety of tactics at his disposal, and he is not afraid to use them. One of the most common is the ’set-up’. When a player calls for a new ’set-up’, he is asking that the decks in play be replaced with two new decks. To the untrained eye, the new decks look just like the old decks. Actually, they look the same to the trained eye as well, but that is not relevant. We are not dealing with rational beings.

Another tactic is the ’scramble’. At the end of a hand, the dealer has all of the cards face-down in an unruly mess. Usually the dealer collects the cards into a nice, brick-like pile and places them into the shuffle machine. If someone asks for ’scramble’, however, the dealer pushes the cards all over the table by making circular motions with his hands, in effect shuffling them, before picking them up and putting them in the shuffle machine.

Sometimes there is no flop, and so the hand ends very quickly. Often when this happens, the dealer will shuffle the cards by hand instead of waiting for the machine to finish shuffling the other deck. Many do not trust the dealers to shuffle the cards properly, and thus will request ‘no hand job’ from the dealer. So, we all wait for the machine to finish shuffling the other deck.

I had experienced all of these methods of thwarting the evil dealers in my previous Commerce excursions, but I was about to experience something new and perhaps even weirder.

A few days ago there was a regular in the 100/200 game who was running good. Another player at the table, who was not faring so well, requested that the dealer ‘make good scrambooooool’ after one of the hands. The regular objected. I thought all hell was going to break loose. One guy is losing, and thus thinks that the dealer is a bumbling idiot who is misinterpreting Fortuna’s intentions. The other is running hotter than the sun, and thus thinks this dealer is some sort of savant and wants nothing to disturb the rhythm between the dealer and Fortuna. To my utter surprise, nothing happened. It turns out that one is indeed allowed to object to a scramboooool. One objection is not enough to stop the scramboooool, but two objections and the scrambooooling will cease. I was shocked to see that both parties knew and understood this, and were content to defer to this rule. I guess they understand that they may be on the other side of things someday, and thus want equal protection. The next day that is exactly what happened.

The regular was blowing his brains and, being the wily little gamboooler that he is, used all of the resources at his disposal. He changed seats repeatedly. He called for set-ups. He told dealer ‘no hand job’. He even asked for scramboool, but when he did 3 people who had played with him the previous day spitefully (and to my sheer delight) objected. There would be no scramboooool to save this guy. He went on to lose over $20k.

Karma’s a bitch.

[gobboboy]

A+

[its_just_me]

loooool awesome post.
A+++++

[DontRaiseMeBro]

i stabbed a dealer once.. i didn't take kindly to his 'scramble this!' comment.

[RiverFenix]

I once sat with a guy in Vegas who asked for a wash every 30 minutes tops. Holy hell its bad enough playing 30 hands an hour but to waste an extra 2-3 minutes because one moron is superstitious is infuriating.

[AceCR9]

[ QUOTE ]
A+

[/ QUOTE ]

[AceMason]

Great post

[kiddcheckers]

big implied tilt odds refusing the scramble obv.

[highsteptd]

soooo true, A++ insight.

commerce is like the degens convention too.

[please.muck]

genius insight into the foolish degenerate mind

great post