An “Only in LA” Story - The Dealer Stall and the $1 pot!

[Rick Nebiolo]

After getting partially busted holding AK against Seat 1 holding Ax (hitting the turn three outer after my flop overbet) in a later hand from this thread I decided to relax by dropping by a struggling casino to visit an old friend working as a host of sorts.

Since the nightly tournament hadn’t finished the re-buy period the club had only three small cash games going with open seats everywhere. My friend “GI” was in a 40-100 spread buy NL game with 1-2 blinds. So I bought a rack and took a seat next to him so we could talk shop a bit. At this point the game had GI, one real loose donkey who was running hot, perhaps one or two sort of normal customers, and what appeared to be four or five props or quasi-props. Not a game to make money, but sometimes just playing small and chatting/relaxing can be +EV for personal reasons.

After playing for a while and watching/playing several small to medium sized pots, the hot, loose donkey went for a walk. I took my $2 BB anyway; I wouldn’t want to hurt my friend’s game by taking an out button when the game needed my “action”. Plus I already ordered cocktails and couldn’t leave. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

So with my menacing presence in the BB a woman in the cutoff open limps for $2 and the button and SB fold. Sometimes we LA players go for the chop/collection save after an early limp is uncalled but I was curious how a game with 1/2 blinds and the infamous LA drop would play out. I also wondered if a late limp might mean a big hand. Plus with cocktails coming it just seemed like goofy-fun to play against the single late limper (generally we LA players discourage with peer pressure any sort of cutoff or button open limp in small games).

Anyway, after the flop the pot contains five $1 chips. But the dealer has to take a $3 collection and $1 jackpot drop so he goes into a stall of sorts; even a dealer hates to see the coming collection fiasco clearly visible to someone (me) whom he probably assumes is a potential new, badly needed customer. Meanwhile the props roll their eyes and look bored; they are starting to understand that most of their salary is disappearing down the box and only the strong survive.

So I stall too just to bust balls and help the props (I’ve been a prop and managed props) and finally after an embarrassing delay the dealer breaks down and takes the $1 jackpot drop. He still has to take the $3 collection drop as required by procedure but tries to stall again, probably hoping for a pot size bet by me or a pot sized bet by my opponent after my check. Then the remaining $3 drop wouldn’t be so darn obvious. But I decide to keep putting on the pressure and continue to stall. So the dealer finally, with lowered eyes and shame penetrating to the depth of his soul takes three more dollars out of the pot and puts them down the box. Now one lonely, isolated $1 chip remains in the pot. But it is a beautiful $1 chip.

Now that the pot is correct I have two cards and check. The woman at the other end of the table tries to make a pot size bet of $1 but the prop sitting next to her points out that with a $2 big blind, the minimum bet is $2. So she corrects her bet to $2. This is an over-bet so I need a big hand here.

Since I normally don’t talk during the play of the hand (I’ve been voted the most boring player by announcer Dave Tuchman on Live @ Bike) I decided a little 1 /2 NL game is a good time to experiment so I stroke my chin and say, “I don’t think I can call a bet twice the size of the pot.” But I shuffle my stack around a bit to consider. The props are content; my stall slows down the rate they are losing money. There are no action players in the game to upset. After a few more seconds of WSOP final table type contemplation I fold. I had garbage. My opponent takes in a $3 pot, $4 of which is her own money.

Welcome to LA B&M. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

~ Rick


PS This casino (Crystal Park) has to be commended a bit for being the only one in LA having a no flop, no drop policy (not even a jackpot drop). The game got pretty good later when the props were replaced by young kids who seemed like they were out to have fun. I booked a nice win for a small game despite drinking my limit of three cocktails. The place is a pretty pleasant place to play small games.


PPS I wrote this for fun. Later I might make another attempt at presenting my arguments for a serious, probably legal solution to this “drop on flop” problem if enough of you guys are interested.