Lost Episode 4: Event #6, $1500 Limit Holdem

It is truly an honor and pleasure to deal at the World Series of Poker, so if I grumble a bit about things, don't take that too seriously. My last post went a little long about the no-man's land tables, but that was really only a half dozen or so out of nearly 250 total tables available for these events. That being said, it surprised me that the dealers chairs weren't adjustable enough to get the overall height needed. I am not a smallish person, and I spent the whole series carrying around a self-made booster seat. Nearly all of the dealers carry a pad or two. Some of the shorter dealers are forced to carry 3 or 4 pillows from table to table. I think it looks sloppy and a bit unprofessional and I hope that Harrah's addresses it next year.

On my fourth day, I was put right into the start of the first limit holdem event. My very first table had Allen Kessler, who has a reputation for playing a wide open range and during the early going he seemed quite active. There was an issue during this first down with regard to a hand killed by the cell phone use rule. I didn't need to make a floor call, but it seems that there has been some waffling and inconsistent enforcement. This would become an issue that would perturb me throughout the series. Simply put, the directors can not effectively change policy midstream and communicate it thoroughly to all of the people needed for an event this size. They need to all get on the same page before the event and hammer a consistent message into all the dealer meetings.

Midway through my shift an incident occurred just one table away from me. During our first chip race, to remove green chips from play, one of the floormen messed up the procedure and he caught the wrath of Andy Bloch, who stuck around to observe the process. The year before, over $2,000,000 extra chips came into play sometime during the main event, which became a huge issue and caused considerable embarrassment for the WSOP and Harrah's staff. Andy Bloch showed very little class, in my opinion, by literally hollering at the top of his lungs on and on for nearly 5 minutes about the mistake that he observed. Most of the players had left the area, and it was abnormally quiet, so his voice was heard throughout the Amazon room and attracted alot of attention. Most of the top management staff had to come over to oversee the snafu and control Andy's rants a bit. I later saw a CardPlayer video interview where Bloch talks about the error, and I am sure there was reason for his dismay, but I thought he was acting like a child. But, I must agree in that there really is no excuse for the sort of errors that seem to occur in biggest, most prestigious poker tournament in the world. I did get a chance to talk with the floorman later about what happened, and I was a little disappointed in that his focus was entirely on the Bloch tantrum and not the procedural error.

Other notable poker professionals that I dealt to on this day included: Jason Strasser, Barry Schulman, Justin Bonomo, Rafe Furst, Brad Daugherty, Brett Jungblutt, David Chiu, Greg Mueller and Lee Watkinson. In all, I was able to deal 12 downs with only a single break.