"Your Team Sucks" And Short Poker Stories

Good morning everyone.  I'm sorry that I missed you yesterday.  I woke up with some time allotted to do my blog, but I felt bad when I woke up and just went back to sleep before my shift at work.  This late 'Friday' blog has a couple of sports-related 'comebacks' for you and some short poker stories for the poker readers who I shorted on Wednesday when I made my NHL playoffs first-round predictions.

After hours at work last night a group of us were talking about basketball as we cleaned up our venue.  This group included 3 Spurs fans, a Mavericks fan, and a Lakers fan.  You can probably imagine the chirping that was going on as the NBA playoffs are approaching.  The Lakers beat the Spurs a few nights ago, and on facebook I was seeing some of the "Spurs suck" commentary, so I thought that here I'd give you a few comebacks to the "your team sucks" comments after your team suffers a loss at the hands of the guy with the big mouth.  I have found these comebacks to be pretty effective at stifling chirping, and the only team that I follow that they probably wouldn't work for this year is the Montreal Canadiens, who did pretty much suck this season...  My other favorite major sports teams are the Spurs, the Boston Red Sox, and the Pittsburgh Steelers if you are new to 'Bikini Hill'.  So say that the Spurs lose to the Lakers, and you get "the Spurs suck."  Start by snapping off, "well they MUST SUCK if they lost to the LAKERS..."  If necessary, you can follow that up with, "if the Spurs suck so bad, then WHY are you making such a BIG DEAL about the Lakers beating them?..."  Hopefully there's something that you can use there...

I've got a couple of short stories for you that occurred while I was dealing 2-4 limit hold 'em games and one that occurred when I was playing in one of the Station Casinos freeroll tournaments that I participated in while living in Las Vegas.  In the first instance I was dealing what I refer to as a "World Series 2-4 limit hold 'em game."  This means that NO ONE at the table was speaking.  I had a table full of 10 players at the 2-4 limit game who were DEAD SERIOUS.  (At some point in the future, you will probably read about me referencing a game as a "World Series game" when the players are taking FOREVER to act on their hand, like the game is being televised or they are playing for ENORMOUS stakes, but these players were just SILENT)...  I had been dealing this game for about 15 or 20 minutes when 'Sweet Caroline' by Neil Diamond started playing on the in-house music system.  As we played in silence, the first chorus aired...  "...hands...    touching hands...    reaching out...    touching me...     touching you...  Sweet Caroline..."  Suddenly, three players at the table spontaneously BELTED OUT...  "DUN  DUN  DUN!!!"  Led by myself, the whole table starts laughing and everyone FINALLY loosens up...  :)

In another 2-4 limit game that I dealt at a full 10-player table, the woman sitting across from me in the 5-seat sees the flop and proceeds to IMMEDIATELY spill her drink that was sitting in the cupholder nestled in the rail directly in front of her.  At this point she bets her hand and is called in two places.  She bets the turn, and again, is called in two places (I'm trying my best to keep a stone face and not roll my eyes at this point).  After I put the river card on the board, the 5-seat bets again, and after again being called by these 2 players, she proceeds to show that she flopped "the nuts."  My poker tip for you today is that if you ever see anyone excited enough by the flop that they actually BANG into the table and spill their drink, you PROBABLY don't want to call them down to the river...  ;)

You will probably appreciate this last story more if you are a poker dealer or have played a good amount of live poker in casinos.  I was playing in one of the Station Casinos freeroll tournaments (to qualify for this tournament, you had to play a certain amount of hours of poker in any Station Casino in a specified time period - for example, it may have been 90 hours of poker in 3 months).  Well, there are approximately ten of these casinos in the Las Vegas metropolitan area that mainly the local residents frequent, so there are literally thousands of qualifiers for these tournaments, and they require a lot of dealers when the tournaments begin, with many of these dealers predictably being inexperienced to some degree.  Whenever a dealer has a problem at a table that requires the assistance of a floor supervisor, it is common to hear that dealer call out for a 'decision' (for example - "I need a decision on table 22...").  It was early on the first day of this tournament when all I could do was smile and shake my head as I heard the dealer bellow out, "I NEED A SECOND OPINION ON TABLE 22..."  Hopefully someone found that as amusing as I did...

I hope that you have a great weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!