Patience!

About half way though my down on table 9 ($2-5 blind NLH) today a young man sat in seat #1. Almost immediately I noticed that he had something written on his left hand. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious that he had taken a ball point pen and written PATIENCE on his hand. When I stopped laughing I asked him if it worked. He said it worked for him. Maybe all poker players should have that word tattooed on their hands.......
I told him that I thought that I would write about him and he gave me his business card. He is a DJ from LA and his name is Michael Stone AKA DJ Stonerokk www.djstonerokk.com
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Today's performance was spotty at best. On my first table of the day I missed a raise and dropped the deck early. On my third table I misread a hand. It looked like it was going to be one of those days. By the fourth table I had settled down and things went fine. When I went on break after my fourth table I was at the podium and happened to cash out one of the players from the 4th table. He asked my first name (my name tag says Murph) and commented that I was a very good dealer. He liked the way I ran my game and my demeanor. He is a poker dealer (I forgot to ask where he worked) and I told him that a compliment from a fellow dealer meant a lot to me. I also told him that I was off to a rocky start today..........he should see me on the occasional "good" day.....lol

One of the great aspects of my job is that you have the opportunity for a fresh start every 30 minutes. You can carry the bad from table to table OR you can consciously begin anew. Of course changing tables every 30 minutes makes it easier to fade the occasional idget. If I had to deal to some of those players for 8 hours straight I would likely NOT be a poker dealer. I'd be a patient at the local psych ward. To be fair, the VAST majority of our players are nice, friendly folks who are a pleasure to deal to/with.
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Things have slowed down noticably in the room recently. Everyone is wondering if it is a result of the new poker rooms opening or just the start of the summer doldrums in LV. The temperature the last few days has been in the triple digits. We anticipate increased traffic in the very near future. Our tourmanent series starts on May 28 and of course, the WSOP is being held across the street from us. We should see significant overflow business. There are rumors/speculations that the field for the main event may approach 6,000. In case you don't have a calculator handy, that is $60,000,000 smackeroos. I'm not sure that Harrah's/Rio has the infrastructure to handle that number of people, but is should be interesting to see how it all plays out.

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I recently started playing poker online for the first time in about 2 years. I'm not one of the "online poker is rigged" people, but on the 4th or 5th hand I saw straight flush over straight flush. That's not something you see very often.
I've played 3 SNGs placing 3rd in one and going out in 9th the other two. Overall I am down about $5 over 3 days of play. Maybe I need to write PATIENCE across my monitor................