Still have not seen, or heard, it all.

I've only been dealing poker for 18 months. In those 18 months I have seen and heard a considerable amount of things that one would likely not see or hear anywhere except inside a poker room. It is truly a different world. One quickly becomes a little bit jaded and it then takes an extra dash of "holy shit" to raise an eyebrow.
Yesterday I found myself dealing a $5-10 blind NLH game. I have only dealt to the 8s a few times, but EVERY time I have dealt to him, during my 30 minutes at the table, he had found a reason to pull his roll out of his pocket and place it on the table. Granted, the wad of bills would choke the proverbial horse, but this is Las Vegas. Horse-choking-wads-o'-cash are not at all out of the ordinary. He assails the table with constant chatter. Yesterday, this chatter-challenge-chatter was working brilliantly to put the 4 and 5 seat on the biggest tilt-o-whirl in the world. It was I'll bet you 1,000-1 that my buddy can make more foul shots than you. I'll bet you $10,000 that I can do this better than you. You wussies can't sit there and wait for AA and expect to make money, etc etc. He was giving and getting action and was running over quite a few of the players. Then, suddenly he was heads up with a solid-not on tilt-player who re-raised him. He quickly laid down his hand and stated to the re-raiser. "I'll bet you $5000 that my dick is bigger than yours...I already know that I've got bigger balls" Thankfully, the challenged simply stated that "I'm not into that". Would I, as the dealer, have been expected to do the measurements and push the pot to the "winner"? I could imagine myself yelling DECISION, TABLE 10!!
The 4 s later got busted by Mr. Bravado. He pulled out $400 and wanted to re-buy. The min-buy was $500 and we don't allow short-buys. The entire table wanted me to look away and let Mr. I'MONTILT make the short buy. Sorry guys. The 5s wanted to give the 4s $100 in chips to meet the buy requirement. Sorry, that's not allowed either. The 5s finally pulled $100 from his pocket and gave it to the 4s. He was back in business and still on tilt. You could see it in his eyes. He wanted to drag Mr. Bravado outside for a little bit of whoop ass. When I got pushed, the 4s still had about $300 but I suspect that he lost it shortly thereafter.

As of 8:00 AM this morning, the Palms poker room is Non Smoking.....at least on a trial basis. I smoke, but I can tell you that I look forward to dealing without having smoke blown in my face either intentionally or not. The smoke could really be brutal at times. It will be interesting to see if this helps or hurts our customer base. I know that there are quite a few people who play with us because we allowed smoking. I also know that there are quite a few who stopped playing with us because we continued to allow smoking. I wonder how it all will turn out and I will be watching with a vested interest.

Time to fly. The smoke free poker tables await.