Rock Star Poker cont.

Do I have a cool job?
YES, YES, capital letters YES!
Friday found me working most of my normal shift, but at 7:00 when I normally would be looking at the EO list to see if I was on my way out, I was on my way to The Lounge to deal the Rock Star Poker tournament.
Phil gathered the contestents and started to give a Poker Basics 101 speach. He asked how many of the contestants had NEVER played live or online. Amazingly, over half of the people raised their hands..... Phil sent them to Charlie, a Palms dealer and tasked Charlie with teaching them the most basic of the basics. I guess Charlie did a good job because one we got started, things went rather smoothly.
As I have said before, dealing to stars of TV, Movie and Stage doesn't usually get me too worked up. Not that I was worked up about this either, but this was way cool. As the room began to fill and the general public was admitted to the observation area the DJ started cranking out the tunes. Then Phil Gordon introduced those who had won a chance to play in the tournament. He then introduced Dave Navarro, Chad Kroeger, Jerry Cantrell and Gene Simmons (who had just celebrated a birthday) and invited each rock star to select someone from the general admission crowd to play too. Not one of them chose a dude. Not that I expected anything less, but each, in turn selected an attractive female from the crowd. In addition to the $10,000 grand prize, anyone who knocked out one of the stars received a $100 KISS chip courtesy of the Palms. Unfortunately, I was dealing when both Dave and Jerry were eliminated. Gene was the first star eliminated and Chad was the last.
I'm not sure why this surprises me, but each and everyone of the rock stars were extremely gracious and nice people. It was a pleasure to have played a small part of it all.
A young man named Justin won it all. Earlier in the day I happened to deal to Justin in a $2-4 limit game. He told me then that he hoped that the (bad)cards I was dealing him in the limit game were not an omen. I guess he got the bad cards out of the way in the afternoon so that he could win a cool $10,000 later in the evening. To read Dave Navarro's blog of the event and his account of how Justin celebrated it, visit this link. http://www.6767.com/
Gettin' nekkid with Gene Simmons' girl friends.........Only in Vegas Baby!
No, I was not invited to the after party.........maybe next year.