Game Selection: Art, or Science?

(This is Part Two of a guest post. Still not by Zerbet.)

And a Tip o' the Hat to CentV for the recent history on The Admiral in the comments to Part One!

Having your subconscious a) recognize a sound so faint that it blends in with the background noise, and then b) grab the steering wheel, jerk you into a 180° turn and hit the gas can be, um, disconcerting.

Before I really thought about it, I was walking down that hallway full of out-of-use slots like a hound on the scent. (Speaking of scents: imagine what a really old boat smells like. Now add decades of smokers sitting at slot machines. Mix. Garnish with a sprig of beer-soaked felt for that just-right presentation.)

About halfway down the length of the boat I pass a small snack bar area (curtains pulled closed, no one around) and then an empty cashier station (piles of empty chip racks haphazardly stacked) and then, low and behold, I see dead people - no, wait, they're poker players!

The area felt very small, but I was trying to keep in mind that less than two weeks before I was in Vegas, playing at some of the nicest card rooms in town. As I walked into the "room" (don't rooms have, y'know, walls?) I noticed a guy in a jacket sitting at an empty poker table counting decks, just about the same time he noticed me.

"What you lookin' for?" says he, with a nice smile on his face as he gave me the once-over.

"I dunno, what you spreadin'?" says I, trying to sound like a Sophistimacated Gambler. I looked around for a waiting-list board or something similar... nothing.

He gestures towards a couple of tables in the middle, "We got four-eight," then to three tables around the edge, "No Limit," and finally to a table near where I came in "and Stud."

I scanned the tables as he pointed them out (there were eight tables in the room, and six were in use) and each of them looked full. "Mind if I look around a little before I sit?" I asked. He shrugged.

He asked if I lived in St. Louis, and I told him I did. He asked if I'd ever played poker in a casino before (from which question I astutely surmised the Sophictimacated Gambler guise might need some work) and I told him I'd been in Vegas a couple week before.

"Did you play at Red Rock? Best room in Vegas." he asked. "Nope, we played a couple different places, Ceasar's, the Flamingo, Planet Hollywood. The Red Rock is out of town a ways, isn't it? We stayed at the Imperial Palace so we played at places that were walking distance."

His smile grew huge at the mention of the IP. "I helped build that place. Put all them damn palm trees in myself, with a shovel!

I smiled knowingly just as a dealer at one of the No Limit tables yelled, "Floor!" and he jumped up to head over. I thought to myself, "There were palm trees at the IP?"

I walked around the room and looked to see which tables had open seats. Both $4/$8 tables looked full, and I was OK with that - the last time I played $4/$8 (the MGM in Vegas) I got my ass waxed (along with most of the rest of the table) by some clueless flush-chasing mook.

Fortunately, I'm not bitter about it.

I prefer a nice $3/$6 game and that was what I was planning when I hit the ATM on the way, so sitting at 4/8 under-funded was even less appealing.

The No Limit games also looked pretty full, but I did spot a couple of empty seats. Then I walked over to the Stud table and watched the play for a few minutes.

While was on my little tour of the room another player came in - a young "rural" looking guy with a seriously worn-down baseball cap. Just as I began to watching the action on the Stud table, Worn Cap walked over and asked if I knew what games they had available. I gave him the same description the Floorman had given me, ending with "and Stud" while pointing at the table in front of me.

Worn Cap watched for a minute, and then asked me, "So, they deal all the cards up?"

At this point I thought it was appropriate to take a moment and offer a little silent prayer:

"Dear Lord, I know we don't talk much, and I'm sorry about that stuff last week, but please, God, when this gentleman decides to try Stud, let there be TWO seats open. Amen."

I explained the basic workings of a Stud game to him, including that it was a split-limit game (which I'd figured out only moments before he arrived through the cagey process of walking over and reading the little placard next to dealer's elbow) and how the three cards at the beginning, and each card delivered after were called "streets" and that 7th Street came face down.

He then asked if there was a Bad Beat Jackpot for this game. I barely stopped myself from hugging him.

The Floorman - who's name was Lloyd, as I'd learned from people calling out to him - came by at that point, and my young companion asked him if there were any seats for No Limit. As I chanted "Please play Stud, please play Stud..." in my head, Lloyd told him that his name would be fourth on the list ("...please play Stud, please play Stud...") and that they announce when the seats become available over the casino loudspeakers so he could go play slots while he waited, if he wanted ("...please play Stud, please play Stud!")

Worn Cap asked if there was a seat at the Stud table (yes, we were still standing NEXT to the Stud table) and Floyd pointed at the empty chair next to him and said, "The minimum buy-in is $30."

I asked Lloyd whether we could buy chips at the table (putting the final nail into the coffin of Sophistimacated Gambler persona) and was told no, of course. Um... duh. With Missouri's lost limit rules, they have to sell chips from a central location so they can swipe your card and log your chip purchase.

Worn Cap walked off towards the stairs and was back pretty damn quickly with a rack of about $50 (Thank You, Jesus!)

During the time he was gone, I watched the play and counted the stacks of the people at the table. The people at low-limit Stud tables in most small casinos are usually a little "family" group who know each other very well, and I wanted to try to "fit in" as best I could by sitting down with a Red Riding Hood stack - not too big, and not too small.

Just as Worn Cap sat down another seat emptied right next to him and quick-like-a-bunny, I ran upstairs, bought $60 worth of $1 chips, and ran back downstairs to sit at the Seven Card Stud Game From Hell.

End Part Two