Men the Master dislikes me

I haven't really needed to update everyday since I haven't been running into anything really juicy or having too much gossip happen. Although, I have had quite the work schedule over the past 5 days, working 7 shifts. I've done pretty well and my savings for a down payment on a house are going perfectly as scheduled...in fact, I am ahead of schedule. My goal was to save $400 a week and put it all away into a money market and am further along than I am supposed to be.

Now my best night this week was at TI, where I did $218 (plus hourly) in 4.5 hours which comes out to $56.19 an hour. I say that not as a 'brag post' but I know that some people reading this blog are interested in the amount of money that a dealer can make. Is this rare? Absolutely. But for all of the stiffs, there are plenty of generous people who make up for them.

Tonight I dealt ca$h games and started out in the 2/5NL and 5/10NL section. I eventually made my way over to the high limit section which is almost always a nightmare. I dealt 2 tables of high limit mixed games. The first table had Men the Master and Greg Raymer. Now Raymer has always been one of my favorites and he verified it tonight with how nice and classy he was at the table as I dealt to him. Men the Master on the other hand was a complete ass to me. I am not very familiar with dealing mixed games except for the 2/4 and 3/6 limit mixer at Treasure Island. Jumping up to 400/800 is pretty intense. Plus, at the higher level, they are pretty specific in the way they do things and the way they want the dealer to run the game. This takes some time to learn and adjust. Many of the high limit players don't care though.

So what happened with Men the Master? First, he yells at me for not moving the lammer before cutting the deck (the lammer signifies which # of hand you are on in that particular game...in this case it was Badugi) and then went off on me about the timing of taking the time rake from the players which was ridiculous. So I'm a little rattled by this and the next hand, I somehow skip past Men when dealing out the cards in Badugi (players get 4 cards) so basically Men had 3 cards and everyone else had 4. Well he went apeshit and started yelling at me and Raymer had to calm him down. Had I been able to express my opinion, I'd have told him what he is which is a known cheater, but I kept my mouth shut and figured it would be a good experience to go through this and would probably end up with a good story as well. Raymer stuck up for me by saying, "He's doing fine, it was an honest mistake." After that, Men did end up raking a nice pot and then cooled off, gave me a look as if he was saying 'everything's alright now, its all good' and actually threw me a couple bucks because I think he felt bad and realized that I was really trying hard. As I got up out of there, Raymer threw me $5 and said, "Good job John....do you play golf?" I told him I did not and he made a brief comparison about swinging a club and not letting abusive players bother me...I forget the exact statement, but it was nice of him to say.

After that I dealt a 150/300 mixed game and it was cake. That down went perfect and during it I dealt 2-7 Triple Draw and Omaha 8b. Easy game.

Tomorrow -- wait, actually today considering it around 3:30am -- is Clay's birthday and it will be interesting to see what kind of trouble we find. I've got the day off which is much deserved...