Easy answer if that was a question. When I go on vacation I pick a destination that has a casino that offers poker.
Other posts are asking questions about memorable poker hands.
Ok, here is one.
The Bicycle Poker Room, Las Angeles, California, about 1986.
Now the Bike is sitting there with well over a hundred tables not counting tournament tables. They have many bad beat jackpots listed for each game, each limit. 2/4 Holdāem, 3/6 and 5/10. 2/4, 3/6, 5/10 seven card stud. You get the picture. Higher limit games do not have bad beat jackpots because they are time games. Now you often see where the lottery sometimes gets big because no one hits it for a while. Well, the same thing was happening at the bike to its 7-card stud 5/10 straight high game. On any given day you would see between four to six tables of just this one game and limit. But then its jackpot started building. $5,000, $10,000, $20,000. People in 3/6 started moving up to play, people in 10/20 started moving down to play. And it kept growing. $30,000, $40,000, $50,000. People started moving over from Texas Holdāem to play, and then Omaha, both High and High/Low. And it kept growing. $60,000, $70,000, $80,000. Try to remember that this was still the early days of bad beat jackpots. At this time the jackpots only paid 75% to the loser and 25% to the winner. Nothing to the rest of the table. Now, every day, they were starting over 40 tables of seven card stud 5/10, straight high. I used to drive over to LA every few weekends because the players were on the whole much easier to beat than in Las Vegas where I lived. I even hit an $8,000 jackpot myself one weekend. The bike had a hotel right across the street and an Asian Restaurant in house to die for. You could order and be served at the table if you wished. Anyway, here I come, look around, study the board and zero in on the seven-card stud action so I signed up and started playing. Seven card stud qualifiers for the bad beat jackpot were Aces full of Jacks or better beaten by any Four of a kind or better. Does not seem that terribly difficult with about 50 tables going and the Jackpot at about $88,000 that day.
I have been playing about three hours when I hear something stirring on the table next to mine. I stood up and looked. Two players were playing heads up and on 6th street one player was showing three Aces and the other was showing three Queens on the table. The two kept betting until one was all in (no limit on raises when you are down to only two active players). By this time, it was standing room only around the table, including a couple of floor people. The dealer paused and looked at his boss. The floor said, āPlayers, it is your choice, but if you wish, you may now turn up your hole cards for all to see and it will not affect the jackpot if we have one because one of you is all in and the betting has stopped.ā The two players looked at each other and one said āOkā. They both turned their cards face up on the table. One player now showed the fourth Queen while the other player showed pocket jacks for Aces full of Jacks. āJACKPOTā The Aces full of Jacks had just won over $60,000
Now for the rest of the story!
The floor told the dealer to deal the last card, which he did ,face down, and the players turned them over. With all the yelling going on, it took a while for reality to sink in. The Queens had drawn a nothing card, but the other player was sitting there looking stunned. He had just drawn the fourth ace, ohā¦myā¦GOD. The four Queens was now the losing hand and with a flick of the wrist, the Aces full had just turned into four Aces and it had cost him $40,000. The payouts were now reversed. What a horrible time to help your hand.
More poker stories to come later.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
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Hi Craig,
Yes. But how often are you carrying a poker room around with you in your back pocket when on vacation. Now, I am a poker fanatic, but playing poker 20 hours a day, seven days a week forever? I donāt think so.
You want to play poker every waking hour on the cruise, no problem, sleep when we are in port. The poker room is open all three shifts when we are not in port. But in that case, why go on a cruise at all. Just go book a room at the Bellagio, 40 tables, all limits, and play until you drop.
By the way, I guess I am a lot like you. In my 35 years in the poker business, offhand, I can only think of one vacation that I took that did not have a casino nearby. That was one week in Hawaii. I rented a Honda motorcycle big enough to carry two people, and we went to places on that island that the locals have not been to in a hundred years. Up into the mountains and through the rainforest where we were told that they used to sacrifice a virgin, (where they found a virgin, I have no idea). Down on the flat land riding through the pineapple plantations. I found small white beaches for the two of us with no other footprints to be seen. Nice snorkeling for the afternoon.
And no casinos, we had each other, and that was enough.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
For everyone.
I am not sure yet, but it would seem that I might have committed a cardinal sin. I used the word āticketā in one of my posts to you.
I now abase myself before you all and sincerely apologize.
This sin will not be committed again. I so swear upon a deck of cards.
I will be spending the weekend committing self-flagellation upon myself to rid myself of my sins, as soon as I remember where I keep my leather whips and other toys.
Ok, I joked about it, but evidently this website takes this topic very seriously, and I will not repeat this mistake in the future.
I hope I am allowed to post more to you in the coming days.
The jury is still out.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
David
My favorite is the Monte Carlo in Monaco.
There are always Cruise Ships in port there.
Happy Thanksgiving 
Hi,wildpokerdude.
I liked your question because it brought back memories.
I stated dealing high limit poker in Las Vegas in 1973.
At that time, almost all of the new dealers coming into the business, including myself, were dealing high limit poker because we wanted to become a professional poker player ourselves. With that goal in mind, once we learned our basic dealing skills, yes, we watched the players like hawks trying to learn from them. And learn we did. And it also made us better dealers by being aware of, a lot of the time, what the players were about to do and why they were doing it. It turned into a double-edged sword. We got so good at reading the players, to be able to tell in advance what their cards were and who was going to win the pot before they turned over their cards, that we thought Ok, I think that I am ready to go make a lot of money myself playing cards. For you players who only play online, you really donāt have a clue of what the difference is between playing online and playing live. Apples and oranges folks.
Anyway, what the dealers did not understand was that being the dealer at the table gave you a God like view of the whole table, because that made you a better dealer. Now out the dealers went to play live themselves, and guess what, no God like view.
You were now a player and not a dealer, your mind was on your cards being dealt to you and how the betting was affecting you as a player. A whole new learning curve, totally different from being a dealer. It was almost as if being a dealer was not helping you at all, or at most, very little. So no, very, very few poker dealers became professional poker players. After paying my dues playing in live games, I dropped out of dealing and became a professional poker player for almost 3 years before I stopped and went back to dealing for a living. What a professional player does is live a whole different lifestyle. You have to keep records of your play every day. Where you played, what you played, what limit you played what hours of the day you played and your win loss ratio for all of these.
There is a term in poker called a āRounderā, hence the name of the movie. It has a different meaning for different people, but most of them are still true. One thought is that a Rounder is a player who makes the rounds of different casinos looking for that special game that looks like it can be beaten. That is why keeping records is so important. They show you to never go to this casino on Fridays, and never go to that casino on the weekend or maybe never play at these casinos at these levels.
That is one interpretation of the word āRounderā. That is true, but I like the other interpretation of the word, because that is what I consider myself to be. I think a āRounderā is a player who is comfortable playing in almost every type of poker game that is offered, meaning an all around player who is a comfortable player in the game of the day. It can be texas holdāem, or seven card stud straight high or hi/lo. It can be Omaha high only or omaha hi/lo. It can be 5 card stud high or hi/lo or it can be 5 card draw. Or maybe deuce to seven low ball draw. Have you ever heard of H.O.R.S.E? The leters stand for Holdāem, Omaha, Raze, Seven Card Stud, and Seven Card Stud Eight or Better. The dealer has 5 little signs on the table in front of him. As each new dealer sits down every 30 minutes the dealer switches the sign to the next game on the list that he will be dealing. Now these players, to me, are true rounders, because they must be able to play, and win, at all of these games. I count myself among those few āRoundersā. A lot of dealer players are āroundersā because we had to learn how to deal those different games 40 hours a week.
So, to answer your question, Yes, the dealers watch everything each player at the table does in order to become a better dealer. The better the dealer becomes at reading the players, the better dealer he becomes.
OK - poker story.
Picture me dealing at the Dunes, about 1978.
This is a mob-controlled casino with the highest limit games in town on a daily basis, which probably means in the world. Every day the lineup of games starts at 4/8, 10/20, 15/30, 30/60, 50/100, 100/200, and whatever the one, two, or three really high limit games were. The casino manager (read Mob guy) had his elderly father (read retired Mob guy) living there at the hotel. His name was Charlie Rich and everyone called him āRich Charlesā. A little guy, about five foot six, maybe 140 lbs, maybe. He liked to play the 100/200 seven card Raze game about four nights a week. He would always sit in the number five seat so that he could see better, directly across from the dealer. Raze means low only wins the pot, high hands do not play. Rich Charles was a nice enough guy, meaning that he would tip the dealer when he won a hand. But, oh boy. Players, when they get their last card face down would never look at it until the players before them would act so that they might not show a tell to the table. Rich Charles had a tell, a big one. When he finally did look at his last card, if the card made his hand useless, both hands holding the three down cards would shake. He would then look up and throw the three hole cards at the dealer, hitting him or her in the chest or sometimes his aim was off, and the cards would go as high as the dealerās neck. But hey, remember the word āMobā. You took it as part of the job. I got hit in the chest myself quite a few times. I am an easy target at six feet one inch. Anyway, I finally locked onto his tell, and whenever I saw his hands shake, I would push my dealers chair straight back about two feet before he looked up. He liked it. Whenever he looked up and prepared to throw the cards he would see me pushed back and out of throwing reach. That would make him smile, and he would turn the cards face down on the table and politely push them forward, because I wasnāt going anywhere near that table until he took his hands off of the cards. I think he liked me.
Ok, that is my Mob poker story for the day.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
4 Likes
Question 
Did you ever get tips from high rollers that knew you over 35 years instead of chips like rings, watches, chains ? When you retired did the casino owners ever give you a nice Rolex?
Ok, this just came in.
Hi David,
I honestly donāt play at casinos. I feel my facial expression and body language always give me away, so Iād rather play online, where I can hide behind a computer screen. 
My come back.
Thank you, you just made me laugh out loud, honestly.
That is one of the most honest answers that I have ever heard, and oh so true.
To up your game online, I hope you are playing on more than one table at a time.
Back 15 years or so ago, I had friends playing for cash online playing 12 to 16 tables at once and beating the game. Me, I maxed out at 8 tables at once and felt more comfortable with 6 tables. When the laws about gambling online for real money in the states changed many online players moved out of the country. I had friends that moved to Canada to play because of the language, but I know of others who moved to Mexico and Central America. The Carribean was also a new home for some to live and play online in. I seriously thought about it myself but did not want to miss all my family and friends. I own two houses one in Phoenix and one in Las Vegas. When I am up in Vegas, I can legally play online for cash there, so that scratches my itch to play.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
Ps - I hope that you like my posts. I am being told by friends in the business that they had never heard half of the real-life things that I am posting online.
I also had a question above which you missed.
On what platform are your friends in the business reading your posts on Replays Community Forums ??
Your friends in the business never ran across things like in your stories? How can that be ?
Anyone can google replay poker forum and read the content, but only members can reply.
Hope this helps.
So how does the average person know your screen name and that youāre on Replay Poker Community Forums to Google it ?
Craig, what can I say.
I keep in touch with many of my friends by phone and by email. I have told them about replay poker, but I also email my posts to special friends.
If you read it again, I never said that they āneverā ran across things ālikeā in my stories. The Mob ruled back then. The people reading my posts on this web site are hearing things that were never spoken out loud back then. Consider yourselves lucky, I have never told some of these stories to anyone in my life before this. I am 73 years old and hopefully most of the people who I speak about are dead or in an old folkās home by now (knock on wood). Many people have, over the years, said that I should write my memories down before I am no longer able to do so. (By many people I mean more than a dozen). Believe me when I say that a lot of things happened that I never heard about.
The Mob, remember.
I can only write about things that I know in my mind actually happened. In all my posts I will never make any things up or add things that I am not sure in my mind actually happened. Right now, I am still wondering why no one has asked me why I stopped playing poker for a living. There must be a lot of poker players out there who watch the WSOP on TV and fantasize about what it would be like to do that for a living. I know of a lot of players who started playing poker for small limits and eventually made it into a full-time job.
Think people. Ask questions. At this time, I might be unique in that I have this information available to you and are willing to share.
I feel like Kelsey Grammer on Fraiserā¦āIām listeningā.
Anyway, Happy thanksgiving everyone. david
Hi Craig.
Simple answer, they donāt. According to replay I now have about 80 people who have read my posts. The rest of the world has no idea about what I am saying, just you special few.
I have no wish to write a book. I am just killing time here on replay. The give and take dialog right now amuses me. But I have had one mild heart attack and have had three stints put in me, the third one just last month. Time is short and getting shorter. If I wish to tell some truths that have not been spoken about before, that is my prerogative. And no, before you ask, I do not know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried, and I would not tell you if I did.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
1 Like
Oops, make the 552 who have read, about 85 who have replied.
That sounds so morbid on Thanksgiving morning.
Enjoy your day
Then I guess it is a good thing that I sent it out the day before
Thanksgiving isnāt it!
By the way, Craig, thatās two.
Have you ever heard that joke?
Have you ever dealt a hand where one of the players threw the keys to his car (or some other object of value) into the pot to cover his bet?
Iām out of this thread thatās all over the internet.
Best of luck and health.
1 Like
Thanks, DadO-BadO
It is always nice when someone makes me laugh at home.
Yes, several things have been tossed onto the table.
I think my favorite was when Puggy Person threw his wallet into the pot and declared a raise. Johnny Moss reached down, pulled off both of his shoes, tossed them both into the pot and said,
āWell, if we are now playing for leather, I reraiseā.
The whole table, except Puggy, just started laughing.
Amarillo Slim fell off of his chair he was laughing so hard.
A picture of Amarillo Slim, Johnny Moss and Benny Binion
Thanks for the question.
Happy Thanksgiving, David
1 Like