Late at Night in Atlantic City
A lot of players will think I’m crazy, but I have always enjoyed playing tournaments. Granted, they are high variance and can take forever, but your payday can be huge, so what the heck I’ll play them every once in a while.
The WSOP Circuit was in town recently. By “in town” I actually mean Atlantic City, NJ, and although this blog is generally about playing the underground games in the city, occasionally you will have to indulge me on a trip to one of the dirtiest, most depressing places on earth, the land happily known by only its initials A & C.
The bus down to AC is a cheap easy jaunt, two hours, $15 when you clear your bonus at the casino, and some of the least enjoyable company you could imagine. Granted, not everyone is angry and depressed, but any random sample will likely find at least 70% with those two attributes. Indulge me in a story from my past:
A couple years ago, when I was playing poker seriously, but not professionally, I decided to make the trek to Atlantic city late one night. It was about midnight, one of the last busses for the night, and I had had a few too many drinks to be making rational decisions like “not going to AC”, but there was a big July 4th tournament at the Borgata the next day, so at the last minute I took a friend up on her offer of a free suite at Bally’s and bussed on out of the city.
The man sitting next to me was old and weathered looking. He looked, well, like he should be on a bus to Atlantic City at midnight on the Tuesday before 4th of July. He looked like a slot jockey, that beautiful creature who can sit for hours praying to its one-armed god – now more like its buttoned god. A creature who needs nothing more than a frequent player’s card, a lanyard, and a bucket full of quarters to find true happiness.
We are about 20 minutes into the ride when I turn to my companion and ask “So what are you going down to play” and his response surprised me.
“1-2 no limit at the Trop and 5-10 stud at the Taj” he grumbled.
A little surprised I asked what he did for a living and he muttered “That.”
Okay, at this point the old guy kind of surprised me, but I guess maybe he was some retiree eeking out a living between that and social security, or maybe he had a nice retirement fund to work with.
After another minute or two of small talk and short answers, yeah, I was prying, the guy says “I deal a game out of Queens too.” Okay, so the guy deals in Queens and plays in AC.
“What’d you do before that?”
“Before that?”
“Before you were dealing a game in Queens.”
“What do you mean before I was dealing a game in Queens? When I was growing up I ran a craps game for my dad, then I started dealing.”
Okay, there was my answer. A man who spent his life in the New York gambling world. When he was young it was craps, now at the age most men are retiring to the golf courses he has graduated to poker.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Atlantic City.
