One of my favorite stories to this day was in the Empire. Now the player - dealer bond that occurs between the 'regs' of the game is a pretty fun one, when after all they spend hours of their life either pitching you the lot or cold decking your bank roll away. Now one dealer, i'll mention no names, had persistently told one of the older regs, who spent each betting round trying to keep his eyes wide open, to go home as he was drifting off and slowing the game down for the more caffeine eyed among us.
After the fourth or fifth time, said dealer decided it was his time to have some entertainment. Spreading the deck out as if to shuffle the dealer picked out the
unknown to the sleeping gentleman. With a cheeky 'you know' look to the rest of the table the dealer slid the rolled up aces to the snoring senior and pitched the rest of us the cards.
The player UTG was a young guy who dealt at the Vic and was happy to play along. He raised to 7 UTG at 1/2 and UTG+1 limped. It was folded to the unsuspecting victim in MP who was ushered by the dealer as normal to wake up. He looked down at his cards, took a steady gaze towards his chips, then to his left and then.... flatted, flicking in a red and two yellow discs.
The table erupted in laughter and the dealer gave the player a final warning as well as a rub down asking him "Did you forget to add a pony to that bet".
Anyway, a shout out to the heroic dealers that keep the nightly grind that little bit more entertaining, as well as those that participate in 'Lodden' prop bets.
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