Opening new games / breaking old ones, question to floor/dealers

[dtbog]

This situation came up at Turning Stone yesterday and it frustrated me as a player.

I came down from my hotel room to find only one game running, 1-3 spread limit hold'em -- the lowest game they spread. This game is a total joke, and I'd usually rather play NL than any kind of limit game anyway, so I sat around doing nothing, waiting for a NL game to open.

I saw a couple compatriots around the room, and asked the floor if we could open the NL game shorthanded. They said yes, "but we can't start with 3 -- we need 6". At this time, a seat opened in the 1-3 game, so I shrugged and sat down to pass the time.
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Now we get a few more for NL, so I ask if they'll open NL with 6, including 2 players from the 10-person limit game.

The floor says no, because 'they can't break the 1-3 game.. that wouldn't be fair to the players in that game'... but why not? If the NL players sitting at 1-3 simply stood up on their own accord, then there would be 10 people standing around to play NL, and then the floor would open NL while the 1-3 broke from lack of interest.

.. so then I walked up to a couple of dealers/floor personnel who were standing around talking, and asked them if I would be better off doing nothing at all than taking a 1-3 seat to wait for my game. They said yes. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

... I got fed up, so I bought a deck of cards at their gift shop for $1 and sat at a table with a guy who said he'd play me heads-up. The floor came over and yelled at me for using other playing cards on their tables.

Floor: "What are you doing?"
Me: "I came here to play cards."
Floor: "No other cards on our tables, sir."

A NL game was opened within 2 minutes of this interaction.