Nasty people

[mosch]

Because of you and your damnable publications I find myself with all sorts of problems. You know how many miles I've driven with my extra trips to the card room and the bank, because of your books? You truly are a menace to the environment and a terrible person! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Drunk Bob]

Ejected from cardroom means a little more when you're in the middle of the ocean,then you have to deal with real sharks!

[Clarkmeister]

Mason,

I don't think it is a stretch to think that you and your wife are treated better and see a different side of the Mirage poker room because of your relationship with Donna.

Regards,

Clark

[Clarkmeister]

"So what I'm saying is if you put a negative post up about a make believe cardroom my guess is that you would get some feedback from a few people telling you their even worse experiences. It's just the nature of the Internet"

Even if we ignore the unnamed people who emailed Felicia, this thread has 3 respected posters (Felicia, Fossilman and myself) whose have had negative experiences of a similar nature at the Mirage. None of us have any personal axe to grind, either.


"Now with that being said, if you have a problem with The Mirage Poker Room I believe I can put you in touch with Donna Harris who is Director of Poker Operations where you can discuss the problem with her. And if there is a problem, I guarantee it will be fixed."

Felicia talked with the manager on duty the evening of her incident. She was rebuffed and basically told to butt out. Her experience is entirely consistant with how I have seen the Mirage Shift Managers deal with similar issues and I am not alone in this observation.

I really don't want to get into a long debate about the merits of the Mirage management. I do, however, wish you would respect that others may have had different expereinces than you have.

Regards,

Clark

[FeliciaLee]

I respectfully wish to withdraw from this thread. I knew it was going to be hard to maintain a detached, objective nature in this matter from the start.

Clark, I thank you dearly for your imput. Fossil, however, had nothing to do with the original thread, as it was about a totally different subject, with him saying, "Why don't you try the Mirage?" That is when I posted my Mirage story.

The secondhand stories I tried not to elaborate. I wanted to keep them close to one-liners, with no detail.

The story of the grifter truly happened. I was there. That is why I felt more comfortable elaborating about it.

I stand by the things I have seen. Whether it is a grifter at the Mirage, a dealer getting punched by a drunk at the Riverside, or any other abuse I've witnessed. My Mom was a dealer for ten years. Many of those years were in Vegas, and filled with abusive incidents.

Maybe this thread is just too close to me, emotionally. So I am respectfully asking to withdraw. Dr. Al may use any of my firsthand accounts for his research.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi mosch:

Thanks for the comments.

A lot of people won't believe this, but I have never published a book for the sole intention of making money. Our idea was to produce something very good and the profits would take care of themselves. And because of that, I have never shied away from criticizing how cardrooms are run, and I believe the impact has been very positive.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Clark:

If you are unhappy with the way the shift managers have teated you, you should, in my opinion, go talk to their boss and have a talk with her.

I wasn't there for these rebuffs so I don't want to comment on them specifically. But sometimes during disputes in an effort to get the game going again, which is what most everyone wants, the shift manager (or floorperson handling the problem) will make decisions quickly. That's why at a later taime you should talk to them or their superior in private. You'll be surprised as to how much you can sometimes accomplish by doing this.

Best wishes,
Mason

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi Clark:

I'm treated better everywhere. That's just the way it is when you are as successful as I have been doing what I do.

But it wasn't always this way. I remember when I was looked upon with much suspicion by most cardroom managers who thought that a $10-$20 player had no business being critical of them, and this includes being barred for several months in the late 1980s from The Las Vegas Hilton poker room because I told them that they ran the "Worse cardroom ever." (By the way they closed about a year later after they lost all their business. See "The Collapse of Two Cardrooms" in my book Poker Essays.)

Best wishes,
Mason

[Don Olney]

I am new here, and have started readingthis thread.
Dealer abuse is growing from what I see from my seat.
I also have read that some think poker rooms can not keep the grifters from playing untill something happens.
I thought Casinos had the right to ask anyone not to gamble at the casino, at anytime.
Am I wrong about this

[andyfox]

Good thread.

Your efforts to try to make the cardrooms plesanter places are admirable.

But probably doomed to failure.

Most people lose. And most people who lose go on tilt. Some of them start to play badly or wildly. Some of them get nasty. (Most do both.) Given that many people who play cards regularly do so because they are anti-social to begin with or can't get along in "regular" jobs anyway, the combination of factors makes it a certainly that nastiness will be a part of poker no matter what we do.

Now this doesn't mean we shouldn't try to minimize it. I'm an introverted, quiet person, but I make a big stink both to the players involved and to the cardroom personnel when I think the worst offenders (such as Archie, Iris, and Stefan, about whom I have posted) go over the line.

But the cardrooms will not do anything. They'll put in a 20 minute rule and they'll ban somebody for 24 hours and if they kick him out "permanently" he goes down the road for a few months and ends up back where he started after that. Some time back, Lee Jones took me to task for not being more proactive in doing things to help. Frankly, I don't want to have to run the cardroom. I want to go and have a good time. I expect them to ensure that the experience is a good one for me. I don't want to have to write a letter or constantly get up to consult with a floorperson about things.

Lots of the abuse I see also has a racial overtone to it. A player will make fun of the way an Asian dealer speaks and the Asian dealers at Commerce definitely get abused, by both Asians and non-Asians alike, but mostly by non-Asians, more than non-Asian dealers.

Maybe Mason, because of who he is and his relationship to the big cheese at the Mirage can get something done, but the rest of us are usually tilting at windmills. Archie plays 8 hours a day, paying probably an average of $19/hour in collections, and then he goes and plays in the Chinese section for big $ after his shift is over. And he loses. Bigtime. The casino simply is not going to give up his dollars, either that they put into their pockets, or that they perceive their other customers want to keep in theirs.