A Tipping Story

Hawk Loogie wasn't the biggest tipper in the world but that didn't make him a bad guy.   He was also absurdly nitpicky about rules and procedures but that didn't make him a bad guy either.  What made him a bad guy, in the eyes of Anna Reksic, was when Hawk called Anna over to the table to complain that the dealer was ungracious.

Anna was working the floor when Hawk showed up with his roll of quarters.  All the tables were in action that night at the Column Down poker room.  All three of them.  A $3-6 hold'em game was going at table one.  At table two it was six geezers playing Hollywood gin.  And table three was the main game: $4-8 Omaha hi-lo.

Anna was a houseman here, meaning that each week, she dealt a few nights, she ran the floor a couple nights, and the other nights, like the other housemen, she played.  Anna had thin bones and thick skin.  Cute, flirtatious, controlling, she had been molded by these walls into a poker guy’s kind of gal, female when convenient, and only then by technicality. 

The Omaha hi-lo game had just started when Hawk walked in.  Anna offered him the last open seat.  He said “I’ll take it” and sat down.  Nobody knew the brisk stranger.  Hawk adjusted the collar on his jogging jacket, smugly, with an Elvis sneer.  There was an oval of tension.  He put on his big sunglasses, deliberately, with both hands, and now he looked like an insect.  The tension grew.   Hawk pulled out a roll of quarters and thunked it onto the table, in defiance.

Think of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.  Think of Richard Nixon and any Kennedy.  Now think of the Oakland Raiders and any anything.  There was that much tension, already.  And Anna was keeping watch.

The big blind was two seats right of Hawk.  While shuffling, the dealer asked Hawk if he wanted dealt in.   Hawk asked, “Is it free if I come in behind the button?”  The dealer nodded yes.  “Well of course I’ll wait then,” Hawk said with a biting tone. “Hey, is that coffee free?”  The dealer nodded yes again, barely.  Hawk went to get some.

He came back and watched a few hands.  All players saw all flops.  Berry patch, he thought.  Hawk took his first hand in the cutoff seat.   The players watched Hawk muck before the flop.  A waste of a perfectly good chair, they thought.

Next hand, Hawk had A-4-Q-9, with the Q-9 suited.  Not bad, but still bad enough.  He folded again.

Next hand he had an ace-deuce so he limped along with everyone else.  The player on the button had ace-deuce too, and the low got there, so Hawk won one fourth of the medium-sized pot.  The dealer split the pot in half.  It was an even split.  He shoved half the pot to the high-hand winner.  Then he split the other half in half.  There was an odd chip.  He tossed the odd chip to the gray-haired man on the button before awarding the even stacks.

Hawk spoke up.  “Wait a second.  I had worst position. I should get that odd chip, not him.”

The dealer started to speak but she stopped abruptly when she saw Anna standing behind Hawk.  Anna had her index finger on her lips, giving the shush signal to the dealer.  Hawk was unaware that Anna had been there all along.  Anna acted as if she happened to be walking by.  “Is there something I can help with?”

“Yes there is,” snapped Hawk.  “Perhaps you can explain to me why I am not getting the odd chip in this pot.”

Anna said, “We do lots of things a little different out here.”  That was true.  “For instance, when there is a tie for low, and there is an odd chip in the low half, the odd chip goes to whoever is older.”  That was true too.  Hawk’s face started to twist up.  Anna continued, “I know, I know.  It’s silly.  Kinda fun, actually.  But still.  We should be more conformist, for when passersby pass by.”

“Well,” Hawk said.  “It’s wrong.  You should change that rule.”

“You are absolutely right,” Anna said. “I have been trying to get the owner to change it for five years.”  That was a lie, and everyone but Hawk knew so.  Hawk was pleased with Anna’s competence.  Hawk even imagined tipping her at the end of the night if he won big enough.

The player who won half the pot tossed three one-dollar chips to the dealer.  The player who split the low half with Hawk tipped one chip.  Hawk picked up his roll of quarters and cracked it open on his chair leg.  He spilled some quarters onto the table behind his chips.  He tossed two quarters to the dealer.  The dealer tapped the chip tray twice with the quarters and said thank you, but everyone knew he didn’t mean it, including Hawk.

The next hand, there was a raise and a reraise before the flop and everyone was in except for Hawk.  By the end, the pot swelled to over $200, all $1 chips.  There were two housemen in the game and they split this pot, one winning high, the other low.  The dealer pushed four tall stacks of chips to each winner.  Then he split the remaining stack into two stacks of 12 chips each.  He pushed these final stacks to the winners.  The first houseman splashed half of his final stack back to the dealer as a tip.  The second houseman tipped the entire final stack, twelve dollars.  The dealer said thank you, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and he put the chips in his chip tray.