Would anyone here like service?

The new and improved old card room at the Muck reopened late Wednesday night, recombining with the old new room, and it still had that new-degenerate smell when I got there yesterday afternoon.

The carpet has been replaced, and that was long overdue and much appreciated by everyone, I'm sure. The bigger and more noticeable changes though were the fancy new tables and electronic communication system.

At the new front desk by the entrance a floor guy takes your name, asks what you want to play and types it into a computer. Big plasma screens around the room show the constantly updated list of games and waiting players, and also the high hand for that hour's bonus and the dealer rotation.

Each table has a little panel in front of the dealer, with a row of buttons and a small LED readout screen. When there's an open seat the dealer pushes a button and the next player on the big board is called to the table. Next to the dealer's panel is a credit card swiper. When a new player sits in, he hands the dealer his Muckleshoot player's card, used to track hours for comps and giveaways, and the dealer swipes him into the system. If he gets up for a break, changes tables or even changes seats, it's noted.

That's good because a lot of players were gaming the system. The Muck always tracked hours for generous quarterly giveaways -- they'd hold nightly drawings for thousands of dollars every three months, with tickets in the barrel determined by hours played, and also freeroll tournaments with starting chips determined by hours -- but the tracking system was extremely loose. Some players would sit into a game, clock in, and then get up and walk around or hang out in the restaurant for hours, returning to play a round just often enough to keep their seats. The result was that when it came time for the quarterly drawings the same couple dozen "players" -- playas, more like -- would pull down thousands of dollars raked from the pots of us solid citizens. That always annoyed me.

But the early reviews of the system yesterday weren't good, at least from the dealers. They all hated the extra work, and already the button panels seemed finicky.

The one thing the dealers seemed to appreciate was the relative quiet in the room. Gone were the constant shouts from the tables to the floor to the tables to the food station to the tables. "Seat on 4! Thank you 4. Mark M for 4-8, table 4. Chips! Service on 3! Thank you 3! Double on 16!"

If you worked there, I guess, that would get old. But I always liked the cacophony. It's part of the experience. And if you hear enough calls for "service" at the next table you might get a bead on some guy who's drinking too much.

At our table yesterday, the dude in Seat 8 sipping vodka and cranberry juice quietly asked the dealer for a cocktail waitress. The dealer must have pushed a button because in a minute, without another word being spoken, Anna was standing there. "Would anyone here like service?"

New Muck update

The refurbishing of the old poker room was supposed to be done Saturday, but as of Sunday night it was still closed off, leaving players jammed into the smaller "new" room.

With my fuzzy camera phone I could see the new carpet's laid and the tables are partly reinstalled, so I'm not sure what the holdup is at this point. Word around the campfire, with much eye-rolling by dealers, was that they still need another week or so.

One player (and one dealer?) per hand

Thanks to a horrible mistake by an experienced dealer, Michelle got ripped off of a big pot in our Muck session the other night, a swing that made the difference between a winning and losing session for her.

I wasn't in the hand and don't remember all the particulars, but I know she raised pre-flop with A-K, hit a king right away and didn't slow-play. I think the flop was K-9-7. One of the other players in the pot was a friendly, extremely loose, not very knowledgeable and heavily drinking Tracy Morgan look-alike in Seat 9. He kept playing back at Michelle, but she didn't back down, reraising confidently and forcing the dude to pay if he was drawing.

By the river there was a possible straight on the board -- something like K-9-7-10-6. Again, Tracy Morgan bet, but now Michelle, smart enough to slow down with one pair only on a board like this, just called him.

"Ah," Tracy Morgan said, "I just have the 9," and he gave his cards a dispirited, disinterested flip toward the middle. He knew he was beat.

The cards bounced, landing face down -- not in the muck, but on top of the shuffling machine and touching the giant pile of chips.

Here's where the dealer, a woman we've known a long time, made the move that will cost her all future tokes from both Michelle and me. She asked Tracy, "Are you sure you want to muck that," and as he reached in robotically to turn over his cards she announced: "straight." Tracy looked at his cards -- A-8, no 9 -- and literally counted out the 6-7-8-9-10 on his fingers to confirm he had a straight.

"Oh, I didn't even know I had that," he said.

How Michelle kept from leaping across the table and knocking their two heads together I'll never know. She didn't even call the floor for a ruling, although she asked a supervisor about it later and was informed she would have lost the appeal since Tracy's cards never touched the muck.

Still, very bad play by the dealer known as Triple-H. This also strikes me as a bad policy by the Muck. The man surrendered his hand and miscalled it to boot. The dealer, who may have seen the player's cards as they tumbled feltward, should not assist him in reclaiming his hand and dragging the pot. In many other rooms this ruling would go in Michelle's favor.

Michelle said that next time she plays she might table-change around the room, following Triple-H, just so she can make a point of not tipping her whenever she wins a hand. I don't blame her.

The new* Muck

(* halfway there)

The Muckleshoot poker room is in transition. A couple of weeks ago they closed down the original, big room for updating, including new carpet, and shifted the action to the year-old addition.

As an extension of the existing room, the "new" room seemed fine to me -- 16 new tables taking the overflow, allowing bigger tournaments and shortening the wait for a game. Plus there was talk of cool new high-tech improvements, like an electronic board to manage the waiting lists and card readers at the tables that would automatically record players' hours for the purpose of promotions. I also liked the direct doors to the outside, so you don't have to walk through the smoky casino to get to the smoke-free poker room.

But with the opening between the rooms walled off, the addition feels cramped and airless, a long narrow hold-em hallway with no amenities save the sports-tuned flat-screen TVs. And so far at least, the improvements are a no-show: They just moved over the old, big dry-erase board to manage the list, and the auto card readers aren't in use. In my couple of visits during this transition period, the dealers have universally grumbled about the room; the tables are uncomfortable for dealing, they say. One dealer said all the furniture was ordered by "someone upstairs who's never played poker, let alone dealt."

I don't know. I was dealt a straight flush on the flop one day last week -- good for a $300 high hand prize in addition to the pot -- and I've cashed out a winner on both trips, so I'm not complaining.

One strange result of the construction: There's no direct access to restrooms from the addition; you have to walk outside, down the sidewalk and then back through the main casino entrance. Kind of a pain.

Last week a kid got up on his blind to make the trek, came back five minutes or so later, then left again after one hand. When he got back I said, Dude, you missed your button. He said he realized he left his watch in the bathroom and had to go back to get it. Some kind of Larry Craig foot-tapping ritual going on there, I think, but whatever.

The old room is scheduled to reopen, recombining both halves, next weekend.