by Brian “WillisNYC” Willis
Check out Brian at http://www.thepokercampcom
Recently the bad beat jackpot at Caesar’s Atlantic City was nearly $300k. I found this out while enquiring why the turnout at the casino that I was playing in was so low. In turn, this reminded me of one of the most startling things that I have ever seen in a poker room.
I was sitting at a cash game in Caesar’s and witnessed a scene so brutal that I would never believe it except that my own two peepers actually saw the events unfold. I was startled by an uproar at the table next to me. This table was directly in front of the entrance to the poker room. Back then Caesar’s had a short velvet rope held up by a pair of bronze stanchions that separated the front desk area from the rest of the poker room.
I turned my head to see what had caused the uproar and witnessed a tall, skinny black man, hereafter dubbed ‘Skinny’, holding one of the stanchions near the end of the table. A short white man, whom we’ll call ‘Shorty’, was seated at the table near him and it was evident that he had just been ‘clocked’ by the fellow holding the stanchion. He was slumped over the table holding his head in his hands and moaning. As I turned, Skinny dropped the stanchion and ran from the room posthaste.
A Good Samaritan who had seen what transpired tackled Skinny between the slot machines before he could take 10 steps out of the poker room. I turned my attention back to Shorty who had been clocked in the head. Well he must not have been hit too hard because the moment he saw his assailant sprawled out on the floor, he shot out of his chair and darted toward the exit of the poker room.
Now those of you familiar with Caesar’s in Atlantic City know that you can see the entire slots area from the poker room. So I all I had to do was stand up in order to witness a further escalation of the brutality which I had just witnessed. Skinny was lying on the floor, held down by the Good Samaritan when ‘Shorty’ came running up. Shorty’s run became a flying leap which culminated in a two footed landing that came down directly on Skinny’s head and face! I groaned collectively with the rest of the poker room patrons who watched in amazement.
The stunned Samaritan let go of Skinny, I am sure he was as shocked as the rest of us were. To my amazement, a seemingly unfazed Skinny stands up and starts exchanging punches with Shorty. How either of them still had their skulls intact amazes me to this day, let alone how they still had their wits intact enough to start pounding on each other after the initial pair of skull shattering blows was delivered.
Security finally showed up and secured the two men. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but it was obvious that they were trying to ascertain how this fracas got began. During the conversation Skinny stands out in my mind for being at least 12 if not 18 inches taller than Shorty who couldn’t have been taller than 5 feet, nor could he have weighed 125 pounds soaking wet. This was illustrated at one point as the security guards released Shorty for an instant. Shockingly Shorty, still quite incensed, launches a roundhouse that connects directly to the chin of Skinny. Security restrained Shorty once again without further incident until the police showed up and took both of them away.
As I was recounting this story at the table in the Borgata, another player asked what started this whole ‘mess’. I replied that I didn’t ever find out. To my surprise, the Borgata dealer spoke up at this point and vouched for my entire story. He said he was dealing at Caesars at the time and that Shorty had bad beat Skinny in a hand earlier that evening. Damn if it isn’t a small world!
