A Hollywood [Park] Story

My brother asked me to post a couple of poker stories that I’ve told him.  One of them has to do with my experience at the Hollywood Park casino in Los Angeles.  The other is a question about famous poker stars I’ve seen.  I’ll make it two posts; this one will be on Hollywood Park and a later one on famous poker stars I’ve seen (and in one case, even played against – I think).

I actually had forgotten all about the Hollywood Park until he reminded me.  I had to go back and add it to my roll call list.  It was the first poker room in the L.A. area that I’d ever been to, but I don’t really have any interest in going back there, as my story will reveal.

The Hollywood Park casino is actually a horseracing course that added a card room some time ago.  It’s really close to the L.A. airport (LAX) in a pretty bad part of town.  As far as the player demographic . . . well, let’s just say I was one of the few people there with blue eyes.

I was playing at a low-limit table, I think it was $4-$8.  I was doing okay; the players were pretty pathetic and even that early in my poker experience I was able to hold my own against really bad players.

There was one player in particular who was really loose and starting to lose a bunch.  The more he lost, the more tilty he became.  He was seated in Seat 1, I was in Seat 5.  I could hear him muttering under his breath, mostly English but occasionally he lapsed into his (probably native) Spanish.  I won a big pot from him, and he glared at me with truly evil eyes and started saying, “I’m going to cut you, I’m going to get you.”  I just ignored it; for some people, trash-talking is just part of the game.  The volume of his threats continued to rise and fall, never getting really loud but never really tapering off to silence either. 

I won another  decent-sized pot from him.  “I’m going to get you, I’ll get you in the parking lot, I’ll cut you.”  Yeah, whatever.

Finally, one last big hand did him in, I had felted him.  He got a little louder but was jabbering in Spanish, so I couldn’t follow it too closely.  He got up from the table, all the time glaring at me, but as he was walking away behind the dealer he took his hand and (rather lightly) cuffed the back of the dealer’s head.

All of a sudden, a huge swarm of security guards descended on the guy.  I don’t even know where they had come from, maybe Scotty beamed them down from the Enterprise.  Before he had walked three more steps, he was grabbed and taken away.  I don’t think he’s ever been heard from again, frankly.

That’s actually when I started to get a little concerned.  This guy had been peppering me with terroristic threats for half an hour, which didn’t seem to alarm anybody particularly.  But one little tap on the dealer, and he was taken out.  The more I thought about it, the more it troubled me.  So I ended up cashing out a little later (a slight winner on the night).  And yes, I did ask security to walk me to my car.