A new deal
Two poker dealers lose their home and jobs to Hurricane Katrina but find a change of fortune in Tampa.
By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published December 17, 2005
TAMPA - Everyone is looking for Lady Luck. Maybe she's Lisa Rice, dressed in spade-black, her blond hair pulled high and tight. Enthroned in a black leather chair, the casino queen rules over a grass-green oval poker table, deciding fortune with each flick.
Swiveling like a lawn sprinkler, Rice, a Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino dealer, tosses cards left to right, wrists never moving, just forearms and flashing red nails, spraying the felt with diamonds and hearts.
"Check," she says over and over, slapping the felt like a broken TV, using one card to squeegee off the cards to get another hand rolling.
"Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold," says one player. "I was fishing for a king. There was nothing on the table."
Another hand. No luck. "All right, kids, have a good night," he said, rising to his feet.
"Thanks for playing," Rice tells him.
Luck, the dictionary defines, is a force that brings good fortune or adversity; the events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual.
Dealers are loath to use the word. But Rice does not deny its existence.
She dealt a million-dollar hand in 2003 that was pivotal in poker's revival and helped secure her a job for years. She saw Hurricane Katrina bust the $1.23-billion-a-year Mississippi casino coastline and her hometown of Biloxi, eliminating her line of work and possibly any return to her home state.
But dealing has taught Rice that good fortune may lie in the next card. Every deck has as many aces as deuces. Tampa and the Seminole Hard Rock were the "miracle card" she needed, she said.
"We went from bad luck in Biloxi to the Hard Rock," Rice said. "That's like hitting the ace on the river."
Beating the oddsChris Moneymaker needed a big river card in 2003. In Texas hold'em, getting a big card "on the river" means the final community card dealt puts a player over the top.
He was a 29-year-old accountant, drawn into poker after watching the 1998 film Rounders, about two backroom hustlers. With $39, he entered an online tournament and won himself a seat at the 2003 World Series of Poker.
By day four, Moneymaker and nine others remained of a field of 839.
Rice, wearing a black bow tie with long tails that bore the gold letters of the casino, "Binion's Horseshoe," held the cards.
Poker veteran Phil Ivey announced that he was "all in," shoving his chip pile into the center. Moneymaker soon found himself outgunned: three queens and an ace to Ivey's three 9s and a pair of queens.
Moneymaker needed a queen or an ace to topple Ivey's full house.
Rice dealt one final card, the river. She turned it over on the table.
Ace.
Moneymaker went on to win the World Series and become a worldwide celebrity who pushed casino poker back into popularity. He is credited with helping TV poker outdraw NBA games; boosting online gambling revenues to $10-billion this year; keeping casino poker rooms open.
"You can just change one card," said Steven Lipscomb, creator of the World Poker Tour, which airs on cable TV's Travel Channel. "One card on the river, and he'd be gone, and you'd never have heard his name. A lot of things have to be aligned for that to happen."
A new professionRice, whose round face is full of smiles and chatter, was delivering room service for the Grand Casino Hotel in Gulfport when she decided to enroll in poker school.
Her father, an Air Force veteran, had to teach her the ranking of cards in a deck. The only card games she knew were Uno, rummy and pinochle. But she became proficient, practicing at home, dealing into 10 baking pans she set up on the kitchen floor.
Her hands seemed to be kneading dough as she practiced a standard shuffle over and over: Shuffle twice, box the cards by sliding the top 10 or 15 to the bottom of the deck, shuffle, cut, deal.
Her speed and accuracy led dealers to nickname Rice "the machine."
She started dealing in Mississippi but became good enough to work in poker tournaments in faraway places like Aruba, where she dealt at the hotel from which Natalee Holloway would disappear. Rice sailed out of Miami for a tournament.
"Best cruise I ever dealt," she said.
She moved to Las Vegas and became one of the best. But when her mother died after a blood clot formed in her heart, Rice returned to Mississippi to be with her father. She worked at the President Casino in Biloxi and became reacquainted with an old friend, Steve Johnson, who worked at the Grand Casino in Gulfport, where Rice had started her career.
Johnson, a man polite to a fault with gray-flecked brown hair, was also a dealer. He grew up in Mississippi and voted against allowing riverboat gambling the first time around. He changed his mind in 1992 and found himself a new line of work.
Cards.
"You get to sit down and that was appealing to a waiter," he said.
Rice and Johnson began dating just after her mother died.
"I believe we're a personal example in fate," Rice said. "God took away the most important person in my life and left me him."
She is more of an entertainer than Johnson at the tables. Johnson is stoic, matching the persona of serious gamblers.
"As long as I get the cards out," Johnson said, "that's all that matters."
She is more likely to look for tells. She knows players sliding chips into the pot have weak hands while those who plop in are strong. He doesn't look for tells. He just deals.
She thinks picking up a penny could lead to bad luck. He thinks a picked-up penny is good luck, especially a penny deposited in a penny jar.
He is more of a pit boss with his money. He deposits the paychecks. Rice spends money like a loose slot.
Her favorite card is the jack of hearts. Her favorite Texas hold'em hand is a jack and 10. She loved dealing the famous river card.
"When I'm dealing I like the deuce," Johnson said. Everyone's waiting for a face card, and then a 2 shows up like a needle at a balloon party.
His favorite hand is ace-king or "Big Slick."
She drives a dinged-up blue Hyundai Santa Fe with the Mississippi plates "Poker 74."
They are both drawn to poker because it's more social than cold-hearted blackjack.
In poker, players cannot cuss. Players are loyal to their dealers. Rice got to know players like "Mr. Rick" and "Curly." Johnson has gone fishing with some. He has received $50 bills tucked in Christmas cards and a case of grapefruits. Rice has been tipped a bottle of Dom Perignon.
The world grows smaller at the poker tables.
Widowed seniors find friends.
"This is where a lot of people who are lonely come to find company," Rice said.
Including hurricane evacuees starting over.
Losing it allRice and Johnson huddled in her father's home in Saucier, Miss., when Hurricane Katrina struck.
They knew they were unemployed. Winds tossed the Grand Casino Gulfport riverboat across U.S. 90.
Rice began looking on a generator-powered computer for jobs. The couple didn't even consider another line of work. Rice, 30, has dealt for nine years. Johnson, 38, has dealt for 12 years.
Rice found the Seminole Hard Rock Casino on the Internet, a rectangular high-rise on Interstate 4 that glows like a purple and blue beacon at night.
They moved to Brandon, where a gray snake met them in the mailbox. New to Florida, Rice heard mothballs scare snakes away. So she sprinkled a box on her lawn.
The pair slept on two air mattresses shoved together. An American Red Cross debit card paid for their $34 Wal-Mart sheet and comforter set.
Starting from scratchAs time passed, Rice and Johnson's Brandon house started filling with lighthouse-shaped end tables and knickknacks from garage sales.
Rice likes lighthouses because they help the lost find their way.
Stability slowly returned. Cable television. Enough apple-themed kitchen towels and stove sitters to ward off the doctor for weeks. A queen Sealy Posturepedic and a bedroom lamp.
Then, about the time Hurricane Wilma threatened Florida in October, Rice learned that the Seminole Hard Rock was going to try out dealerless tables. It'll never work, Rice said. Who will play sheriff?
"A hand of poker changes every time," she said."Is the table going to tell them to not cuss?"
"Watch your language," Johnson replied in a robotic voice. "Watch your language."
"It's probably going to be like the self-checkout at a grocery checkout line," Johnson said. "One bent $1 bill and the little light goes off."
Already, three tables in the Hard Rock use shuffle machines.
Only two tables will be without dealers. But that's two less dealers on the floor.
"I don't really care," Johnson said, trying to minimize the news.
"You don't really care?" Rice asked. "Chris Moneymaker secured our future!"
A new challengeOne day in November at an empty poker table, Rice divulged that she's seeing a doctor.
"She's having problems with her left hand," Johnson said grabbing her middle finger. Things have been going great. "I feel better than we ever were," Rice said. They love their jobs. Both want to relocate their parents here. They don't want to consider a future in which Rice cannot deal.
It's her third day of pain.
"These are what pays the bills," Johnson said, waving his hands.
Dealing as many as 300 hands a night strains the fingers and back. At the table, Johnson kept rising from his black chair, stretching his back over and over.
He hopes it's not "dealer knot."
He hopes she doesn't have carpal tunnel syndrome, as common as a shock is to electricians, Johnson said. Sometimes, stretching and using a lighter watch, like Johnson's titanium-banded timepiece, can stave off the pain.
Keeping fingers crossedThe Hard Rock Casino poker room chirps like coins in a change machine from hundreds of nervous poker players fingering their chip piles. Sometimes, players curse dealers when their luck runs out.
"Sir, it's not the hand," Johnson tells them, "it's your seat."
Neither Rice nor Johnson tell players "good luck" when they change cash for chips. They stopped doing so long ago, knowing they can't determine the future. Neither blame luck for Katrina.
"We didn't think "why us,' " Rice said.
"Lady Luck deals you a winning hand or deals you a losing hand," Johnson said.
They just hope their luck holds like it has for Moneymaker, who won $234,000 last year in poker tournaments after pocketing $2.5-million at the 2003 World Series.
In part, he has one dealer to thank.
"I remember Lisa, she gave me the ace on the river," Moneymaker said. "One of the highlights of my life."
- Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com