Tropicana, home of the most obnoxious poker player I've ever encountered

The following is a letter I wrote to the Tropicana casino's general manager back in August, 2006, just a month or so after I moved here. I'm not sure why it has taken me this long to get around to posting about it, since it's a pretty obvious candidate story, given the general subject of this blog. Maybe I partially blotted that horrible day out of memory. Anyway, here's the description of the most unpleasant session I've ever had at a poker table:

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August 21, 2006

I recently moved to Las Vegas. I make a living playing poker. I have been exploring the city’s poker rooms, trying to decide which one(s) to make my main place(s) in which to play. I thought I should tell you why, after one visit, the Tropicana is off the list.

I was there for less than an hour yesterday. Seated to my left was a man named Scott, apparently well known to the staff. As I was being seated, he was in the middle of relating a story about strippers at a club he had recently visited, and how he had cleverly insulted one of them. He then repeated the story to one of the employees who had, sadly, missed the first telling.

He first tried to address me directly when I was in the middle of a hand, trying to concentrate, so I ignored him. This apparently bothered him tremendously, because he escalated his attempts to get my attention—again, while I am still trying to concentrate on winning a hand. The dealer did nothing.

Because Scott was so obnoxious, I continued to ignore him after the hand was over. This really set him off. He wandered over to the front desk area of the poker room—just a few feet from the table at which we were playing—and proceeded to berate me to Vince, who I understand to have been the manager in charge of the poker room on that shift. He told Vince that I had the personality of a speck of dust. He told Vince that I looked like I had just come out of chemotherapy (perhaps because I’m somewhat thin and keep my hair cropped very short). He said, “I think I might be sitting next to a serial killer.” As he had made known that he wanted to order pizzas for anybody else at the table that wanted to join him, he told Vince that when the pizzas came, make sure that they only brought plastic knives and forks because of the serial killer at the table. All of this was loud enough that everybody at the poker table could easily hear it.

Your employee, Vince—the supposed supervisor of your poker room—did not attempt to stop Scott, did not tell him to behave civilly. Instead, Vince laughed loudly at each of Scott’s jibes. It was humiliating.

When Scott returned to the table, he was apparently making faces or gestures at or about me whenever I turned my face away, because a woman to my right would frequently look past me at Scott and laugh when I was faced away from him. Again, the dealers did nothing.

Scott was frequently absent from the table, chatting with the staff or making cell phone calls. The game was held up many times while the dealers would wait for him to come back to the table to take his turn. When he was seated, he frequently acted out of turn. He criticized the way others played. He spouted profanity. He told numerous off-color jokes and stories. He complained about his cards, the dealers, the cocktail waitresses, and everything and everyone else. He continued intermittently to attempt to get me to react to his shenanigans and continued to make obnoxious comments about me to everybody else at the table.

In hundreds of hours spent in poker rooms, I have never been treated so rudely and abusively by another player. Yet, as far as I could tell, not a single dealer or floor person ever took any measures to stop any of this conduct, and, as I mentioned, the supervisor on duty actively reinforced it by heartily laughing along, rather than expressing even the mildest disapproval.

I am a quiet, mild-mannered, non-confrontational person by nature. Furthermore, as a player, it is not my job to deal with or attempt to control other people who are misbehaving. It’s an unpleasant task, but it falls squarely on the poker room staff. I am not going to divert my attention from the game and risk provoking a physical response from a jerk—nor should I have to. If the staff of the poker room won’t intervene to stop such abusive conduct, then it won’t get stopped. But at the same time, nobody who is serious about playing poker can or would tolerate such abuse. It’s impossible to play in such an environment. In other words, if the staff won’t set and enforce limits on obnoxious players, you’ll simply lose as patrons those who are serious about playing.

That’s the case here. I understand that idiots such as Scott can show up anywhere. His existence and presence is not a blot on the Tropicana poker room per se. But when the staff not only allows such behavior, but encourages it, you have made a choice. You can have, as players, people like Scott, or you can have, as players, people like me, who are civil, polite, and respectful of others, and who expect such simple rules of conduct to be followed by everybody. You cannot have both. For reasons that I cannot fathom, you have chosen to allow jerks to behave in any ill-mannered way that they want to in your poker room. So be it. I will simply chose, in response, to patronize the other 50 or so poker rooms in the city, and leave the Tropicana to the Scotts of the world, and to Vince, the dealers, and the others of your staff who apparently enjoy, or at least see nothing objectionable in, his crass conduct.

A final thought: I noticed that posted in the poker room is a list of general rules. I did not inspect it on this visit, but if it is like most others I have seen, it includes something like “Abusive language and conduct will not be tolerated.” If you do, in fact, have such a rule posted, I hope you will seriously consider removing it, as it is abundantly clear that your establishment does tolerate such behavior, and you have in your employ a supervisor that clearly finds it amusing, rather than offensive. If you are going to permit and encourage this kind of rudeness, at least don’t publicly post a lie to the contrary.

Sincerely,


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I should add, as a coda, that the general manager of the casino responded quickly and personally in a highly apologetic and apparently sincere letter. Here's what he wrote:

August 25, 2006

I received your letter and wanted to thank you for sharing your unfortunate experience with me. As you can imagine, it is not the goal of the Tropicana to offend our customers. The only way that we can address an issue such as this is to be informed and go forward from there.

Our policy in the poker room states that discourteous behavior is unacceptable; and, it is unacceptable to me that this policy was not enforced during your visit to our room. We have spoken to Vincent and shared your letter with him. There is no justification for this kind of behavior and, on behalf of the Tropicana, I would like to extend an apology to you. We expect our employees to conduct themselves and their areas of responsibility in a professional and positive manner. Anything less will not be tolerated.

I understand that you have many options when it comes to choosing a place to play and there is certainly no reason to play in a hostile environment. I believe, if you were to visit our rooom in the future, you would find that your first visit was the exception to the rule rather than the rule itself.

I sincerely hope that you will reconsider and give us another opportunity to serve you. I would like to offer you two complimentary tickets to either the Folies Bergere or the Dirk Arthur Xtreme magic show. If you would like to accept this offer, please contact [name and contact information omitted here for purposes of posting].

Again, you have my deepest apologies.

Sincerely,

Gary Van Hettinga
President and General Manager


I have to say that that's one of the best corporate responses to a complaint that I've ever received. I have often wondered since then whether Vincent got a real dressing down, or just a
perfunctory "Don't worry about this--we just have to look like we're doing something to respond to the complaint" kind of talk.

By the way, I did accept the free show tickets: front row for the Folies, with a friend.

Now that my main base of operations (the Hilton) has closed, maybe it's time to give the ol' Trop another try, as I was invited to do.