Poker dreaming, #whatever (I've lost track)

I woke up too early, checked email/Twitter/RSS, found the story about Danette Levick's tournament at the Venetian, pounded out my thoughts about it, and headed back to bed. So maybe it's not surprising that Danette featured prominently in the dream from which I just now woke.

We were playing in a single-table tournament somewhere. She was on my left. The flop was A-A-4. Then, and only then, did the dealer pitch us each two cards--face up.

My first confusion was what I had. My cards were each labeled with an "F" rather than a number. Luckily, I had in front of me a chart about cards, and confirmed that "F" stood for "four" rather than "five." I had a full house, so, being first to act, I declared myself all in. I was aware that I had no idea what the blinds were, nor how many chips I had, and therefore this might be a terrible overbet, but oh well.

Then I looked to my left to see what Danette was going to do. Her two cards, also face up, were the other two aces. Damn! I should have known better than to act without first looking around at what everybody else had. Predictably, she shoved, too. I was just sitting there, waiting for all the others to act, and thinking, "Well, at least I have a good story for the blog, about how important it is to remember to look around the table at what everybody has before making a decision."

It then dawned on me that this isn't how hold'em is played. We were supposed to get our hole cards before the flop, not after, and they were supposed to come face down, not face up. These subtleties had eluded every player at the table except me, sharp guy that I am. But once I started protesting that things were all wrong, they chimed in one by one with agreement.

I called the floor over and explained the problem. I even threw in a disparaging remark about how they had hired an incompetent dealer who didn't know the most basic procedures of the game. The floor woman was trying to figure out how to resolve the situation. I said it was an obvious misdeal, and we should all just take our chips back and start over.

That's when I woke up. And part of the dream was true--I did have a blog story to write about it!