Playing sensibly

The result we are after

Somebody who played an evening and then went up is a better night for this lodge than somebody still sitting when the door shuts. That is not a motto; it is why the lower floor is built the way it is. Four tables, not ten. Closing at half past twelve, not at four. No credit. No cash machine in the building or anywhere on this land. The bar in the hall stops at eleven, an hour and a half before the tables, and people notice.

Age, every single visit

18 in Argentina, a photographic document every time, including for the guest who was eating in the kitchen an hour before. A telephone showing a picture of a DNI is not a DNI.

What the staff do, standing at that door

• Hold a figure you have named. Say it before you sit and it is written down.
• Name the hour the first time it is asked for. The clock is on the stone wall.
• Keep your seat for twenty minutes if you want to go up, eat something, or stand outside in the cold.
• Shut you out for a few days on request, with a note where the next shift will find it.
• Take a self-exclusion at the desk upstairs, in person, in effect that night.

None of it has been put on this website, and that is a decision rather than an oversight. Every one of them is said to a person who is looking at you, thirty-five paces from where you stand. A box to tick would be convenient here and useless to whoever ticked it.

Five things to watch for in yourself

• You are thinking about the tables while you are standing at the Correntoso outlet, which is what you came up the road for.
• You went back down the stair after announcing, out loud, that you were done for the night.
• You have worked out the bus times to the village cash machine and back.
• You are playing at a figure you would not repeat to the person you came with.
• You would prefer not to be greeted at the desk by name. You are; nine rooms, nine staff.

Training

The two who work the door and the bar are put through it before the first shift and once a season after: the law, how to read a document, how to refuse somebody without a scene, and the guest whose glass is emptying faster than the table. Whoever is managing that evening comes down more than once. Each of them has shut a table before closing time and neither was asked to account for it.

How to ask

Put it to the person at the door, or to the desk upstairs. However it comes out is fine. It will not be made uncomfortable and it will not be discussed anywhere else.