Table Talk

As a former dealer, I was intrigued by the dealers’ competition at the recent G2E. The Clarion booth (in the U.S. we call it a booth, in Europe it’s a stand!) faced the Dealer Championship arena on the show floor. There was an atmosphere of excitement and camaraderie that we rarely see at G2E. The area got lots of attention and it was quite noisy, making the podcasts we were conducting a bit challenging.

In 1979, I broke in as a dealer at Caesars Atlantic City (then the Boardwalk Regency), the second casino to open in the city. It was an exciting time. Gaming was still a novelty on the East Coast. People lined up to get into the casino, and as a dealer, you worked nine- or 10-hour days—one hour on, 20 minutes off—six days a week. It was a grind.

From the moment you hit the table, you were dealing all the time to every spot or position. People stood behind players, waiting for a seat to open up. Since there was a regulation that casinos had to maintain a certain number of $2 and $5 tables, I rarely saw a lot of action.

Dealers were cautioned about talking to players. “Dummy up and deal” was the rule. Once when I was working a $2 blackjack game, a player keeled over backward and fainted. A man jumped into his seat. I notified the floor supervisor, who told me to keep dealing; someone would come help the unfortunate victim. We took the man’s chips and put them on the side of the chip rack, so they could follow wherever they took him. Everyone who worked in those days has stories like this.

To escape the boring and mind-numbing blackjack tables, I took a class to learn baccarat. My entire attitude then changed. The game was elegant—the big game with three dealers like a crap table—and attracted the highest of the high rollers. Dealers had to be sharp and accurate. The amount of cash going across the tables was stunning. Caesars was the top casino in town at the time, to be surpassed by the Golden Nugget when it opened down the Boardwalk a couple of years later. I was recruited to deal at the Nugget and took the job.

Again, another level of professionalism. The Steve Wynn culture was something few in the casino industry had ever experienced. You wanted to be the best, because Wynn told you that you were the best.

Watching the dealers at G2E was eye-opening for me. While I enjoyed my time dealing baccarat—which wasn’t part of this contest, by the way—these professional dealers made the blackjack games seem fun and the roulette tables sing. They conversed with judges at the tables while keeping the games moving and making the payouts smoothly and accurately.

I remember my training classes where the teachers stressed procedures. Every move had to be done the way it was taught. Pay and take were the buzzwords in all the games. In baccarat, they wanted you to work on only two wagers at a time when paying the bets and marking the commissions. But I liked to have a style that was different from all the others. I always looked for a way to have some flair.

For example, in a blackjack game, I would wait for a hand at a $5 game where a player won a $20 bet and the next spot was a winning $5 bet. I would take a green $25 chip and slide it into the four red $5 chips. It would hit the bottom $5 chip and knock it over to the next $5 bet, paying both bets with one move. Sharp move, but not procedure.

In baccarat, I could pay the entire side of the game without stopping and mark the commissions accurately. Most of the supervisors allowed me to do that because they knew it was accurate and sped up the game. But occasionally I’d hear a pit boss yell from the other side of the pit, “Pay two and mark two!” Yup. Not procedure.

So to see the dealers at G2E following correct procedure and dealing to the players with a smile and casual conversation was revealing. You see, dealing can be a career in itself. Some people with whom I broke in at Caesars in 1979 were still dealing 25 years later. Most of them are now retired and enjoying the good life, but the fact that they made a career as a dealer is testament to their professionalism.

Congratulations to the winners of the G2E Dealer Championship. And I hope someday that we can see a “Super Bowl” of dealing competition to include the European Dealer Championship, which has been produced annually by the European Casino Association. Now that’s professionalism.