Dealing Tips

Every once in a while a fellow dealer asks me how I got such good hands. They react incredulously when I tell them that I practice at home. At that point someone else explains that I am not serious, I have good hands because I have been doing this for 23 years.

Why is it that no one can believe that a person could care enough about their vocation to spend a few minutes of their spare time practicing? When I first started in this business you could always tell which dealers practiced and which didn't. The ones that did became the ones that could handle anything that happened on a game and make it look effortless. They were the ones that all the suits loved to watch. The ones that didn't were always the ones that everyone hated to work with because everything they did, every change transaction, every booking of bets, every payoff was at best a production and at worst an adventure.

I was working at one of the last casinos on the planet to pay 30 for 1 and 15 for 1 for the props. This guy I worked with was fortunate enough to get hired at a new strip resort before they opened. I find out later that he had failed to "make the cut" probably because he looked bad on his first day. He "had trouble" paying downtown odds and made many mistakes.

Don't you think about the new odds before you start your first day? Maybe practice paying everyday bets in your head while waiting at stop lights? Sure if I start a new job I'll make a couple of mistakes when I get too comfortable and relapse into the old ways, anyone would. But how can someone be so complacent and unprepared when starting a new job?

So much emphasis if placed on customer service and entertaining the patrons that people have lost sight on the two most important skills a dealer should possess: the ability to handle checks and the ability to calculate payoffs. These skills along with common sense and communication skills is what determines how smoothly your game runs.

Practice bottom cutting checks at home a few minutes a day. Stand up when you practice and don't watch television. Handling checks is different when you sit and watching TV will cause you to look up instead of looking at your layout. When bottom cutting or picking, don't look at your hand to see if you have the correct amount. That is a bad habit and you will never be a good check handler if you do it. Use both hands alternately. Look at the amount picked or cut for a split second after setting it down. This will teach you to be able to read checks.

When practicing payoffs, don't blow any circuits trying to pay $1333 boxcars. Practice the everyday things like $1, $5, $10, $25, $50, $75 and $100. If you can pay these bets you can use them as building blocks to pay more esoteric bets.

Tale pride in your abilities. Don't ever feel that you can't be as good as anyone else on your crew. Don't think that you can't do something as well or better than someone else.