I am the floor manager at a new room opening in North Houston TX and am looking to see if I'm on the right track with the scheduling...it's a new room so traffic is going to be heavily estimated, but what is a guideline to use for scheduling dealers. I've handled 4-6 table rooms before, but this one has 12 tables and obviously hoping to be full for tourneys...I'm expecting capacity on day 1, after that, who knows...

Day 1 (Fri) I'm having 15 dealers. We are opening at 4pm with a tournament at 7. I have 4 dealers coming in at 4pm 1 at 5pm, 2 at 6pm, and the rest at 7pm.

Day 2 (Sat) Open at 12, tourney at 2. I have 2 dealers at 12, 2 at 1pm, and 5 more for the tourney.

Day3 (Sun) Open at 12, tourney at 2. Same as above except only 2 coming in for tourney. So I'll have 6 total at the start of the tourney. I'm thinking I needed maybe 1 more.

Day4 (Mon) Open at 12, tourney at 7. I have 2 coming in at 12, 1 at 2pm and 1 at 4pm. 2 more coming in at 7 for tourney

It seems there should be a little easier way than this...or am I on the right track here. Help please.

You seem short every day. With 4 dealers at opening for a new room, that means you can only open 3 tables unless your 4PM dealer is going to be a break dealer. You'll have 7 dealers total at 6PM which means 5 tables total.

For the sake of your dealers, don't make them go longer than 2 hours without a break. And by break, I mean at least 20 or 25 minutes where they can go sit down in the break room, get a soda, and play video games on their phone. Giving them 5 minutes to run to the restroom and back is not a break even if it's legal.

I'd expect you to get more business on Saturday and Sunday, especially around tournament time but I'm not sure what numbers you're expecting so I don't know if you have enough dealers or not. Why do you have tournaments at 7 on Friday and Monday but not on Saturday or Sunday? Why don't Monday and Friday have tournaments at 2? If they have guarantees, you'll get them filled up...eventually).

You don't say anything about a closing time. Do you have one or just close when the games break.

I would open with full staff. You can adjust later but you would rather open prepared for a full house than to start your questionably legal business venture by pissing off your players.

After you get a feel for actual traffic you can adjust your scheduling.

Ordinarily I would disagree with the poster who thinks dealers shouldn't deal more than 2 hours without a break. But since your dealers won't be getting tips I am sure they want as many breaks as possible. Some dealers like myself who work for tips don't want too many breaks because we don't get tipped on break.

Are the dealers paid hourly or per down? If it's per down they'll tend to want longer strings.

Breaks aren't really just for the dealers anyway. They're there to give you spare capacity should you need it later. As such, they'll probably be short while you get a better handle on how much business to expect.

I'd probably bring more dealers in before the tournament just in case.

Thanks everyone. I don't want to be short but I also don't want to be overstaffed. Weekday tourneys are at 7, weekend tourneys are at 2. So all of you are saying bring a few extra in before tournament time. Thanks!

You definitely want to be overstaffed on opening weekend. That shouldn’t even be a question. What’s the problem with having 5 extra dealers around just in case you might need them?

There’s a gazillion reasons why you want to prepare for all eventualities but the obvious #1: each customer who is unhappy because there were too little dealers might not come back and will tell 7 friends about it. I hope your expected CLV isn’t that low that a couple hundred bucks for extra dealers on opening weekend makes a significant difference.

Raked poker is illegal in Texas. How are you getting around this?

Other things to consider .... do you hve chip runners or are dealers supposed to run chips ... if so then you need more dealers than just what covers tables and breaks....

Do you have experienced dealers or newbies..... you could easily have a new dealer just have a meltdown on the first day of work.... so having extra dealers in case you lose someone isn't a bad idea..... and be prepared for sick calls, no shows ...etc.

Initiation Fee ("a private club") + Daily Fee + Hourly Seat Rental + No Dealer Tips
is how these clubs seem to run.

Just echoing what was already said in this thread. Over-staff the first week. If you have extra dealers standing around you can always keep them busy making nice with the customers, making change, etc.

Overstaff. Send dealers home if it turns out you can't use them. Set up an early out list and let them volunteer to go if they want to before just sending people.

professionally run rooms have been operating in Houston for years.

They are obviously Illegal under state law but for some reason city / county law enforcement around Houston have always just looked the other way.

Other rooms have been opening in many other cities (including Austin) using a variety of alternate rake models that allege to get around TX Gambling laws.

Several opened up in the Dallas metroplex also but they are being shut down now. My guess is the State law is amended soon to make these type rooms illegal also. Not trying to hijack the thread. Just throwing it out there.

http://bigtexaspoker.com/
http://www.pokerroomsoftexas.com/
https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threa...n-texas.23525/

If you can employ dealers that double as props do that and schedule them all.

Do not under any circumstances run short staffed your first week.

Thank you all so much. I'm adding more dealers, lol. Thanks again for your help....is there a floorperson thread or forum somewhere to post oddities, questions, and other such stuff

Let me understand this.

Some asking if a rake is beatable and then separately mentions they are in Houston and the rake beatable thread gets locked. Ok, fair enough even if the major part of the thread should have nothing to do with the location and or legality of the venue. The forum is certainly entitled to its rules.

Meanwhile this thread continues on for several days even though the admitted main thrust of the discussion is specifically about how to operate a club of questionable legality. How can discussions specifically on how to staff a club that can't be discussed here be ok? Seems hypocritical to me and I don't have a direct stake in either thread.

Remove the location from this thread and we still have something that’s worth talking about. Especially compared to the weekly ‘is this rake beatable’ thread that wouldn’t even exist if people would use the search function.

Well I didn't mean to try and get banned from using a location name....on another note...when you guys schedule 10-20 dealers or so, do you just give them a time to be there and cut as needed or do you schedule a time for them to leave or a situation to leave (like, John stay until there are only 2 cash tables going).

Do your dealers get tips? Or do they just work for salary?

Well one thing you have to consider is that the no tipping situation changes the labor dynamic.

When dealers are working primarily for tips .... very often the amount of labor self regulates .... that is dealers recognize overstaffing cuts down on the amount of money they stand to make so they are more willing to voluntarily EO when the room is overstaffed.

Take that out of the equation .... now the only reason a dealer should want to leave early is the same reason any employee on hourly wages would want to leave early ... they specifically have someplace they want to be at that time.

That being said my experiences have been that dealers get scheduled for 8 hour shifts. But they EO or get forced out early if they are not needed. Having a policy for how you will handle EO's and force outs is important. Since you are paying higher wages do to the non-tipping situation you probably want to avoid overtime because of the added expense where its less of an issue in laces where dealers receive small hourly wages to begin with.

Quality of the thread not withstanding, the locale actually is a major part of this thread. It explains ands reveals why tips are not allowed. It explains why the location. Is or very recently was an whole new market. It evens provides some reasoning why someone with zero experience in managing a poker room finds himself with these questions. So I would say that locale has much to do with this thread.

But even if I am completely wrong a simple look at the reason provided for closing the other thread provides all the evidence necessary that this thread is no more "allowed" than any other thread discussing a room of questionable legality. "Unfortunately, CCP and V&C don't allow discussion of cardrooms of questionable legality." There in plain simple language the hypocrisy is laid bare.

But again not mt forum, not my rules, not my decisions. I am just pointing out what I see and my opinion.

Duplication

He's got a point.

Everywhere I've worked we get start times only and are sent home when no longer needed. In predictably busy rooms this may mean 8 hour shifts are common but given your limited opening hours and unknown traffic this will be difficult. Keep enough dealers on hand for possible tables needed later and for breaks. Send everyone else home for the night. I've done the sit around and wait thing, it sucks even when I'm paid hourly. Time flies faster if I'm working.

Put up an EO list, those are don't feel like working that day or have day jobs get sent home first. Then create some sort of formula for who to cut when the list is empty. You could go by who came earliest, then who has the most hours so far that week, then starting at some random point on the list and work down. Or have some other criteria - as long as everyone knows it's a formula and not you letting your favorites come and go when they want. Adjust it as necessary.