That got me remembering the one and only time I had a poker dealing dream.

In my dream I went to work. It was tournament time and there were lots of new dealers I didn't know and the casino was very crowded. But it was all laid out differently. And the poker tables were just randomly mixed in among the pit games and they were scattered all over the place. For example behind an escalator there were two blackjack tables with a poker table in between. I got my table assignment ..... but could not find my table. I walked all over the casino but the numbering of the tables made no sense and the tables were just scattered. And I could never find my table even when I asked people and they told me I would go where they said and it would be a different table.

I'm sure that this is just a result of reading about your dreams YTF and psand - but while taking my afternoon nap yesterday (still haven't quite transitioned properly to graveyard sleep schedule so I usually sleep around 4-6 hours in the morning and then take a 1-2 hr nap before my shift) I had some wicked work-related nightmares about being late constantly throughout the night (for my shift and then returning from each break), uniform malfunctions (for some reason my pants kept falling down on the way to the table???) and constant problems with my chip-counts at rotation... Yeesh.

Worst 2 hr nap ever.

When I worked in NH (charity casinos with $4 max bets, pit games and poker), they were getting ready to start spreading craps. Craps, of course, has a lower house edge, which I would imagine leads to higher swings for the house's bankroll.

One of the co-owners of the joint was telling me he had a dream where he was trying to run the dice game, and the white dots kept sliding off the dice, and he freaking out about it. It seemed pretty obvious he was feeling some anxiety about this new venture.

I told him about my first job after high school. I was hired by a company that owned a few of those magnificent brick textile mill buildings along the Merrimac river in Lawrence, Massachusetts. These 100+ year old buildings usually went 2-6 stories and were at least a quarter-mile long, each. They're now used for offices, industrial space, retail space, loft apartments, you name it.

Any way, they needed to get some long-abandoned space ready to put back on the leasing market, and they hired 4-5 guys, me included, to strip it down to the bare walls and the bare floors. This space was about 20 yards wide and at least 200 yards long. It was empty. Taking down all the old florescent light fixtures was time consuming, but easy work. But then they handed each of us an ice scraper (just like a garden hoe, except the blade isn't bent at a 90 degree angle, it just continues straight off the handle) and told us to remove the floor tiles. You know, the standard 1'x1' white tiles glued to the floor.

IT TOOK WEEKS! Bent over, hacking at that glue with long-handled ice scrapers, constantly looking up to see how much further you have to go and being confronted with an endless corridor of tiles....

I told my boss with his dice dreams about the dreams THAT job used to give me: swarms of tiles flying around, chasing me through the endlessly long mill building, me having only an ice scraper to fight them off...

I cannot remember any dream concerning work but my wife told about this the other day. She had woken up first one day when we were both off and she was laying in bed reading when I rolled over and said "Check, check, check" then started snoring again.

When I was in college I worked for the University grounds-keeping dept as a part time job to supplement my GI Bill. We were scrapping up tile off a concrete floor using ice scrapers and it wasn't going very well until a full time employee came in. He had a propane torch and a large tank of gas. He heated up the tiles and we popped them off in a couple of hours. Of course it was a smaller building only about 25 by 50 feet square.

Oh, we had a torch as well, but we were working in a vacant, unheated building, in winter, in New England.

Every month or two when I'm having a bad night sleep, I get into a state where I'm half awake and half asleep. I am panicing because I don't know whether the action is on my TV directly infront of my bed or the sofa off to the right and and end up waking up really stressed. It usually takes me a minute or two to figure out I'm not at work, not dealing cards and realise WTF is going on.

So I was approached by the powers that be the other day about taking a dual-rate position. Was wondering if any of the poker dealers here had any advice or opinions about if it's a good idea to give up my lucrative dealing shifts for it.

I don;t know your situation .... but one thing I have consistently seen over the years is that people who agree to dual rate inevitably find themselves working the floor more they want to.

I have never met the dual rate who said .... "I deal to much, I wish they would give me more floor shifts."

if you are full time deal, it is usually a significant pay cut to go dual rate... If you want to have a long career in the casino industry moving up is a part of it. if you are part time, sometimes it is the only way to get full time, to get the benefits.

do you enjoy dealing?
Don't take it for the sake of the "promotion".
Likely you will find yourself at the bottom end of the positional seniority ranking and will find yourself doing just what you anticipate: working extra floor shifts for other who want a day off and perhaps having to switch your normal days off( unless you don't care about that).

If you want to move up and can handle the loss of income, do it. If moving up in the industry is not a priority and/or you cannot afford a pay cut, don't.

Oh, it's a nice change of pace--for about a week. After that, you'll wish you were back in the box. Why trade in your flexible schedule for less pay?

Only way I'd do it is if a physical problem entered into it (back, wrist, etc). Nothing is worth more than your health.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.

As YTF stated, only do it due to physical pain, if it's the only route to full time, or if you want to move into a managerial role in the future so that you can put up with lots of bull**** for minimal or no gain.

I've turned down the offer more times than I can count.

Reading this thread was very entertaining. There are a lot of intelligent poker dealers here and I'm rather surprised to see it. I was resigned to the fact that the casino business was filled with a bunch of mo-mo's.

I'm a poker dealer at a big poker room in Atlantic City with a few questions.

#1 You are in the box of a high limit three handed game where no player tips for any reason. One player is constantly throwing cards either at you or near you, or when folding, they are moving their cards FARTHER away from their natural position as he is playing the hand - in order to make you reach. You are fast, competent, and polite. This player obviously dislikes you because you are dealing him losing hands. In my house and on my shift, the floor will not protect the dealer from a player abusing him. Essentially it's the 'draw this table to get crapped on for a half hour, suck it up to get your chance to do your real job on your next table.'

How do you deal with this on a daily basis? You are in the box where you are assured to make $0 in tips and be tormented for no reason other than that variance exists.

#2 In a 2/4 limit hold-em game, a pretty 21 year old girl is playing horribly and crushing the game. Old people are utterly tormenting her for playing bad cards and winning, as if she should start playing only good cards and losing. She starts crying at the table and leaves the game. What as a dealer can you do in this situation to stop this? Any tricks or tips on how to diffuse the situation?

Keep in mind that this is a big 'professional' room and I've only been dealing there a little less than a year. Also, the job is important to me and it took me three years to get in dealing live games.

#1. My inclination is to say suck it up, and deal. That being said if you want to do something the proper way to go about it is as follows:

a. next time a player throws his cards at you, say politely "Sir, please don't throw the cards at me."

b. When he does it again, call the floor. Calmly tell the floor that the gentleman in the three seat threw his cards at you, you asked him poltely not to do it, and his response was to do it again.

understand that at this point the floro is not going to throw him out. The floor is going to tell him not to throw his cards (if this is not the floors - response ask for the shift manager).

Now when the player next throws his acrds at you call the floor and tell him the player has ignored his instructions and continue sto throw his cards at you. Floors (like all people) do not like to be disobeyed. This should escalate it to teh point where the floor will feel obligated to do something no to protect you, but to protect his authority. If still nothing is done ask for the shift manager.

Now understand thsi will not earn you the respect of the floor or the shift manager. Both came up through poker and had to deal with this and believe taht you should just suck it up.

What this does however is clears the way for you to go to Human Resources about this. You see the folks in HR never dealt poker. probably never played poker. They came up from touchy feely college classes about nothing but feelings. They do not think you should just suck it up. They worry about things like your feeling harassed .....

And then you should follow up with HR.

OR do what i would do and just suck it up and bitch about these *******s in the breakroom.

on situation #2.

If a young girl leaves your table crying because of the abuse of the other players ..... You have failed. You simply can not tolerate any abuse of a customer (unless you are the one doing the abusing).

I understand it is hard. But you need to interject yourself and tells these players to STFU (probably in more polite terms). The reason it is hard is that the abuse usually starts small and builds. You would probably have no problem dealing with it if a player just came out of nowhere and told her that she was a ****ing horrible player.

Instead what happens is after a hand a guy starts muttering.... you do nothing..... it emboldens him.... he starts getting worse ..... you do nothing eventually it gets bad but its only marginally worse than the last thing you let him get away with. For this reason you must nip it in the bud. "Sir, I understand your frustrated but we can't allow you to continue to berate the other players"

Call the floor if you can't stop it ..... but it must be stopped. If you let this continue you will run out all the decent people from the room and leave yourself with npothing but the *******s.

Bunch of idiots. Pretty 21 year old is playing badly and has a big stack and they cause her to leave crying instead of staying and losing all her chips???
Didn't any of the smarter players at the table speak up? I hope I would have if I had been there even if it weren't a pretty 21 year old and even if they he/she didn't have a big stack. I guess I would keep quiet if I thought the player was very experienced, though.

This is to Bigfish. I've never worked in a casino but I have 30+ years experience in big business so take this for what it is worth.

No matter your field, with rare exception do not turn down opportunities to expand your skills and experience and do not turn down extra assignments from your boss(es). You never know where they might lead. I could go on and on with examples but they all share one common theme - doing that little extra usually pays off. Not doing the extra frequently leads to dead ends.

If your current life situation doesn't allow you to take the dual rate job, give your bosses an explanation and tell them you hope they'll keep you in mind again in the future.

No offence but the fact that you have no casino experience makes your advice irrelevant. I'm a pit dealer but I assume that poker dual rates get treatment similar to pit dual rates. Dual rates get the shaft. It's more responsibility for less pay. As YTF stated, it's not a good idea unless you can't physically deal every day.

No offence taken. I did say to take my advice FWIW. I probably should have pointed out that I have a couple of decades of live experience and am friendly with a number of current and former AC dealers in the later half of their careers. The recent downturns in the economy and casino business have left a bunch of them regretting missed opportunities to advance themselves or broaden their skills years ago.

Everyone has to make the right decision for himself and if dual rates really are getting screwed it could be a bad job to take. But more responsibility for less pay today is not necessarily a bad thing if one has the luxury of looking long term.

the reality is that in this business there really isn't a place for long term advancement. Yeah you can take a dual rate spot and eventually take a FT floor spot. Some small minority will move on to be Poker Room managers ...... but thats pretty much the end of the line. There really isn't much place to go.

To advance any further in the casino business .... poker is not the entryway. Marketing, and Hotel and even the Pit are better avenues to advance to upper management.

I always enjoy reading your comments because you never fail to bring something informative to the discussion.

The OP didn't bring his life situation or aspirations to the discussion so it would be very wrong of me to assume anything. But I have a general question on the point you are making, if someone was certain they want to spend a career in the casino industry, would there not be more doors open to him, in poker or other areas, if he had experience as a floorperson as opposed to only dealing experience? I worked in different fields, in a few industries, in different states and countries and it was always the case that if someone had a promotion on his resume he would find it much easier to move around - either within the same company or to get hired by another one - than someone who did not have one. Is the casino industry that much different?

At the company I last worked at an outsider would have no chance, no chance at all, of being hired into my company if they had not been promoted or could demonstrate having had increasing responsibilities while working for a previous employer. We didn't want anyone else's dead wood and if your old company, who knew you far better than we could learn in an hour interview, didn't want to promote or give you more then we assumed there was a good reason.

If a player is smart, they're not playing 2/4 to begin with (with extremely limited exceptions such as the guy waiting on another table killing time).

My first inclination would be to suck it up and hate it, but I imagine after half my down, that is easier said than done.

Other dealers I know will slow down, sometimes to a crawl, if they are not getting tipped. I never do this because it's unprofessional, but also impractical: Even if 9 players out of 10 aren't tipping, that means 1 player will and the more hands you get out, the more likely that person will win a few of them.

There are little passive aggressive things you can do which won't get you in trouble usually but can give you some inner satisfaction.

In our room, dealers control the Bravo system. Some dealers will "accidentally" log out a player and log them back in as a guest so they don't get their comps and whatnot. I think that's sneaky but I lack the balls to do it.

One thing you can do is deal around the player. By that I mean if the player is in the 7 seat, the first card will go closer to the 6 seat and the other will wind up closer to the 8 seat. Very subtle, not something anyone can call the floor about. Like I said, passive aggressive!

Also, when they fold nowhere near you, simply ask them "can you please push them to me?" You are polite and asking for help to speed up the game. If they don't, just say "well I cannot reach them - me and my short arms" (assuming they are that far away). Eventually someone will push them to you.

(That isn't passive aggressive if you in fact do have short arms/are short and cannot reach.)

Alternately, and this migh be the best thing, you can "kill 'em with kindness." Be the most polite, professional and courteous person you can be. Maybe someone with a conscious will realize you're doing a job. With that approach, if they never tip you, you cannot walk away thinking that you gave them a reason not to. Food for thought...


Yeah, you need to step in here before it reaches that far. A simple "come on, everyone, we're playing a game, let's have fun" seems to go a long way in low limit games. If someone continues to berate a player - inexperienced or not - call the floor.