Up until a few months ago I was a dual rate at a Indian casino. They got approved for 100 more slot machines. We had an emergency meeting a week later and they told us they were closing the poker room.

The room is now filled with slots that sot empty most of the time but a couple of hours of play a day on just one of those machines make more than we ever did in a day for the casino. We operated at a very slight loss for 6 years.

As a poker manager with over a decade in the business: No, this is not how it works, not at all. Poker is never billed for drinks, ever, and only pays for food if a manager decides to do a discretionary comp out of an expense account. Budgets just aren't set up this way.

I thought part of the point of building casinos out in the desert would be that there was unlimited space - but everyone ITT talks as if casino floor space is severely limited. Are there licensing issues in the US that are artificially limiting the space available for "gaming" forcing poker to compete with the slots? They can't just build more space or convert properties vacated by other businesses?

In Illinois, at least, there is a strict limit on the number of licenses for casinos and, within each casino, on gaming positions. Thus, poker is almost entirely eschewed in favor of slots/tables, and poker that does exist is raked at ridiculous rates.

A few years back, I remember playing poker on Saturday night at a Hollywood casino in Aurora, IL that had a six-table poker room. All six poker tables were full with a waiting list. Then, they shut down two tables because poker was counted as the same as other table games like BJ and Craps. The casino was small and was only licensed for a set number of active table games at one time. They had reached that number and decided to open two more BJ tables in lieu of poker. Now, this situation makes sense from a profitability standpoint but I highly doubt Vegas casinos run up against such constraints.

each division is billed or accounted for all its expenses. otherwise they have no idea of what and if it is making money. if the drinks to to the poker room and the casino just lumps all the drinks together with the pit and slots etc, how would it know where to allocated the bill for it. even the coffee and water is billed to the room but not meaning they are sent a bill to pay but it is accounted for in their profit and losses.

Here in Vegas, the standard is you go to dealer school, then go to a joe blow casino, get experience, then maybe go downtown, and then work your way to the strip. So to say it's easy to get, requires no training or skill, is just ignorance.

Another poster who has no idea of the quality of dealers at the RIO.

Dealers at the Rio are straight out of dealer school.

Dealers at Ventian/Aria are top notch and they make quite a bit.

So it requires no education, slight fluency in english and very little training. If you have the aptitude, you can make a very good living.

It's hard to think of comparable jobs in America today. Most four year university graduates would be thrilled to make what a competent poker dealer makes, and their education often costs them $100,000 or more, and four to six years of their life.

This is how a casino manager could look at you with a straight face and tell you the poker room is not very profitable. The comp. drinks are actually very cheap outside of alcohol but it's probably not accounted for that way.

just think about how much money one could make operating a poker room charging 15 per hour per person to play even if you also gave free food and drinks.

This even ignores that the poker room is a net positive to the hotel, and other parts of the casino...

Casinos understand that poker is a net a positive. That's why the reinvest every profit dollar earned from the poker room back into the poker room.

This is where your promos, higher comp rates, and other packages come from.

As for dealers, at the WSOP a lot of them ARE just out of dealer school. A four year grad might be happy making what a dealer makes AT THE BEGINNING of their career. A dealer's pay doesn't scale much.

Fact is, we all start somewhere. Remember the time you were so bad at poker it would've been hard for someone to just sit at a table with you?

Pay is about expectation. If someone borrowed money from you and you agreed to a 15% interest rate, would you be okay if they gave 10% and no more?

i find it amusing how many people in this thread argue that dealing is unskilled labour whilst simultaneously suggesting a lot of the dealers are awful

I don't think I've ever made that argument ITT.

dealers that came from the player pool are much better as they understand how the game goes. and of course it isnt an unskilled profession, but it isnt a highly skilled one either.
it does take quick thinking and grade school math so smarter people would naturally be better dealers.

i believe breakin dealers shouldnt be handling big money decisions ever. you wouldnt accept a bank teller that couldnt count your deposit or put it in the correct place.

Highschool diploma or GED. Sounds like someone has a degree they can't put to use and are upset. It's not the dealers choice somebody went to school and became an art major. The dealers are being tipped for a service, not because they have some super skill. Truck drivers can also make six figures a year in the same boat. Poker players, stock traders, pilots.

So if a person gets hired as a dishwasher and they start washing (dealing) painfully slow, flipping plates (cards) over, and being unaware of several common rules of the dish (poker) room, that is proof that being a dish washing is skilled labor?

Do the dishwashers have to keep track of what a plate-sized raise and re-raise would be after every action?

The Rio is an off-strip venue, so yes, that would make sense.

You guys are not too sharp or never been to the wsop. There are some dealers who work the circuit every year or the wsop who are very good. They also hire a lot of new people some of whom are horrible. Some dealers enjoy the circuit or only want to work a small portion of the year.

If you make it to a small second day only experienced dealers are used.

You're pointing in the mirror, pal. You think the WSOP dealers are all local talent to Rio. Think again. You just said in your comment "They also hire a lot of new people". That right there confirms exactly what I just pointed out. Dealer School > Rio (Non Prime Dealing Location) > Strip Casinos.

Jesus they make $22/hr just sitting there dealing cards? Wow I'm in the wrong job.

You obviously have never even been to wsop or the circuit. None or very few are from the rio poker room (which has like 8 tables). There are dealers who regularly travel the circuit or just work at the wsop. They have enough experienced dealers so that if you make a legitimate day 2 or day 3 you will not have a rookie dealer.

Not everyone seeks a higher paying full time dealing job. That being said if you make 20 dollars an hour but can make 40 elsewhere eventually you might go elsewhere.

The rookie dealers work the deep stacks and the day 1s

i got my g.e.d., i never went to dealer skool, i flung my first card for $ at the wsop. Thank you . why they hire me back is a mystery to me. I cant work no where else .im homeless by law, i cant pass a test with a years notice,i couldnt tell u what the inside of a bank looks like. Also ,i like to gamble and carouse.A lot. Jack effel ,may he live to be a 100. Bless the WSOP and all the folks who make the pilgrimage.Please make it a annual affair, i have dealt to your granpa's and fathers,let me deal to you. Thank you. sincerely, Shoeshine. p.s. WSOP wish they had 500 like me. I deal (play) any game you can name ,for any amount you can count. "puggy pearson" P.s.s. FYI, this prob be my last time here dealing,unless i get a promise of a increase in pay over a first year dealer. WORD to my Mother. Good luck.

canada petes a man.
"You obviously have never even been to wsop or the circuit. None or very few are from the rio poker room (which has like 8 tables). There are dealers who regularly travel the circuit or just work at the wsop. They have enough experienced dealers so that if you make a legitimate day 2 or day 3 you will not have a rookie dealer.

Not everyone seeks a higher paying full time dealing job. That being said if you make 20 dollars an hour but can make 40 elsewhere eventually you might go elsewhere.

The rookie dealers work the deep stacks and the day 1s" <<they get dealers of all ilk in these deepstacks tho by the by...the players in a deep stack thanked me profusely for dealing. i was humbled.

There are rookies in the deep stacks and there are people who have been there for years as well. It just depends on where they put you. Final tables and $10k events are usually assigned to long-time dealers, but other than that pretty much everybody deals everything. I remember a brand new dealer who had never dealt anywhere being put in a 50-100 mixed game in the snake pit on his very first day.

old dogs deal deep stacks and restarts, deal anywhere th boss sends us, so u have a lady 40s, & a old dealer dog who i wont name, both of them moused out on dealing a sit and go of 2-7 triple draw, so you know who they send.

And we get the same pay. kiss my azzz