How to be a good dealer

19 September 2017

By Frank Scoblete

If you think it is easy being a casino dealer then just give it a try. The public can be a real pain in the “you-know-what” in all situations but in a casino, losing money, the player-public can be downright nasty.

Nasty players blame the dealers for bad luck, scold other players for making the “wrong” decisions, and generally make a nuisance or worse of themselves.

Still, there are dealers who can also be described as pains in the “you-know-what” and these dealers are not fun to be with. I think most of them are burnt out, the way many teachers get burned out, by the travails of dealing with the public.

Yet, despite the rudeness, sometimes crudeness, drunkenness, lewdness and “ness” of all types, dealers must appear as if they are having fun dealing to you. Folks, it’s called acting.

As a former actor, I can tell you that when you go on the stage you must play your role no matter what is happening in your life. Say you are a happy character in the show but in real life you are having great difficulty – maybe you are going through a knockdown, dragged-out, awful divorce from a spouse that should be shipped to a prison colony. In short, you are miserable.

You cannot, at any time, allow that misery to enter into your performance. In fact, if you are in a comedy and the audience is not laughing at your jokes this particular night, you cannot let that sour your performance, or as they say, “You must go on with the show.”

Let me add another level to this as well. As a former teacher (yes, I’ve been a lot of things in my life), I did not like every kid I ever taught. There were some (two in particular) that I couldn’t stand and would have sent them to the prison camp with the former spouse. But I never let them know that I had fantasies of punching each with all my might right in the jaw. They never knew how much I loathed them.

Dealers have to take acting to heart. Even if they don’t like a particular patron, or several patrons or all their patrons, they can’t show it. They have to act pleasantly, even in the midst of players who should be dragged out of the casino and thrown in prison.

For any dealer, one rotten player can sour a day, I know that, but still all the other patrons who are gambling their hard-earned money must not see the hurt that one rotten player has bestowed. In eight hours there will probably be at least one rotten player but the dealer must “go on with the show.”

Acting is one key to dealing. It sits right there with knowledge of the game and the game’s payouts. The inner state of the dealer is irrelevant. The players are not playing at a casino in order to act as a psychiatrist for a casino-weary employee.

In short, dealers must learn the art of pretending – and most dealers have actually done just that. But the dealers who can’t pretend should leave the business because that business will not get any better.

You might hate all your players but those players should never know that. You must act professionally and pleasantly and on your break you can fantasize about shipwrecking them on some hostile island.

[Read Frank Scoblete’s books I Am a Card Counter: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Blackjack, I Am a Dice Controller: Inside the World of Advantage-Play Craps and Confessions of a Wayward Catholic! All available from Amazon.com, on Kindle and electronic media, at Barnes and Noble, and at bookstores. Visit Frank’s website at www.frankscoblete.com.]