Life as a Dealer: Worth Pursuing?

Do dealers represent a very mechanical part of the game when you play, or do you wonder what’s behind their uniforms and serious faces? Dealers run interesting lives, and as a group, they are a minority, usually secluded in gambling cities around the casinos. Dealers can tell you some of the most interesting stories, and they definitely have a hectic and tiresome job.

According to player and author Kaeline Minton, the journey to becoming a dealer is a bumpy one but definitely feasible if you do your best in stressful situations. She actually entertained the thought of becoming a dealer rather than a poker pro – since according to her, she lacks the skills to support herself as a poker player. However, living in Georgia, where no casinos are found, she had to dig deep and go underground, where she found a community of poker rooms, which were looking for dealers at the time. There, Minton met a professional dealer, who tutored her before starting her dealer gig at the Georgian underground rooms. Before taking personal tutoring, she recommends reading the Professional Poker Dealer’s Handbook, which she says it is essential for learning the theory and background of poker dealing.

Minton got excited about the 2005 World Poker Open in Tunica, to which she applied for a dealer job, took 2 weeks off from work and got herself her first formal dealer job. Before getting the job, “[she] had to pay $75 (non-refundable) to the Goldstrike, who handled the application for [her] Mississippi Gaming License.”

Minton found out dealers make minimum wage from casinos in Mississippi, and they supplement their salaries with tokes, or tips. Dealers report all tokes to the casino and all of their winnings are taxed. In general, dealers can make between $20 to $30 an hour, taxing half of it.

For her first time as a dealer, she got a swing shift (7 pm to 3 am) in the Single Table Satellites, the easiest tables in a tournament, for which she earned $16 per STS dealt, and her tokes ranged between $10 and $50. Later in the tournament, she was assigned to the high-limit cash games, in which Minton was dealing 20-minute downs at each table and charging a pot fee for the winners before handing them their winnings. Her experience juggling all this was stressful but manageable, as she said, “sometimes I would push the pot to the winner and then go ‘Oops, I forgot to take the time charge’ and have to ask the player for $35 back - trust me when I say this will make most players cranky and will negatively impact your tokes!” The tokes Minton received in the cash tables ranged from $2 to $25.

During the final phase of the tournament, Minton was assigned to the main tables, after which every dealer had to turn in the tips received in a tipping pool and the casino management would split it in equal parts among all of them.

After the tournament, Minton called her supervisor hoping to receive some feedback, and she was surprised to know her supervisor was disappointed about her leaving and expressed her satisfaction with her performance.

Even though Minton had a nice trip as a dealer, she does not recommend it as a main or first-option career, since it is very hard to support a living working only as a dealer, especially in states where they don’t enjoy many benefits. However, she does recommend it as a supplementary career to your main one, or as a transitional one.

As a general caution, when people interested in dealing live in states where casinos are banned, going underground may be dangerous if police raids occur, since underground dealers are harshly punished if arrested, more than underground players. According to Launch Poker, a home poker game was raided this month in South Carolina, and more than 50 people were arrested, from which 7 were dealers. The dealers will be facing a fine of $2,000 for each count and one year in prison.

The Vegas dealer blogger shared his hectic life as a dealer in one of his blogs, saying that dealer schedules are some of the worst in employment. Depending on the demand and the events, you can work from 8 hours to 50 in one week, and in predictable days, the casinos usually tell you whether they are going to need you or not, but in unpredictable days, they have you on stand-by, waiting for their call any minute of the day. It also can take a while to get a full-time dealing job, usually months. The good thing is that in good days, dealers can go home with large tips, up to $300. Of course, dealer salaries in Vegas are much better than in no-gambling states.

If you are interested in becoming a poker dealer, but have no time to attend dealer school, there is an online course available, which claims to teach you everything you need to know for dealing, with demonstration videos from a professional dealer who works at the Bellagio. They warn potential clients that dealing is not for everybody, since in the poker arena, dealers must have a thick skin and take the mood swings of poker players, who usually take their frustrations out on them. Dealers must always be nice and respectful to nasty players at all times, which is definitely not for everybody. The kit costs $197, and according to them, all you need to start training is an internet connection. For more information about this product, visit dealer-training.com.

Hopefully, the information in this article was useful not only for the mere curious but also for the people interested in making some tokes in the near future. Keep in mind, though, that dealing is a career you must carefully think about and we recommend you pursue it the right way.