best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

my nominations:

best:

joe at bellagio (asian kid with spikey hair)

unreal fast dealing hands, always has action correct, despite dealing at laser speeds the cards usually end up right where you want them. he collects time like no other. just an amazing dealer.

clarkmonster would nominate some kid names justin(?) at the mirage. i do recall having a great dealer when i last played there (2 years ago) perhaps it was him.

worst:

abe at bellagio. unreal slow at just about everything he does and is always engaged in conversations with players (which i despise).


gogogogoogogogoogog

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Lance at Venetain and Jimmy at the Orleans can get a lot of hands out per hour. They can really keep a game moving and are always in control of the game.



David at Red Rock (who used to deal at Monte Carlo for years) is GREAT! So is Gina (Red Rock also) who used to deal at MGM and Texas Station before that.


As far as worst.....

They had some of the slowest dealers I've ever seen at the Golden Nugget a week or so back (and I play at some off the wall places, Joker's Wild, Speedway, etc.).
The floor was real nice (at the Nugget) but the dealers that night were pretty bad IMHO. YMMV.



Happy Pokering,

Howard

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Aaron at Caesars is awesome

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Joe at the Bellagio is great. Sky is also excellent.

--Nate

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
worst:

abe at bellagio. unreal slow at just about everything he does and is always engaged in conversations with players (which i despise).

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this the guy I dubbed "Abe the Game Killer" at the MGM Grand when it first opened in the mid-90's? A small guy, always scowling, always chewing out the tourists for not paying attention, or acting out of turn. Runs the game like a strict headmaster, demanding that everyone pay attention to the game, and that no one disrupt the proceedings by--gulp--having fun.

I'd be in the loosest, wildest LLHE games imaginable, then Abe would push in. 30 minutes later, I'm sitting in a rock garden. Nobody wants to play a hand, because every time they do, the dealer finds fault with them, with lots of scowling and disapproval. This guy would simply suck the life out of a good game.

If it's not the same guy, I apologize to the Abe that you mention.

My Abe was the only dealer I ever stiffed. I would set aside any tokes that I would've given, and let them pile up, and use this money to reward the next dealer to sit down, for getting Abe out of my game.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

i like leslie at the bellagio. agree that joe is great. sky scares me a bit. almost too intense, like his dad made him do pushups as a kid or something.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Aaron at Caesars is awesome

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Has anybody noticed that many of the dealers at the bellagio are really pissy lately? Very quick to take offense from players. I was never the target of them, but saw 3 or 4 instances in three days of play where they just overreacted with players.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
my nominations:

best:

joe at bellagio (asian kid with spikey hair)

unreal fast dealing hands, always has action correct, despite dealing at laser speeds the cards usually end up right where you want them. he collects time like no other. just an amazing dealer.

clarkmonster would nominate some kid names justin(?) at the mirage. i do recall having a great dealer when i last played there (2 years ago) perhaps it was him.

worst:

abe at bellagio. unreal slow at just about everything he does and is always engaged in conversations with players (which i despise).


gogogogoogogogoogog

[/ QUOTE ]i agree, abe is horrible. i cant stand him, he talks wayyy too much, even while involved in a hand, and his breathe stinks.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

joe is probably the best like you said sublime, honorable mention to sky

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Aaron at Caesars is awesome

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Abe @ Bellagio is my "go take a 30-minute break" dealer.

I'm gonna throw Shaun @ Caesars some love.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Joe @ Bellagio is very good, but the best imo is Robert @ Wynn.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

There's a guy at Wynn that likes to critique your play. Wish I'd caught his name.

There's a woman at Caesars that's horrible. In a tournament she will grab your chips to make change without asking. In one down she made about 3 mis-deals, misread the board a couple times, and twice tried to push the pot to the wrong guy. She screwed up about a third of the hands she dealt.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

This totally reminds me that Abe dealt a flop in a round of Triple Draw in the mixed game.

God he SUCKS so bad.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Your Abe is clearly different from my Abe, and I apologize for lumping them together.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

this will seem random but the majority of the dealers in the little poker room at the rio are outstanding. me and some other posters were playing a very wild mixed game as well as some hu hold em and they were keep up very well with our very fast action including a lot of dark bets and raises. there were virtually no mistakes and we were really testing them. the floor was also excellent and very accomodating to our hijinks.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

BEST: About 4 hours after the 2007 new year this year I found myself playing 1-2 NL at the Tuscany Suites which is off the strip down the street from Bally's

I had easily the best dealer in the history of poker. Kept the game going at an amazing pace and never made a mistake.

He even POUNCED on one drunk guys hand with out dropping the deck when said drunk guy flipped his hand on the river before the action had closed.

Who woulda thought...4am on Jan 1st and some guy is dealing like its the final table of the WSOP. The only pot I won was checked around for like $7 with a couple people...I gave the dealer all $7 and racked up after that.

Guy kinda looked like Mike Matasouw if anyone has played there...and I think he might have been coked up also - which is kinda ironic given my comparision.

WORST: Some old lady at the Wynn who looks like a bird. Short hair - too much make-up - probably a former hooker, etc...

Basically she acts like a bitch to me when I dont want to give her my cards before I get shipped the pot(is this wrong?) - I dont give her a tip - and then she acts like a super bitch to me from that point forward. Banging the [censored] our of her tokes on the drop box from that point forward and giving my the death stare, etc...I guess thats why you deal cards for a living bitch...

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Which one is she?

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Is spikey haired Joe back to dealing again? He had been on the floor recently.

He is a great dealer, but he's even better when he's at your table and not in the box!

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Beau at the Wynn is one of the best dealers in town. Plus I don't think I've ever seen him in a bad mood.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Is spikey haired Joe back to dealing again? He had been on the floor recently.

He is a great dealer, but he's even better when he's at your table and not in the box!

[/ QUOTE ]

indeed.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Which one is she?

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know her name, but she did the same sort of thing when I played there last December.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Yeah, the Rio grave crew especially, is considered one of the if not the best crew in town. I haven't been there in quite a long time (used to grind the 4/8 there when I first rolled into town - yum yum), but the dealers there are great and make out like gangbusters (no having to deal crappy 1/2 games = good times).

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
Is spikey haired Joe back to dealing again? He had been on the floor recently.

He is a great dealer, but he's even better when he's at your table and not in the box!

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm trying to figure out who this is... blond highlights, usually plays 15/30 (at least as of late)?

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

From Caesars-

Best- Shaun and Brandon. Both very fast, personable, and don't interfere with the action.

Worst- Joan. Holy [censored], what a miserable old woman.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
this will seem random but the majority of the dealers in the little poker room at the rio are outstanding. me and some other posters were playing a very wild mixed game as well as some hu hold em and they were keep up very well with our very fast action including a lot of dark bets and raises.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know if you realized it, but I was kinda drunk thanks to that mango lasse spiked with 151... but I do remember that the dealers were surprisingly very good - except for the first guy we had who was standard. They adjusted perfectly to the fast and furious pace of our game, never got flustered (and there were plenty of moments where i expected them to), and as you pointed out was always in step with the ridiculous amount of dark bettering that was going on. I'd go back again, provided we bring our own players of course(hard to start a mid-limit mixed game at the Rio I guess)

Re: RANT on Vegas dealers and the compnies the work for
 

It is an unfortunate truth that the worst dealers should far outnumber the best here in vegas. The reasons for this are multifaceted and complex. Please allow me to elaborate in great detail ...

First off, almost every casino has tried to jump on the poker bandwagon, but almost none of them are actually behind poker in any real or meaningful way. This is most obvious in casinos where the poker room is located way off in a corner, far from the main casino. Casino executives just don't get it as they usually know nothing at all of poker, but since they are bigshot execs they convince themselves it's a good idea to hide the poker room from those who might actually play in the games. The list of rooms with this problem might include the majority of rooms that have opened since the boom began. Holy cow, Mason wrote about this subject how friggin' long ago? If there is a single casino exec in this town who's even read the essay I'd be shocked.

Next, when you take a casino who's not really behind poker and open a poker room, you're very likely to have the room staffed with people who aren't really behind poker either, or perhaps who aren't even poker people at all. Typically this is seen when pit personelle are brought into poker rather than hiring someone from the outside (who's actually qualified). The other possibility is that the casino will pay the supervisors such an insultingly small wage that good people just won't last long working for such small potatoes. Most of the good ones will go back to dealing, most likely earning $400-$1000 a month more money, while working significantly fewer hours and not having to deal with the incredible corporate stupidity that's become commonplace in the few corporations that control almost all of vegas these days. It really is sickening when the supervisor is required to "carry the corporate torch" as their primary duty, with running the poker room as a distant second place finisher.

Unfortunately, a poker room that is run by incompetent morons will probably still turn some profit. Thus your corporate execs, who see things mostly in terms of average profit per square foot, won't know the difference, and will also have their preconceived notions about poker mediocrity in adding to overall profits validated by their own self fulfilling profecy.

So I've gone off on a tangent here, but all this is the reason why there are far more outstandingly BAD dealers in vegas than good ones. No one's forcing the dealers to live up to any meaningful standards because the corporation has not attached any importance to those standards. Instead, these corporate idiots are putting high importance on getting everyone "certified" in some idiotic multiday class (with an acronym name) about kissing the customer's butt and sucking the corporate a$$.*** Never mind that 99% of it SHOULD be common sense, and that the rest could be taught in an hour or two. You see, these classes are developed by people who don't really do a friggin' thing for the casino, but who wish to justify their own salaries and perpetuate their own existence. It's kind of like the human resources department.

Human resources-a department within a corporation whose function is to take simple problems and make them complicated, thus providing employment for several totally incompent and generally useless lumps of flesh. The quintessential human resources employee can be found right here in vegas at the [name of corporation withheld]. A stiff middle finger to all the internal employees at that chithole of a building.

How's about any one of you name three dealers who work in a room without shuffle machines that you have EVER seen count the stub? What's the line on how many out of 100 would not know what counting the stub was?

How many dealers out of ten in your favorite room take the five whites out of the rack before they put the redbird into the rack? In the blackjack pit it's "money in, money out." Violate this twice and see if you still have a job. But in the poker rooms it's so commonplace you'd wonder if it was even a rule at all. (BTW, I would fail you for an audition if you did not follow the money in, money out rule).

You see, the casino can save a few bucks by cutting the poker supervisor's pay, but the dealers are already at minimum wage, so no savings there. Even a badly run poker room can make some money, so why bother trying to promote excellence in an area that doesn't translate into immediate and direct corporate profits? Hell, money in, money out don't mean chit in the poker room because the banks are minimal anyway (usually $500 or so per table), and they just charge the dealers if they are short.

So excellence is top priority here at [corporate name withheld] but only if it shows an immediate quantifiable profit. Otherwise who gives a rat's a$$, our execs are too ignorant to care, and the average WPT trained dullard won't notice anyway.

So as for the dealers, I've played coast to coast and they are probably the worst here in vegas (although I must admit I have not been to the dreaded foxwoods). Seriously, the dealers in AC were excellent compared to vegas, same in many cali clubs).

So enjoy the good ones, because bad dealers won't go away until someone actually cares. And don't expect [name of corporation withheld] to lead the way.

Al

***You see, these corporations don't just want people who are willing to suck corporate a$$, they want people who actually like the taste of it.

Re: RANT on Vegas dealers and the compnies the work for
 

One poker room i worked in actually drove out almost every dealer with any experience, because management basically wanted young friendly smiling people who they could worry about teaching dealing to later. Walk into that room now and believe they have proably no more than 4 dealers who had more than 6 months experience dealing poker before they were hired and those four were probably friends of the manager (in all fairness this is an estimate and the numbers may be slightly off). That room also has a shift manager who was hired at age 21 with no poker or casino experience.

BTW I'm not saying all those dealers are bad, just that the corporate priority is not on having good staff.

Re: RANT on Vegas dealers and the compnies the work for
 

Gina at the Red Rock (and formally MGM). Good speed and control of the game. I hear she's got some camera time in the soon (?) to be released Lucky You.

Re: RANT on Vegas dealers and the compnies the work for
 

Meh, I think Vegas dealers are better on balance than NorCal dealers.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]


WORST: Some old lady at the Wynn who looks like a bird. Short hair - too much make-up - probably a former hooker, etc...

[/ QUOTE ]

fo sho.

joe at bellagio is awesome. even better when he's playing the 30......

leslie is great at b as well.

i also like john at wynn.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
i like leslie at the bellagio. agree that joe is great. sky scares me a bit. almost too intense, like his dad made him do pushups as a kid or something.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah I remember sweating when Tongni was playing some fish HU 400/800 and Sky was in the box. By the end of his down I thought he was going to need smelling salts and an IV he was so intense and pushing out tons of hands.

Another guy I like at Bellagio I can't remember his name but young white kid with glasses who looks a bit like Clay Aiken and I always find dealing my 1/2 games overnight.

-DeathDonkey

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]

Another guy I like at Bellagio I can't remember his name but young white kid with glasses who looks a bit like Clay Aiken and I always find dealing my 1/2 games overnight.

-DeathDonkey

[/ QUOTE ]

When did they start spreading 1/2 at the Bellagio? Or are you referring to 100/200? I think I know the dealer you're speaking of but I cannot remember his name either.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Another guy I like at Bellagio I can't remember his name but young white kid with glasses who looks a bit like Clay Aiken and I always find dealing my 1/2 games overnight.

-DeathDonkey

[/ QUOTE ]

When did they start spreading 1/2 at the Bellagio? Or are you referring to 100/200?

[/ QUOTE ]

Um... Death Donkey's game starts at 60/120 and goes pretty far north from there. High limit players call 100/200 1/2, 400/800 is called 4/8 - etc.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Understood. Threw me off a bit there, but I had no clue what his normal game was.

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[/ QUOTE ]i agree, abe is horrible. i cant stand him, he talks wayyy too much, even while involved in a hand, and his breathe stinks.

[/ QUOTE ]

How the heck do you smell a dealer's breath all the way from your seat?

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

[ QUOTE ]

David at Red Rock (who used to deal at Monte Carlo for years) is GREAT! So is Gina (Red Rock also) who used to deal at MGM and Texas Station before that.


[/ QUOTE ]

Gina was my favorite dealer at MGM when i vacationed.... Great personality, keeps the game moving, but even more fun to play with...

Have not seen her deal/play with her at the Red Rock because it's quite a drive from where I live...

Re: best (and worst) dealers in las vegas
 

Sky is unreal. Our table joked about how he puts away his dishes in the kitchen cabinet after they come out of his dishwasher. Imagine that visual.

Re: RANT on Vegas dealers and the compnies the work for
 

[ QUOTE ]
How many dealers out of ten in your favorite room take the five whites out of the rack before they put the redbird into the rack? In the blackjack pit it's "money in, money out." Violate this twice and see if you still have a job. But in the poker rooms it's so commonplace you'd wonder if it was even a rule at all. (BTW, I would fail you for an audition if you did not follow the money in, money out rule).

[/ QUOTE ]

The poker room is not the pit. In the past there were problems with the casino moving the chips from the pot to the rack. If I saw a dealer put the red chip in the rack before putting 5 white in the pot, I would tell him I don't want it done that way. I want the 5 white to come out of the dealer's rack, then I want the red chip removed from the pot, and then I want the 5 white chips pushed into the pot so everyone can see the dealer didn't just steal $5 out of the pot.