best (and worst) dealers in las vegas

[VORP]

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.

[PokerBob]

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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!

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indeed.

[pig4bill]

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Which one is she?

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

[52s]

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).

[52s]

[ 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)?

[bones]

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.

[*TT*]

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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.

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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)

[Al_Capone_Junior]

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.

[psandman]

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.

[EWillers]

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.