I'm a Poker Dealer and I still love my Job!! (Long)

[balt999]

I used to be a regular poster on 2+2, but lately I've become more of a lurker than a poster. The last couple of weeks I've seen a trend of negativity towards poker dealers. As a poker dealer myself, I've been particularly disturbed by the bashing of poker dealers. Bigfishhead and Photoc are the most prominent Las Vegas Poker dealers that posts regularly and I usually enjoy reading what they say. I wanted to chime in my two cents of what being a poker dealer is all about and what I see from the box.

1) I work for a major Strip casino, but our poker room is small in comparsion to other huge casinos, so our major clientel are tourists with a sprinkle of locals. In generally many of these players are reasonable people who have a good time, so crap like dealer abuse, bad attitudes, and nits are little or non existent where I work. It makes the environment very pleasant to work at when you know the players are there to have fun.

2) Tipping: Listen, everyone who knows our job knows that tipping makes up for huge part of my income. When I first started dealing it used to bother me when I get stiffed on a 700 pot. BUt as I've gotten more experience getting stiff doesn't bother me much anymore. I figured in the long run the poker dealers make the same amount at the end of the year, so there's no sense of getting all worked out when someone stiffs ya on a $1,000 pot.

3) I take pride in my work. I'm always working on my dealing skills to make myself a better dealer, and fortunately I've gotten a lot of feedback from players saying they respect and like the way I deal, and how I can control a game.

4) I'm not a big talker in the box. It's my responsibility to make sure I give my game my full attention even when I'm at a table full of stiffs. but if it's a fun 3-6 game or a crazy 1-2 NL and they're talking to me, I'm not going to ignore them. I pretty much look at the table dynamics and go with the flow.

5) Finally I love my job!! I can't believe I didn't do this earlier. There's never two days the same. Everyday you sit with 10 different people with 10 different personalities and someone always happens that brings out some sort of genuinue emotions, where it's watching some young WPT Wannabee (dark sunglasses, REd Bull drinking, and iPod wearing) Donk off all their money on Q-High or watching two people fight over a 10 dollar pot.

And Finally to all the Young stallions WPT wannabees playing 1-2 NL...when you try to stare down an opponent for an eternity trying to get a read, 90% of the time you're usuall going to fold and I'm ready to drop the deck [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

That's my two cents from another Las Vegas Poker Dealer