Just Poker Talk

Today I read that Casino College is offering a special Poker Dealing course. The aim of this course is to give student dealers an opportunity to deal at the WSOP. Casino College is adamant that they can get 100 of their students hired to deal.

The course teaches prospective dealers how to deal a dozen variations of poker. They have even arranged for a WSOP insider to give insider tips and advice. I wonder how dealing in the WSOP differs from other professional settings, like dealing ring games at my local casino.

The whole deal amounts to publicity and a gimmick to attract more students to College Casino. The prospect of dealing at the WSOP, however, does sound enticing, though not for the same reasons I had a few years ago.

More than once the thought of becoming a poker dealer has entered my mind. Two years ago, I went to the Morongo to play some poker. It was my first time playing for real money. Up until then I had only played online for play money.

On that day I skipped Calculus and British Literature for a trip to the casino. I brought a hundred dollars, none of which I was willing to lose. I had taken the money out of the ATM earlier in the afternoon. Taking out five 20 dollars bills while a security camera caught my every movement, made feel deviant, like a criminal who had taken someone’s ATM card and who was now withdrawing the owner’s money. In these situations I always feel a degree of moral responsibility, a feeling that I’m doing something wrong. Of course I was doing nothing wrong by withdrawing my own money or playing poker at a casino. All that was perfectly legal, yet there was a feeling that I was doing something socially reprehensible.

The Morongo is an Indian Casino located in Cabazon California, a place that is all freeway, billboards advertising strip clubs, and desert in every direction. The casino and the adjacent upscale outlet mall are the only signs of life in an otherwise deserted town. On either side freeway you can see billboards advertising the Morongo’s luxurious food and relaxing spas, not to mention hundreds of slot machines and Pai Gow poker. The billboards grow more frequent as you get closer and seem to create a sense of anticipation and excitement before arrival. In my case I was thinking about how much money I would win and how I would bluff everyone at the table.

When I arrived at the Morongo, I noticed, in several parts of the casino, a help wanted sign for card dealers. This job opportunity appealed to me for a few reasons. 1) It was better than my job tutoring math and science to middle schoolers. 2) Meeting other poker players and learning from them. 3) I had an image of card dealers as rebellious anti-capitalistic renegades that dealt in the shady underworld of America.

My image of dealers came from the idea of Las Vegas, gambling, and casinos as sinful. This image was reinforced through movies, commercials, television, and books. Las Vegas is shown as both deviant and hip. A month before I had read Bringing Down the House, a book about MIT students who developed a system to beat blackjack. The descriptions of life in Vegas and casinos had an impact in solidifying that image in my head.

My image of card dealers turned out to be untrue, at least at the Morongo. Most of the dealers were middle-aged and looked nothing like the renegades I pictured. In fact the dealers were just ordinary people with polished shuffling and dealing skills, nothing that I could emulate without practice. That was the main reason I never applied for the job.

[via Pokerpages.com]

WSOP, dealing poker, casino college, Morongo