8 Secrets of a casino dealer

I skipped university in favour of earning a wage, as a young girl my mum would tell me about her career in casinos, and although it was far from the glamorous representation that James Bond would have you believe, I was always fascinated as to why she viewed it as the best days of her life and yet begged me not to go for it myself. One day and true to my petulant form I saw an ad in a local newspaper, (yes there were still paper ads rather than online ads even as recent as 2008), I called and was accepted into a training school which would ultimately change my life forever.

I went into casino world a mousy teenager, to yell at me would have me in fits of tears immediately, and by the time I became a fully fledged dealer, I was hardened, quick, and worked off of two to three hours sleep every day, to make me cry you'd have to throw a breeze block at me to even make a dent. I'm going to tell you some things that you’d never know if you didn't work in a casino, and some of it is going to shock you.

1. It is absolutely filthy

You’d be forgiven for thinking that everything in a casino is shiny, sparkly and perfectly clean, given that there is a whole bunch of work that goes in behind the scenes to project a fantasy for the customer to make you spend more money.

The truth of it is that casino workers knew long before Coronavirus to NEVER touch their face and to always wash their hands before doing anything. The ‘baize’ (that's the fabric table covering) is at least two shades darker within two weeks of a new one being put on. The amount of hands that touch it, sweat, grime and yes sometimes even blood that seeps into it makes it one of the most toxic things in the world.

Often after a shift I would come home and the palms of my hands would be black from the gunk deeply settled into the fabric. The chips (tokens that you exchange money for) get switched out every so often too, the thing about new chips is that it's a bit like a hairstyle, much more workable between washes as gross as that is. Not to mention that with every casino carpet, comes fleas. I would wager you won't find a casino employee without at least a few flea bites on their ankles.

2. No it isn't rigged.

Every night and without fail, there would be at least 20 players furiously writing numbers down that had come in on a roulette wheel, absolutely sure that they would beat the system. Regulars would often only play with their favourite dealers as they just “knew” where they would put the ball. Even so far as taking it as personally offensive if the dealer threw a different number to what they were expecting. I am here to tell you once and for all, after 6 years of being the top of my game in the business that it is. Not. Rigged.

I promise you that every time we opened we would bust out levels to check the wheels were completely balanced on roulette, there is a ‘company shuffle’ on card games to ensure everything is as random as possible. If you play in a casino you better get your head around the fact that it is absolute luck of the draw quite literally.

There are no magic signals that we give off if we think you are winning too much, we simply lose that night. Chances are based on the heaviness of the game you are playing against a dealer who is either insanely bored, or laser focused as everything has to be absolutely accurate on paying you out.

3. The Hierarchy

Casinos work in a pyramid system. You have your dealers who are front line, dealing the games and making sure you have a fun time, you have the inspectors, who effectively watch the games to make sure everything adds up and there's no underhandedness going on, and they also watch for cheats and check the maths on bets, and then you have the pit bosses and the managers.

These people deal with the real heavy stuff like cash flow in and out of the casino, VIP customers, and the hiring and firing. Casinos run an extremely tight ship, so if you've ever seen a person in a suit hovering over a dealer, they are there because they HAVE to be. No game goes unwatched, no payout is left unchecked, especially when there are millions at stake. Dealers and inspectors have to do a large amount of complex maths incredibly quickly, and with no help from calculators, so sometimes it takes a whole four man team to send out a payout to a winner.

4. It's damn near impossible to cheat. So don't try.

The moment you enter the workplace as a casino dealer you get taught how to spot cheats, there's literally months worth of training you can do, and there's virtually nothing that doesn't get caught by a dealer, an inspector, or a camera. Any tiny dispute on the table relating to a hustle someone is trying to pull and the game will be stopped immediately, even if they aren't sure that something actually happened. As there's a line of command in casinos if anything slips by it could mean instant dismissal, so they are incredibly vigilant.

5. Sex drugs and rock and roll.

Like all night time industries its bedmates with bad decisions. It wasn't unusual to rock up to work two hours after leaving a party, or to sleep with your superior. Substance abuse is rife within casinos, the night work and limited people you interact with often mean that if you aren't working with your colleagues you're partying with them, and if you aren't partying with them, you're marrying them. It's an incredibly insular world and everybody knows everybody even through different casinos.

Whole teams of dealers can be living together because of the incredibly unsociable hours, which makes it super easy for time to have its own meaning. Your whole life is run by shifts and not what day of the week it is, often resulting in not actually seeing daylight for hours on end. That being said it's a very fun way to live, as long as you don't get trapped.

6. Money isn't real money

A question I used to get asked a lot being on salary as a dealer was did it make me feel sick when I saw £10,000 or higher in front of me that I couldn't dream of gambling. The answer to that is no. Through a dealer’s hands in a night there could be mind boggling amounts of money passing through them, cold hard cash plunged down a little box and turned into play plastic for the rich.

If you're in casinos long enough money is reduced to paper and numbers, it ceases to have any value attached to it further than the correct maths. Dealers and managers also have to count all of the money taken in an evening by hand in a bomb proof room. Once you're surrounded by this much cash, it's just monopoly money.

7. It's boring

As previously stated a while goes by and money ceases to be shocking in huge amounts. As you get better at your job and the maths comes quickly, game play is seamless and you no longer worry about every little thing you do being watched it can become very boring indeed.

There is very little as repetitive as being a casino dealer, although we do have moment of excitement from enormous games from time to time where you have to actually shout to deal properly and clearly, (known as speaking your game, you have to say everything you are doing loudly and clearly on the table, for the inspector who might be watching four tables, and for the microphones embedded in the tables).

There are moments when I've had big celebrities walk in the door and have dealt a private game just for them, or when we've had fights break out between some not so savoury characters, (criminals are rich, who knew), but most of the time its dealing the same game, to the same people, with the same people watching you.

8. Competitiveness

It is said that casino folk are the oddest in the world. We often come into the job having had sketchy pasts, usually with a very strange sense of humour, and an air of superiority. The last character trait in that list comes from the constant need to be perfect when dealing. The whole thing is like a performance, and as soon as you walk on to the floor as a trainee you're looking up to people whose muscle memory and brains have been so well adjusted to that job, you're pitting yourself against years and years of experience.

It wasn't unusual for bored dealers to create fake games for themselves and the tables next to them, racing to add up impossibly large bets with four of five other staff members. Dealers and inspectors aren't allowed to sit down, so this was one of the only times, with no one in the building that we were allowed.

Being great at your job as a dealer isn't just an ego thing. If you're good at what you do that means less checks, less aggravation from otherwise assholey customers if you know how to work them, and there is something beautiful about a well dealt game. I left the industry years ago, but my trophies from competitions, (yes there are dealer competitions), are still proudly on my mantle, as a little reminder that I can do anything if I get goaded into being good long enough and have the right people teaching me.