Lee Barnes:

Dummy Up and Deal

I look back on how audacious I was the first time I tried out for a dealing job. A friend of mine knew Benny Binion and had promised he could get me an audition at the Horseshoe. I got a deck of cards, a layout and some used roulette chips and practiced for two days. Actually, a couple of hours each day. On the third night I called my friend. He walked me up to the old man’s booth in the front of the restaurant and introduced us. Benny, who was eating a bowl of his famous chili, tilted his hat back and looked me up and down. He seemed a bit amused as he asked how long I’d been practicing. I told him several days.

“You nervous?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Then it must be your hands is nervous,” he said with a wry smile.

He told me to follow him into the pit. There he introduced me to the pit boss, who pointed to a game. The boss told the dealer on the game that I was coming in for an audition. I tapped the dealer out. The old man stationed himself at the pit podium, that same smile on his lips. I shuffled the cards, which was difficult, as the dealer I’d taken out had obviously had honey or glue on his hands. I let one of the players cut the cards and buried the top one. The deck was by then just about the size of a good shipping crate and weighed about 10 pounds; still I managed to pitch two cards to each player. The only problem was that I forgot to deal myself a first card. One of the players looked at me as I took the last card and tried to put it under a top that was nonexistent.

“What’cho gonna play with?” the player asked.

The pit boss came over, apologized to the players and told me to take the first card off the deck and use it as my up card. It was a face card. Now I had to look underneath it to see if I had an ace in the hole. This was no easy task, since the deck had nearly doubled in size in the last two seconds. I managed somehow to peek underneath. By then sweat was trickling down my neck and my armpits were soaked. I went from left to right to give hits to whichever players needed them. Everything went well until I reached the player on third base. He scratched his cards along the felt to ask for a hit. He got more than he expected. The top card was one of the four that landed right in front of his bet. The next thing I knew, the pit boss was telling me to pay everyone at the table.

Benny’s smile hadn’t faded one little bit. He waited for me as I backed away from the table. He tilted his hat back again and said, “Some fellas don’t pick this up on the first try. You’re welcome to come back sometime and give it your best.” Recommending his chili, of course, he told me to have a bite to eat in his restaurant and not to worry about the bill.

BREAKING IN IS HARD TO DO

Before they can make the cards do ballet in the air, before they can spin a roulette ball at speeds approaching the sound barrier, before they can pay 12 bets on a layout faster than a car salesman can calculate his commission, dealers must break in. Although it’s their hope that their careers will lead them someday to work at the Mirage or Caesars Palace, dealers don’t start there; they begin as “break-ins” at places like the Four Queens or the Horseshoe if they’re fortunate, or, if not, the Lady Luck or El Cortez. In the late ’70s, before they were closed and torn down, Little Caesar’s and Big Wheel were the worst of the break-in joints, dives that offered 50-cent blackjack and 25-cent craps, heated arguments flying as soon as the dice were tossed, claims about every other hand in blackjack. These were the places dealers found work on the way up or the way down—the toughest of the tough joints, one-room casinos that bored holes in dealers’ eyes and left scars on their souls.

At Little Caesar’s, pay was minimum wage and roughly a dollar a day in tips. Across the Strip at the Dunes, craps dealers were knocking down $60,000 a year in tips and keeping most of their wages as well. On her second week of employment at Little Caesar’s, a break-in feeding her kids with food stamps asked if she should declare income tax on her tips. Sure, the boss told her, put your pennies in a piggy bank. Insane as it may sound, in the early 1980s, many dealers were audited and hounded to pay taxes on undeclared tips at places like Little Caesar’s, while those who worked at the Dunes or the Sands were granted amnesty if they complied thereafter by declaring the full amount earned to the IRS.

Breaking in is not so much a process of gaining mechanical skills as it is an acclimation, a slow hardening of the soul. Dealers survive the daily rigors by recognizing signs, by wearing wreaths of emotional garlic to fend off faux vampires from the Upper Peninsula. Dealers who often have no sense of themselves or their spouses or children often express surprising insights into the forces that operate around them. Cynicism is pervasive. Survival in a casino depends on acquiring it.

A casino is a microcosm of a society that desires immediate gratification, risk without danger, reward without labor, recognition without earned respect. Our culture demands a Las Vegas or a Reno or an Atlantic City or the dozens of river-boat casinos found in the South and Midwest to provide an arena in which to act out that which is otherwise leashed. We need a place absent of reproach or reprisal. Dealers are sometimes the target of the most outlandish behavior. It is then that they are drawn into the theater, then that they become actors in the comedy or drama. What dealer doesn’t have a story?

Dealers merely help facilitate chance but are perceived quite differently. Veterans of the casino wars understand this and have developed mechanisms to deal with it—unflinching eyes, a deadpan expression, methodical motions that express disgust or boredom. Old-timers speak of pit bosses kicking them in the ankles and asking, “Can’t you win a hand?” Others tell stories of bosses sprinkling salt on losing tables. Both versions suggest, in some way, that when Pascal’s mathematics collide with the human desire to control an outcome, superstition and intimidation win.

At Little Caesar’s, a defunct casino legendary as hell for break-ins, one of the bosses would switch dealers every hand if a player had a streak. At the Mint, a floor man changed decks four times in 10 minutes. At the Maxim, a pit boss in craps often took dice off the game to spin and mike them, then he would hide them in his pocket. Men in $300 silk suits have not advanced much beyond the aboriginal stage of the tribesman in New Guinea who paints his face to control the weather. Don’t look for calm reasoning here. There are spirits at work.

You’re a break-in and you don’t yet have the stories in place, so you try to function on a rational level in an arena where reason is out of place. This is how it begins: confusion, anger, anxiety. Turn the dice over; give the deck an extra shuffle; go slow; go fast; get ’em in the air; dummy up and deal.

THE FACE-OFF

This may be just an urban legend, as it has been repeated so many times and gone through so much revision that the source is lost, except those who have dealt don’t doubt it one bit. The story goes that a young female break-in was placed on a blackjack game where a high roller was playing $500 on five spots. The high roller was way ahead of the game, up more than 20,000. This woman was picked to go in and deal to him because she had been winning on another game and the bosses were superstitious. Break-ins, after all, are lucky.

The shift boss and pit boss and floor man hovered nearby. Though nervous, she picked up the deck, shuffled and offered the cut card to the player, who carefully cut the deck. Hands trembling, she buried the top card and dealt two cards each to all five of his hands and two for herself. Her top card was an ace. She called for insurance. The pit boss smiled at the shift boss. The axiom about break-ins being lucky was holding up.

One by one the player peeked under each of his hands, pinned the cards under the bets, and when he’d looked at and pinned the last hand, he shook his head, signaling no insurance. The dealer carefully looked at her hole card. She didn’t have a face card. She asked if the player wanted a hit. The high roller shook his head. He was good on all hands. She turned over her hole card and hit and hit again to 16, then again to an 18. The pit boss growled under his breath. The dealer reached to turn over the first of the high roller’s hands, but before she could, he swept all of the cards from all of his hands into one pile.

Immediately the pit boss and shift boss charged the table, shouting that he couldn’t do that. The player smiled and said, “Just go ahead and pay them.”

The boss turned over the cards. The player had 10 of the 16 face cards in the deck. No matter how the hands were arranged he’d have 20 on each of them.

THE PROJECT

I was on the floor on graveyard at the Maxim, which wasn’t a break-in joint. Most of the dealers were required to have three years’ experience to work there. In those days it was a good house in terms of tips. The casino manager was known to be kind of his own person, which is another way of saying he had some unorthodox notions, but he’d also do some humane things from time to time. One of his little acts of kindness came after a porter found a wallet with several hundred dollars in it. The porter turned the wallet in, and the casino manager took this act of honesty to heart and gave the porter a job as a dealer.

At the time, we got some pretty good action in the casino, especially on late swing shift and early graveyard. Well, the porter was assigned to graveyard. That meant he came in at 4 in the morning. At the same time, another of the casino manager’s project dealers (people he was determined would become dealers), a woman who’d worked in the accounts department as a secretary, was also breaking in. I spent half my time watching these two break-ins and correcting their mistakes.

By the end of the first month, the ex-porter still couldn’t pay off a blackjack, any blackjack, other than a $2 bet, without making a mistake. Every blackjack payout, no matter how many times he’d made the payoff before, flustered him as much as the last one had, and yet every time I came to his aid he got upset and even more nervous. More than once I thought the poor guy was going to have a seizure.

The woman, on the other hand, made mistakes because she tried to go too fast and carry on conversations with the players, and it was impossible to correct her mistakes without her whining about being corrected and reminding me how she had her job because the casino manager wanted her to have it because she was “so good with people.” When she looked at her hole card, players in the MGM across the street could see it. Of the two, she was the harder to supervise. The ex-porter, essentially a nice guy, was thankful for getting a dealer’s job, and he tried but just wasn’t competent.

Invariably, the two of them ended up in my pit.

One morning I was exhausted already from watching the two of them and fixing their mistakes when I finally got a well-earned but short break. Earl, the floor man who relieved me, had been in the business for more than 25 years. He always looked like he’d been interrupted from a nap, but he knew the score. He told me to take a 15. He looked at the ex-porter and the ex-secretary and said, “Well, well, Lumpville. Have a good break and hurry back.”

When I returned, the ex-porter was staring at a player’s $15 bet and trying to figure out what to pay the player for his blackjack. He took a stack of $5 chips out of the rack and set them before him on the layout, but didn’t do anything with them, just stared at the blackjack. A couple of seconds later, he put those back in the rack and scratched his head. Now he came out with a stack of $25 checks. He scratched his head again. It was obvious that he had advanced beyond flustered into completely boggled. He scraped the toe of his shoe over the carpet. I asked Earl if he was going to help the dealer.

Earl looked at me with his perpetually drowsy-eyed look and said, “When he scratches his ass, I’ll go over.”

It wasn’t half a second later that the porter reached behind himself and scratched his butt.

“Excuse me,” Earl said. “Time to go help.”

MAKING ENDS MEET

At 26, she has two kids, a girl, 5, and a boy, 3, and a mortgage, responsibilities. She’s still on the extra board after eight months and working only three or four days a week, making barely enough to make the house payment and feed her kids. She seeks the advice of another dealer, a woman a year or two older, who’s been in the business three years. They sit on the couch in the break room, smoking and talking. The younger one talks around the subject, says her ex-husband isn’t real good about child support, that she’s been late twice with the mortgage.

The older woman listens, occasionally sucking on a cigarette and blowing the smoke at the ceiling. She’s a good listener and quickly figures out in what direction the conversation’s headed. Before it gets too intimate for her liking, she snuffs out her cigarette.

“Tell you what,” she says and names the man who schedules the dealers. “He’s the guy to see.”

The younger dealer says the man intimidates her. The older one understands, as he used to intimidate her as well. She smiles knowingly and looks the other up and down. “He’s a man. You’re attractive. Figure it out.” The older one stands and smoothes her skirt, checks her nylons in the mirror and starts to leave. She has a second thought. “I’ll tell him you have a problem. That way he’ll make the approach. Never know, you could get to like him.”

ELVIS INSURANCE

Colonel Parker bet every number every way he could get to it. Sometimes, so many chips were on the roulette layout that the numbers were hidden. The table was reserved for him and him alone, and the Hilton allowed him to have all the colors of the chips, each marked at a given denomination. It was virtually impossible for him to know how much he was betting on a given spin. He spread the chips until he had no more. The table was roped off. A gallery would form to watch. People were almost as intrigued with Colonel Parker as they were with Elvis.

Rumor had it that Elvis wanted to stop playing the showroom but that the Colonel was buried in markers and kept renewing the contract. They were supposed to have argued over it. On the night in question, the dealer had been buried for some four hours, and when he came off the break, he asked Colonel Parker if he knew he couldn’t win.

“Don’t have to, son. Got me a million-dollar pair a sideburns making me more ‘an I ever could lose to you.”

The dealer went on his break, knowing it was true. Of course the reason Elvis never performed at other hotels is that Colonel Parker was using the contract to pay off his markers at the Hilton. The casino kept extending him credit, so the cycle went on and on. The dealer was called down from his break and told to report to the pit boss, who told him he was suspended for telling the Colonel he couldn’t win.

“I asked him a question,” the dealer said.

“Same thing.”

The dealer, happy for the extra time off, took the two-day suspension and went fishing at Lake Mead. Years later, when the Colonel had died and Elvis had died and the dealer had been fired in a mass layoff, he told the story to another boss at a different casino.

“I heard that story,” the boss told him. “But that the dealer was fired.”

Knowing he was part of a Las Vegas legend, the dealer smiled.

THE DRAGON LADY

I never knew her name. We just called her the Dragon Lady. She had a temperament that was half fire and half poison. Every dealer in the joint hated her. One even told the bosses they could fire him if they wanted to, but he wasn’t going to deal another hand to her. He didn’t get fired, but it created a problem because other dealers started balking about going in on the game if she was playing. Once a boss sent a Vietnamese woman dealer to the Dragon Lady’s table. The temperamental player snatched some cards from the discard rack, tore them up and threw them in the air. She wouldn’t let women deal to her, or Asians, male or female, so the Asians and the females were all excused and the only ones left were white and black males. The women dealers showed no sympathy toward us males. One said it was what men had coming for being the pigs they were.

I had no desire to go on the game the day of my blow-up with the Dragon Lady, but I did. The casino books the bets and pays the winners, and that’s what makes the paycheck come home. I’d dealt to her before, and, yes, it was every kind of pain short of physical torture a human can endure, but a shift is only eight hours and I had survived my past encounters. At least that was my thinking.

She was already stuck, not in the grave exactly, but down 40 or 50 grand. I buried a card and waited for her to bet. But she just sat there sipping a straw in a glass of ice and stared at me about as hatefully as one human can at another. I remembered seeing as a kid old reruns of “Flash Gordon.” She reminded me of the evil Ming. I figured I was there for eight hours, and if it took her that long to bet, all the better. No sweat off me. Finally she spoke.

“You think you one hot motherf---er,” she said. “You not. You not shit. You not even a piece of dirt under my fingernail.”

I didn’t say anything.

She stood. “You think you better than me?” She held out her hand for me to see the rings on her fingers. One diamond was about three carats.

I looked at the diamond and asked, “How many batteries does that take?”

She cranked her arm back and heaved the glass she’d been sipping out of. It missed me, cleared the pit and hit a slot machine somewhere. By then she had gone completely berserk, throwing around profanity and threats. The pit boss came over and tried to calm her. He kept asking her to relax, but she didn’t slow down a bit. The shift boss and two security guards arrived, but she held them at bay with her threats. Players at nearby games gathered up their chips and moved farther away. It took most of 10 minutes to get her calm enough to ask her what had provoked the incident. What the bosses really wanted to know was what I had said, but she really didn’t know. She kept pointing to her rings and muttering that I’d insulted her. Her explanations weren’t lucid, and the more she tried to explain what I’d said the worse her accent got. Finally the shift boss asked me what had happened. I told him about the batteries. He cupped his hand over his eyes and shook his head. The way he acted, shaking his head and clicking his tongue in his cheek, you’d think I’d threatened her or called her a name, maybe vowed to kill all her posterity or something. He told me to see him when I went on break.

She sat down and started playing as if nothing had happened. And I did my best to deal as if nothing had happened, all the while thinking how sick this all was.

I found the shift boss on my break, but when I asked what he wanted, he merely dismissed me with a wave of the hand. After the break, I went back to the same game. The Dragon Lady was waiting for me. She said that I would be lucky for her, and if I wasn’t, she would have me fired.

I dealt the cards. If she lost a hand, she tore those cards in two. If she won a hand, she threw the cards at me. No one intervened. No one told her that her behavior was inappropriate. No one cared about anything but the chips that went her way or came back to the house. She won most of what she had lost. When my hour was up, my feet were burning and my back was sore. I was particularly grateful to see my relief enter the pit. He tapped me out and I started to clap. As I raised my hand, the Dragon Lady dropped a $5 check in front of me and asked for change. I gave her $5.

“Here, for you,” she said, setting a dollar token on the layout. “You lucky me.”

I took the token to the dealers’ box and dropped it. A woman dealer saw what I’d dropped and asked if that was all I got for all the money I’d given out.

“No,” I said, “I got that for taking all the bullshit you don’t have to.”

She said that now I knew the kind of crap women had to take every day.

Some time later that same week the casino barred the Dragon Lady from playing and asked her to leave. By that time, she’d been banned from playing in so many other casinos, there remained only a handful where she was still welcome. I heard she started playing at the Imperial Palace, and then a few weeks, perhaps two months later, a rumor circulated that she’d been found dead, the victim of a robbery or foul play. It’s hard to put teeth into rumors, but I remember hoping it was true. Sick as it sounds, it seemed fitting at the time.

BUSTED

In 1987, we had this well-endowed woman with no bra on the craps game at the Aladdin. It was busy, the dice were rolling for the players and she had them. She was wearing a halter top, screaming and bouncing around like she’d just been granted a divorce and a million-dollar settlement. I sent her the dice. She shook them and jumped up and down. Just as she got ready to throw, her halter straps came loose, both of them. But she was bent over and looking up at the other end of the table. There she was, breasts hanging out and so excited about rolling the dice she didn’t realize it. Everyone else did, though. All the action stopped except her. The dice went down the table. It was my job to watch them, but I didn’t. And neither did the box man. We were all staring at her. She was still jumping up and down, her breasts putting on a hell of a show, when she noticed. She pulled up her top, held it firmly, and asked what the number was. No one knew.

SWEETHEART DEAL

We called him the Sweetheart. “The Sweetheart’s here,” we’d say, and everything that was grim turned bright. He’d land in the baccarat pit and put us up for a tie right off, never a second thought. He knew our names and even the names of a few of our children. He’d ask about them and wonder if we were saving for our kids’ educations. He was a regular guy, only better, if you know what I mean. He lived in Los Angeles, actually Brentwood, I think. He played tennis. Once in while, he showed up in tennis apparel. We’d ask how his game went, and he’d just answer with a shrug. He never was one to talk about himself. Humble, you could say.

“I’m not very good at it,” he once said. “My employees try to let me win, but I’m just not very good. But I bet we can beat this game.”

He used “we” a lot whenever he talked about beating the game. We were on his side, and he knew it. Even the bosses were for him. Of course, they were in for the layoff whenever the Sweetheart was in. One weekend we gave over 10 grand to the bosses, three of them, each night. The pit boss got four grand, while the other two picked up three apiece. I think we gave the casino shift boss two grand as well, but in the form of a Rolex. I don’t know how much the cocktail waitress made, but that was the weekend the Sweetheart took the table for three million, and she couldn’t bring him grapefruit juice and coffee fast enough. He caught the streak he always wanted, stayed awake almost to dawn every night and walked out the happiest man alive.

I bet he’d be pleased to know that the money I made then is paying for my daughter’s college right now, business administration, and I already put the boy through law school. How much did we make in tokes that weekend? Ten percent of what he walked away with, plus about $10,000 from other players who were in on the streak. I took home over $70,000, most of it on Saturday. I woke my wife up at 4 o’clock in the morning and dumped the money on the bedspread. Forty-two thousand, we counted out. She tossed money in the air and buried her face in it. She’s a country girl who didn’t have milk money when she went to school. She never imagined so much money at once. The most I ever brought home before that was $6,000. We couldn’t sleep. We got up out of bed and counted it again and after we set 20 grand aside for the kids’ college fund, we made a list of all the things she wanted for the house. We tiled the patio and installed a gas barbecue. No pool. I didn’t want my kids drowning. I have a terrible fear of pools. When I first came to Las Vegas, I lived in the area called the Naked City. It’s over by the Stratosphere. A baby boy drowned in a swimming pool. His mama left him alone for two minutes with the door open, and when she got back the baby was gone. They found him in the pool. Three years old. No pool, I said to her. Most things, I let her have her way, but not that. No pool. I took her hand and led her into the daughter’s room. She was 5 then and sleeping like an angel. I gave my wife a hug and said to her, “The Sweetheart’s done a good thing for us.”

I’m a simple guy. I never expected a lot of things out of life. I got lucky. This business is a crazy one, me making all this money and all. But I’m a family man. I take vacations with the family, even now. I’ve seen people make all sorts of money and they’ve got nothing, some of them because of drugs; some just because they buy everything they can or they blow it gambling or on women or on men, depending. My wife’s a good woman. I never held back a nickel of what I made. I write up one parlay ticket a week during football season. I love the Falcons, pathetic as they are. My wife approves of $20 a week on football. She watches the games with me and tells me her picks, though I never bet them. She likes the Oilers, which is about as sad as liking Atlanta.

She’s helped me stay close to what life’s about. I think the Sweetheart would appreciate that as well. That’s why when he died, I took the week off work and flew my family to the funeral. I wanted my son and daughter, and especially my wife to pay respects to the man who made our life a lot better.

It’s easy for people in the business to get bitter. They forget what life is, if they ever knew. Me, I try to give everyone a chance. It’s not always easy to like another person, but spending time disliking people can’t be very healthy if what I’ve witnessed is true. I’d like to add that the Sweetheart’s funeral was a fine one. Everyone spoke highly of him. I told him that the other dealers sent their best. The old timers, me being one, talk about him even now. I guess being remembered is something.  

The stories above consists of vignettes from H. Lee Barnes’
“Dummy Up and Deal: Inside the Culture of Casino Dealing,”

Little Caesars

Deanna DeMatteo

It was owned by Eugene Maday who also owned the Checker Cab Company. Little Caesar's was a small casino with six 21 tables, one Crap table, six cash pinball, 150 slot machines, and a gift shop.

From its inception, the casino manager was Eddie Huffman, and Dick Sargent was its accountant. Huffman was also a partner in Griffith Investigations, a company that provided "Eye In The Sky" surveillance to many of the states' casinos. A virtual Who's Who of the Gaming Control Board's "Black Book", i.e., "Person Non Grata", would steadily stream into Little Caesar's to see Mr. Huffman. These individuals might have been unwelcome elsewhere, but at here they were employees of, or hoped to be employees of, Griffith Investigations. After all, who better to catch a cheat than a cheat!

Employees of Maday's Check Cab Company used to pick up their paychecks at Little Caesar's casino cage. Many of these drivers ended up working for nothing. Most of the time the wives of these drivers appeared on payday to make sure that their spouses gave them the money!

Caesar's boasted a world class craps dealer who was graced with both the dexterity and the mind to deal the game as though it were an art form. He was a major draw for both players and spectators alike. In fact, many aspiring dealers about town would hang around the casino in hopes that a good game would develop so that they might watch this man in action. The general consensus from many old timers and "wise guys" was that this dealer was the best that they had ever seen. Rumor has it that he eventually left the state in search of a better life.

Caesar's was a favorite haven for many degenerate gamblers in Las Vegas. Among the dealers who worked at Caesar's, the place was referred to as "The Toilet". Little Caesar's was in fact a "dive" if there ever was one. One Saturday night, with its lone crap table filled to capacity and in the throes of a long run, one of the gentlemen players had to relieve himself. Faced with the dilemma, and not wanting to "jinx" the roll, this player relieved himself on the carpet. Hence - The Toilet.

Benny "The Bite" Shapiro was an all time degenerate gambler who graced Little Caesar's with many of his antics. A mild mannered gentleman away from the dice table, Benny would often explode in a tirade when the dice sevened-out. Once before a packed table, the shooter threw the dice to Benny's end of the table where they sevened-out. In a rage, Benny picked up the offending dice and failing to bite them in half, promptly hurled them out in the parking lot. Another sevened-out caused Benny to bite into the nalgahyde railing, came out with a mouthful and promptly spewed it on the table along with the appropriate expletives. Benny "The Bite" was royalty at Little Caesar's!

In the early 1980s, Little Caesar's received a sports book license. With its aptly named "Hole in the Wall" sports book and an ad in all of the local trades as well as its "Midnight Madness" one-half point come on for football wagers on Friday and Saturday nights, Caesar's was a favorite for all of the wise guys. Though small in size, the book did tremendous collar volume.

In 1985, Little Caesars' sport book was managed by Gene Maday.

In 1989, Caesar's booked Bob Stupak's one million dollar bet on the Super Bowl, for which the "Polish Maverick" collected. In a tribute to Maday for booking the bet, Stupak presented him with a custom made one-man automobile, which sat outside in the front parking lot until Little Caesar's closed.

With the death of Maday, the entire mall property was sold in the 1990s. In May/June of 1995, Bally Chairman Arthur Goldberg announced a new project to be built on the property known as Bally's Paris/Paris Casino Resort. Plans called for a 50 story replica of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Paris Opera House, Parc Monceau, and the River Seine.

Meet 46 year casino veteran 

Mr. Larry Russo

I broke into the gaming industry in 1954. I really enjoyed the work and decided to make gaming my career. My first job was at the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas. That's right, the same El Cortez we break in our dice dealers today! The casino manager back then was a fellow named "Whitey Shugert". He was a very nice person and he was my initial tutor. I can recall working eight hours a night just on the stick. I had to work a month on the stick before I was allowed to deal on the bases. In contrast to today's dealers, we were taught to deal to the supervisors, so they could see all the payoffs. Today's dealers have no discipline whatsoever. They do not repeat bets, they cap bets, and a multitude of other no-no's.

In the 1950's there were no dealer's schools. In order to work on the strip it was necessary to learn to deal in downtown casinos. I moved to the Las Vegas Club because it offered a better opportunity to learn to deal because of more games and more business. We dealt 10 cent craps and 25 cent craps. Our boxman was "Fats" Moser. "Fats" was very strict, but an excellent instructor. He would hold a stick in his hand, and when you made a mistake he would rap you on the knuckles. You soon learned to avoid making mistakes.

I had been dealing at the Las Vegas Club for six months when one evening someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to go to work on the strip. I was elated because it was everyone's goal to work on the strip. That was the procedure used to obtain dealers for the strip, scouts would watch you work and if they liked what they saw, they would ask you if you wanted to work for them. So, in September of 1954 I went to work at the "Silver Slipper".

The Silver Slipper was operated by Joe Canino and his brother, Tony Canino. They were very knowledgeable about gaming. I learned a great deal from them. Most of the shows on the strip were over by midnight so everyone would come to the Silver Slipper because it featured a late burlesque type show called "The Hank Henry Show". It was very enjoyable. 

One evening Rock Hudson was gambling and he "came on" to me sexually. I was surprised because I didn't know he was gay. On another occasion, Martha Raye was shooting craps and I was on the stick. She was wearing a low cut dress with quite a bit of her breasts exposed. When I gave her the dice, I made her reach for them. She put the dice down, reached into her dress, and pulled one breast out. She said, "Look Buster, if you want to see my tits, I'll show them to you." Needless to say, I was very embarrassed. 

 We also had a microphone over the dice table. People walking by would hear all the chatter from the stickman. On occasion, when a big hand was going on, the boxman would use some very strong language, which was audible to people outside.

In June of 1959 I went to work at the Desert Inn. It was owned and operated by the 'people from Detroit'. They were very strict. Unlike today's dealers, there was no cross-firing, no capping bets, no throwing chips at the customers, and you dealt so the boxman and floorman could see every payoff. A dealer's appearance was very important. Manicured nails, shined shoes, clothing had to be clean and pressed. Nowadays, dealers wear black jeans, shoddy shoes, same shirt two to three days, and nails with dirt and grease under them. You never talked back to your supervisors, to do so resulted in instant termination. If a supervisor corrects a dealer today, they go right to the shift manager and say you're "picking on him". This results in a breakdown of procedures and discipline. It is so bad today that I sometimes overlook events just to avoid an unpleasant situation. I can't believe how things have changed.

In 1960 I worked at the Sands Hotel, dealing craps. The Sand's was managed by 'professionals'. I enjoyed working there for two years. What a place that was! It was a wonderful experience. I taught many movie stars how to play craps. Lucille Ball, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, and many others. Nat King Cole was a wonderful person, friendly with everyone, and always a smile on his face. Many evenings after work, the casino workers would congregate at the Colonial House, which was next to the Sands Hotel. We would eat spaghetti, chicken, steaks, etc. and have a few drinks.

You were screened very carefully when you were seeking employment at the Sands. Your nails were always manicured, clothes neat and pressed, and shoes shined. The clientel were upper class and the dealers were expected to treat them accordingly. A lot of movies were filmed at the Sands. Movie stars were frequently present.

On one occasion the film crew of the old "Sea Hunt" television series (with Lloyd Bridges) was in town filming some episodes at Lake Mead. I met the producer and told him of my scuba diving experience at Lake Mead. He asked me if I would like to appear in two of the episodes and I agreed. The part I played was the villain, the "bad guy". The name of the two-part episode was "The Briefcase", and I was the crook

In 1962, I went to work at the Stardust.  I was hired as a boxman I didn't have any suits, as I had always been a dealer. One of the people from Chicago took me to his home on the Desert Inn Golf Course, opened his closet door, and told me to pick out a half dozen suits. I was overwhelmed. If the people from Chicago liked you, you were home free.and was promoted to the floor in six months. Our Casino Manager was Sil Petricciani. His family owned the Palace Club in Reno. 

We then went to Reno in 1964 and leased the Palace Club hotel and casino for twelve years. I was licensed by the Nevada Gaming Commission as a 5% owner and Casino Manager.

I was completely surprised by the difference in Reno and Las Vegas. To simplify what I am trying to say, very few dealers in Reno could pass an audition in Las Vegas. Reno was an entirely different operation, all nickel and dime action. If someone bet $100, it was a big deal. Consequently, Reno dealers never had the opportunity to learn to really deal.

In 1976, our lease expired and I gladly returned to Las Vegas, where I was more comfortable. I went to work at the old Aladdin Hotel and Casino as a floorman. Within three months I was the Swing Shift Manager. We had a tremendous amount of big play, as they brought in high roller junkets. The hotel was sold in 1978.

In 1978 I moved to Laughlin, NV and took a job as Shift Manager at the Riverside Hotel for three years. Again, I missed Las Vegas, so I returned once more and went to work at the Tropicana as a floorman. I eventually became a back-up Pit Manager and stayed there for eight years.

In 1993, a friend of mine was negotiating to purchase the Holiday Hotel in Reno. I was offered 10% of the operation if I went in as manager. I returned to Reno and was hired as the Casino Manager of the Holiday Hotel while the sale was pending. My friend was unable to obtain the financing and the deal fell through. About that time, the "Ormsby House" Hotel and Casino in Carson City was about to re-open. I was hired as Casino Manager and help set up the casino operations for opening in 1995. In 1996, a new General Manager came in with his own management team, and I decided it was time to return to Las Vegas. 

I have had a colorful career for 46 years and have always enjoyed my work. If I had it to do all over again I wouldn't change a thing. 

'THE WAY IT WAS'

Old Vegas Stories