You’ve played your cards and played out your bankroll. You’ve plunked down all of your free poker bets. With your original playing money and the free casino beats you earned from referrals, you’ve successfully increased your bankroll from $100 to $500. Other punters would head on to the next level - either play more games with more seasoned players or play for higher stakes. Not you, however. You decide, right there and then, to take the game from online to off. You will become a casino dealer!

Math Wizardry

Is “casino dealer” a good addition to your resume? It depends. Dealing is actually a lot more difficult than it seems. For starters, dealers must do a lot of math in their heads. Some dealers peg the figure at a thousand addition problems per hour - and that’s only at the card games. Throw in payouts for games that play for 6 to 5 bets, and you would surely find yourself making as many computations as Newton when he calculated the speed of a falling apple.

The Job Description

Math is not the only thing dealers have to be good at, though. They have to be good at implementing rules, too. As if this is not enough, while they’re making mental calculations and keeping track of how well players follow rules, they’re also required to keep a steady chatter with players - commiserate over their losses, for example, or ask about the missus who played at the same table two nights ago. Casinos believe - and quite rightly so - that players show the tables some lovin’ not just for the game or the winnings but also because of the friendly blackjack dealer who treat players like extended family. So in more ways than one, dealers actually serve as these gaming centers agents of goodwill. That, or punching bags of the players who lose big. “I’ve been called many names,” recounts one dealer. “I’m a bastard, a good-for-nothing son of a gun, an honorary member of a thieving government. Do I enjoy it? No, but it’s part of the job, and if I lose my money to the house, I’d be pretty mad, too.”

Furious Finger Action

The job description does not stop at name-calling, though. There’s the matter of manual dexterity. Dealers are expected to serve roughly a hundred hands an hour for blackjack alone. With about seven players per table on an average run, it’s not surprising many dealers suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome! and other repetitive strain injuries. Casinos help ease this burden by giving dealers a 20-minute break for every 60 minutes of work.

Clearly, casino dealing is a tough occupation, and it may not be one your resume can benefit from. You might want to reconsider your career path at this point, and simply settle for placing sport bets online.