Busman's Holiday

Barry and I were standing in the parking lot talking about the day’s events and mainly how poorly the dealers are managed. I was repeating my running joke about how during orientation they overly stressed their policy of embracing diversity and inclusion – right before telling us that because we were WSOP dealers we would be treated differently i.e. we were not allowed to use the regular employee entrance nor park in the employee parking lot. WSOP dealers park in the “lower employee lot”. Surprisingly, the Employee Dining Room did not have separate lunch counters for us.


Despite the facts that participation in the WSOP tournaments continues to grow and the structure of the tournaments provides longer play for most of the players, we continually face the challenge of having too many dealers and not enough work. I think it is understandable. The single fatal error that would cost our Dealer Manager her job would be a dealer shortage. It is unthinkable that we would have chips, cards, tables and players and no one to deal the cards. Solution? Overstaff and over schedule and give those who want it a last minute day off. As the tournament progresses and players leave, offer “early out” for those dealers who want to avoid moving over to the more challenging cash tables. But we still have too many dealers. I do not see it changing. If I were Dealer Manager I would make sure I had a cushion of excess dealers and I would make sure to set the expectations accordingly.

As the day started I had seemingly won the dealer lottery. They began assigning tables alphabetically starting with dealers whose last name begins with “L”. Thank you very much. I was assigned table 9 in a section of 60 tables. This meant that it was unlikely that I would find myself homeless as I “pushed” up through the tables and the tournament melted down the tables from high to low.

I had a full day. 11:00 dealer meeting. 11:30 set up for tournament. Noon to 6:30 PM deal Texas Hold’em with three 30 minute breaks. That is a good day’s work for a dealer.

In the parking lot after a leisurely baked chicken dinner in the EDR (Employee Dining Room) I told Barry I needed alcohol. It was far too early to go to bed for fear I would wake up at 5 AM but I really didn’t want to go out and “Party” I wanted to relax. Barry suggested we go find a cheap Pai Gow table where we can play slowly, chit chat and drink for free if we break even.

We decided on the Stratosphere. It is easy to get to, parking is available and close and the atmosphere is pretty laid back. Problem was it was Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend, the casino was packed and the Pai Gow table had a $10 minimum.

“The hell with it, let’s play poker. We’ll play really tight, drink for free and just relax.”

Can you imagine? Here are two guys who just spent their entire day dealing Texas Hold’em and what do they wind up doing to relax? Playing Poker.

The game that night proved to be interesting.