The Art of Dealing

If you've ever had the pleasure of watching a top-notch dealer handle their table game in a casino you already know there is an art to the flow of the cards and the chips. I've seen poker dealers who made no more than ten moves to retrieve, shuffle, and deal a new hand, all the while talking to the players and smoothly slipping across the table like flowing molasses, a joy to watch. Especially when the last dealer made thirty moves, was cranky, exposed two cards, and then had to be reminded to move the dealer button. I love the art.

Sure, these days anybody can be a dealer. From a lumpy, bumpy craps dealer who constantly stares at the layout after the point is called to a wheel dealer who knocks over stacks around winning numbers, you just have to be of age and able to get into a school these days.........and it's really sad.

I was reading the book, Dummy Up and Deal, a while back and it reminded me of how limited the job opportunities were twenty years ago when casinos were only in Nevada and New Jersey. Don't get me wrong, there were some crabby, hack dealers back then who could barely push a single dollar token across a craps layout, but there were a lot more "experts," too.

I was watching one of those blackjack experts the other day at a nice club in Northern Nevada and marveling at the way she moved: smooth, subtle, and sleek as a whisper. The fact that she was nice to look at helped, but the dealing was intoxicating.

It was a single-deck pitch game, and after shuffling the cards: riffle-cut 2/3rds by a third, spin the top of the deck, riffle, offer the cut and get the deck up off the table, she was ready. Sitting at the table you couldn't even be sure she still had the deck in her hand. The angle of her hand was perfect. Set in her left hand, her index finger went straight across the front of the deck and never seemed to move.

If that seems normal, or boring, well, it might be, but to me, it signaled good things to come, and they did. She stood planted in one place and only her hips moved as she swiveled to her left and delivered a card to the first player. Her hand dipped only slightly as her left thumb pushed the top card out a tiny bit and her right thumb and index finger snatched the card before her middle finger flicked it towards the table. Her wrist never moved. This dealer was never going to get carpel-tunnel. She continued and dealt the kind of game you might not even notice while playing because it was perfect.

I timed a few decks. She was dealing at a speed of about 500 hands per hour while bantering with the players and never made a single mistake. Pure poetry in motion. Pride, efficiency, and a joy to behold.

When she delivered hit cards they were beautifully placed, subsequent hit cards were at a nice angle with 20% of the first card covered. She payed bets with both hands (yes, even moving chips with her deck hand), using both sides of her chip tray and she smiled constantly. I was in love.

Even when she snapped off my biggest bet of the evening on a split pair of eights I was still mesmerized. Then she got pushed out and went on break. The new dealer said, "Hey," and started working. The first dealer was artfully dealing. The new dealer was "working," and she was prettier than the first woman, blond, with a light smile.

This dealer was efficient too, probably working at a speed over 400 hands per hour. She leaned on the table with her right hand, she groaned, she dealt the same percentage of winners and losers in a slightly haphazard way. Sometimes the hit cards on the layout were messy, hard for a floor supervisors to read. I left.

I left because it wasn't fun. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't what I wanted. Sure, dealing is a job, just like paper-hanging and trash collecting are jobs. But dealing can be an art. I know, I've seen it.