LOL, the trouble-making side of me wonders what would happen if I wandered into the Asian gaming room. Would I get tossed out on my red head?

I have since been informed that many people consider Monte Carlo to be a dump! While I stayed there in '97, and gambled there in '01, I did not go in there when I was last out in Las Vegas in '07. Maybe it's gone downhill since.

Whatever.

Point is, the new Horseshoe casino is very nice. It was a lot nicer than what I was expecting. Then again, it's currently in a clean and pristine condition. We'll check back and see how it's holding up after a year or so of steady customer traffic.

These are some of the casinos I visited in '07, and I will argue that the new Horseshoe casino is nicer than any of these:
Luxor, Excalibur, New York New York, Tropicana, Imperial Palace, MGM Grand, Bally's, Flamingo, The Mirage, Rio, Orleans, Main Street Station, Binion's, California, Sunset Station.

These are the casinos I visited in '07 which still have the new boat outclassed:
Caesar's Palace, The Venetian, Bellagio, Wynn

This leaves me with one casino left that I visited last year:
Mandalay Bay

I seriously think the gaming floor is as nice as the one at Mandalay Bay, although I confess that I prefer a lush tropical decor to the more western theme of the Horseshoe.

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

DaisyDeuces,

I'm sure you'd be welcomed with open arms. You might be at a disadvantage with some of the staff and most of the guests, however, if you didn't speak Cantonese! :-)

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

Tim the dealer,
I think you have set some sort of TalkVegas record with this thread for posts to, and views! Great running thread BTW.

About those pin points...I'd check in with the older dealers and see how many of them are working for pin points, before I get too jacked up about them. LOL

I don't know if the Monte Carlo is a hole, last time I was through it was clean, and people where very friendly. Although I must admit, it's been a while since my last visit...a few years atleast.

Keep the reports coming...enjoying every word of it!

Report for Monday, July 28th

I showed up shortly before 5 p.m. to attend a pre-opening corporate rally in the new Venue. There was definitely a buzz in the air, and people were getting excited. When I hired in, the opening of the new boat was only two months away. Those months dwindled to weeks, and then the weeks contracted to days. Now, the time to opening was measured in hours.

We all gathered in the Venue, which I confess is smaller than I would have expected. Then again, my only comparison in Vegas is the theater at TI where Cirque du Soleil does Mystere. We could see the upper deck and the skyboxes; the lower seats are telecoping and were currently retracted. The Venue looks 99% finished from what I can tell, but a few construction workers were still around fiddling with this or that. No matter; they still have 10 days before the first act shows up.

Rick Mazur, the regional president of Harrah's, came out and gave us a pep talk. He believes that the new boat is a giant leap forward for casinos in the Chicago market (I think he's right), and one day the industry will look back and compare the impact that the new Horseshoe had on gambling in the Chicago market to the impact that the Mirage had on Las Vegas when it opened 20 years ago. He also announced that we will be hosting a World Series of Poker circuit event this October.

The high point came when they raffled off tickets to upcoming events at the Venue. It was well-intentioned, but you could tell the president was a little disappointed in the lackluster response in the winners. However, when a 23-year-old African-American guy wins tickets to see Liza Minelli, and a 60-year-old seamstress wins tickets to see Lynyrd Skynyrd, I guess that's to be expected. That's why stubhub.com was invented, right? In all, tickets went out for Liza, Skynyrd, Billy Idol, Paul Anka, Michael Bolton, Kem, Sarah Silverman, Chris Botti, and Alicia Keys. After the raffling was over, I saw the seamtress with the Skynyrd tickets talking to the young security guard with the Paul Anka tickets, so hopefully they worked something out.

After the Venue I found my way onto the casino floor, and got drafted into VIP training. I went into the high-limit room, where a pit manager and a casino host emphasized the importance of winning back the bigger gamblers that had left us because of how cramped and crowded the old boat had become. I was really surprised to learn that the dealers in the high-limit area have the authority to issue comps to the restaurants. $25 a hand gets you comped to the buffet, while $100 a hand gets a comp to Binion's Steakhouse. The high-limit table games room has its own set of bathrooms (which I did not get to see) plus an entrance to the Seven Stars Lounge (I felt rich just walking into the new lounge). On the far wall of the high-limit table games room is a display of blown-glass flowers--with lights in the middle of each--that reminded me a lot of the blown glass flowers on the ceiling in Bellagio. In the high-limit slots area ($5 to $1000 slot machines) is a huge abstract horseshoe sculpture made out of acrylic, and it's one solid piece, not a bunch of smaller pieces put together. Supposedly, it's the second-largest single-piece of acrylic art in the world.

After VIP training we broke for dinner, which was crab legs and vegetables! The old boat is now officially gone. I don't know exactly what happened to it or where it is ending up. I thought I heard someone mention that somebody from Singapore bought it and it's on its way there.

After dinner, I went back to the casino floor and took an official tour of the new facility. Turns out Vintage 51 is a bar that specializes in wine, whereas Push is a more traditional casino bar seated in an elevated gazebo on the casino floor. We toured the whole floor, the high-limit areas, the Seven Stars Lounge, the Asian room, the poker room, and both bars, all on the main floor. Upstairs was the venue and the new buffet, which is huge. Underneath the casino floor were offices and employee break rooms. We still have to go off the MOAB to eat, but that's no big deal. Oddly enough, the walk from the MOAB to the EDR is actually shorter than the walk from the old boat to the EDR. The nice thing about the "under-boat" was that it looked like regular offices, aside from the occasional exposed steel where barges had been welded together; it had nothing at all like the cramped U-boat feel of the bowels of the old boat.

After the tour I went back to the casino floor and had another look around for myself. The pit managers were starting to fill the tables with cheques. Thankfully, the Horseshoe heard the complaints of the dealers, and now the $2.50 cheques are easily distinguishable from the $5 cheques. The old cheques looked too similar for comfort, and it drove the blackjack dealers nuts. The orange $1000 cheques in the craps tables are noticeably larger than all the other cheques, by about 15-20%.

My last stop before I went home was the new wardrobe department. Uh-oh. They didn't have my uniform yet, and I was to begin dealing in less than 24 hours. Don't worry, they said, just come in tomorrow a bit early and we'll have it for you then.

Boy, I sure hope so.

Hopefully, this is my last report of preparing to deal. With any luck, all future posts will be a "Tales from the Blackjack Pit" kind of thread with stories of live dealing.

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

I am looking forward to your stories of live dealing. I am curious about a few things.

I saw your old boat on Google Earth. Did they have to move the break water thingy to get MOAB in? Also the old boat looked like a boat. The new one looks like a warehouse on a barge.

One thing I noticed about the casino boats that I visited is that they had low ceilings. Perhaps this because they were real boats. Does the MOAB have higher ceilings throughout?

How are the casinos in the Chicago area that the prez talked about? Obviously MOAB is new. Do the other casinos have things going for them that Harrahs will strive to achieve?

So where do you eat if you have to go off the MOAB? Is it contract services food or is it cooked in a Harrahs kitchen?

I don't know if I have ever seen a $2.50 cheque.

JMT:

As far as I know, MOAB was built on premises in the same location it is in now. I think the Google Earth image is old. Up until this past year, the Google Earth image of Eric&Ellen's house showed a trampoline in the back yard that they got rid of back in '04 or '05, so sometimes those images aren't up to date.

Actually, it's a warehouse on several barges that have been fused together. ;-)

Ceilings on the main floor are probably 15-20 feet high throughout. On the upstairs floor and around the buffet, they're a little lower but I would think they're still at least 10 feet high. The underbelly where the staff goes has normal 8-foot ceilings.

I think every casino in the Chicago area is on a boat. You have to drive to the indian casinos in Wisconsin or Michigan to set foot in an actual land-based casino. Horseshoe is the first one in the area to essentially build a land casino and put it on a barge.

The Horseshoe's main competition in the market is the Grand Victoria casino in Elgin, IL, which is about 20 miles northwest of Chicago. The big-money areas of suburban Chicago are north, northwest, and west of the city, so GV has a location advantage. It's also the prettiest of the boats; it looks like a classic riverboat that should be steaming down the Mississippi in the 19th century, and the gaming area is all on one floor and has high ceilings. Usually GV and the old Horseshoe would take turns being #1 and #2 in the market.

The Employee Dining Room is still in the pavilion where it always has been. It's a short walk from the casino floor. I don't foresee there being a time crunch for breaks. If anything, it's convenient not having to go up and down so many stairs. The food is cooked in a Harrah's kitchen.

At first I was surprised when you said you had never seen a $2.50 cheque. Then I remembered, if a Vegas casino had to pay $22.50 on a winning $15 blackjack, then they would give you the $2.50 in 2 $1 cheques and a Kennedy 50-cent piece. We don't use the Kennedy half-dollars, so we use the hot pink $2.50 cheques. Blackjack is the only game that uses them, in every other game they just round down to the nearest dollar.

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

Atlantic City uses the $2.50 checks. The only Las Vegas chips that I have that are $2.50 are from the four Queens. They are older, and I'm not sure if they still use them. I don't play tables like I used too.

I'm gnona have to look thru my box. I know I've got some $2.50's but I can't remember from where.

Tim....This may have already been asked but I can't remember. Do they allow smoking in the casinos there?

senatorjm:

Yep. Illinois doesn't allow smoking in their casinos anymore because of a statewide ban in the past year or so. Indiana has no such law, so feel free to smoke like chimney in the Hoosier state.

Tim

It's taking me a bit to get used to working nights. Man, I was sooo tired at the end of the first two days. I wanted to post sooner, but I hope you all understand.

Report for Tuesday, July 29

My first day live was Tueday night. I showed up 2 hours early, largely to pick up my new uniform, but also simply because I was excited. I arrived at 6 p.m. to find out that the boat had officially soft-opened about 2:30 p.m. I went down to the new wardrobe department in the basement of MOAB to find that my uniform was not ready! Because of my size, they had to special order it, but it hadn't come in! Come on, guys, you measured me for it 2 weeks ago! I'm needed on the floor in 90 minutes!

The wardrobe department apologized and said that there was nothing they could do. Just in case, I had brought my old uniform along. They said they didn't think the pit managers would let me wear it, but to go upstairs and check. I walked up and out onto the casino floor to find hundreds of customers already on board. I went over to pit 5 where a floor supervisor is assigning games to dealers who came in a 6 p.m. When I told her what had happened to my uniform, she shook her head and said that several people were in the same boat, and that I could not wear my old uniform. We would probably just get sent home, she said. She marked me down for a "variance" of "no uniform", but told me since it was not my fault I wouldn't get in trouble for it.

Even if it wasn't my fault, I didn't drive all the way out here on opening night just to be sent home!

I went back down to wardrobe to see if I could find anything that would fit, and maybe piece something together. Two other dealers had the same idea and we all went into wardrobe together. The wardrobe lady said, sure, go right ahead and take whatever fits, just let her know what I'm taking. I found a gold dealer's vest that's a little big, but it worked. It's a woman's vest, supposedly, because the buttons are on the opposite side. Also, the buttons are clear plastic instead of gold-plated. It looked like that if I got to deal at all, I'd be doing it in drag. Another box on the floor was full of men's dress shirts. These were just plain white dress shirts; the dealers shirts are a different texture, but these would do in a pinch. I found a few that should fit, with a 20" neck and 36-37" sleeves. I tried one on and it fit! Wardrobe Lady told me to take 3.

I had a shirt and a vest; all I needed now was a bow tie and an apron. Wardrobe Lady told us to go digging through those boxes over there to see what we could find. I found the gold bow ties. One size fits all, and it just barely made it around my neck. Another dealer pulled out of another box a bag full of beige, half-moon shaped thingies. "What are these?", he asked. "Oh! Those are push-up inserts for the cocktail waitresses new bustiers! Um, you won't be needing those to deal," she answered.

I sure hoped not. I found the boxes of aprons. The biggest size available was an XL. My old apron is a 2XL, and that's a tight fit. The apron is short, black, and has a Horseshoe logo on it. Ideally, it covers the pockets on your pants so that you can't slip any cheques into it. With monumental effort I was able to stretch the apron to just barely close it in the back. I figured that I would probably start cutting off circulation to the bottom half of my body, but at least now I had a complete uniform. I stashed my "street shirt" and the two spare dress shirts in a locker and went back upstairs to tell the floor to put me back on the schedule. She was happy for me and erased my name from the variance column. Victory!

By now it was a little after 7, and I didn't have to punch in until 7:45. I went to the EDR for dinner. Dinner was another Lean Cuisine dish of sliced beef, pearl onions, and mushrooms served in a wine sauce and over rice. I also watched part of the White Sox game on the lovely flatscreen plasma HDTV hanging on the wall. This is a fantastic development, because even if I work Sundays this fall, I can still watch some football.

At 7:45 we all clocked in and went to our daily buzz session. The buzz leader informed us that we currently had 2700 customers on the new boat. He also reminded us BJ dealers that all tables on the main floor now hit soft 17; the tables in high limit still stand on all 17s. We would go see "The Pencil", who is the floor supervisor who makes table assignments, and go from there. We all went up as a group to Pit 5 ready for our assignments...and we were all promptly sent back downstairs. We were told to expect this with the new boat, as the casino gradually figured out how to properly staff and schedule the games. At one point they tried to send me to a Mini-Baccarat table; I politely informed them that I did not know the game. Apparently, the code for "Mississippi Stud" looks a lot like the code for "Mini-Baccarat". A little later they tried to send me to BJ-610, a blackjack table in the high-limit area. I got up there only to find that there was no BJ-610. The pit boss stuck me for 10 minutes on a dead table with a $500 minimum bet before sending me back downstairs.

At 9:30 we finally got me up and dealing. I was at a blackjack table in pit 5, which had the Lucky Ladies side bet and a $10 minimum. Before I knew it I was being tapped out at 10:30 and going on my 20 minute break. The rest of the night went very much like that: deal for an hour, get tapped out for 20. After midnight, my relief tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a cheery "Hi, Tim!" My relief for the rest of the night turned out to be one of my classmates from dealer school, the former high school math teacher. Even though I was scheduled to work until 3:45 a.m., I ended up staying on until almost 4:30 simply because of how the scheduled breaks were running. We hit our peak around midnight, but there were still quite a few people around at 4:30 a.m. My floor supervisor by then had announced plans to close the table for the day at 5 a.m.

Fortunately, all of my customers were friendly and supportive throughout the night. I freely admitted that I was a new dealer. There was one guy right across from me in a suit playing anywhere from $25-$50 a hand. He was about 50, had a thick Chicago accent, and chatted about sports most of the night. Remember those "Da Bears" skits from Saturday Night Live back in the early 90's? Imagine one of those guys in a suit. But, hey, he tipped me about $50 over his 2 hours at the table!

Another memorable customer was this young Chinese guy (late-20s) with his girlfriend. He bought in for about $300, and started betting about $10-$25 a hand. He went on a real hot streak and started upping his bets, and after about 90 minutes he was up nearly $1000. All luck evens out, though, and over the next hour he proceeded to lose every bit of that $1000 back to the house. Fortunately, he was smart enough to quit when he got back to his starting point of $300. Even though he never tipped, he was friendly and enthusiastic about the game.

The most memorable, however, was the middle-aged Eastern European woman who came up to the table about 1:30 a.m. and put $200 in green cheques on the layout. She won. "Pay me in black," she said. "I can do that!" I said. "Two cheques out at player request!" I called out to the floor. She took the black but kept the green on the layout. She won again, and again, and again. Each time I paid her in black. She only stayed around for about a dozen hands, but she won every single one! A couple of those wins were even blackjacks where I paid out $300, but the best was where she split, double down on one of the split hands, and then won $600 when I busted. This woman took me for $3000 in less than half an hour! Finally she lost a hand, and I scooped up those same 8 green cheques that had been sitting in her betting circle the whole time. And then she walked away with every penny of that $3000. Talk about knowing when to quit!

In all, I would say that my first day was fairly successful. After a few false starts, I finally got out on the floor. The only crisis I had the whole time was when the automatic shuffler broke, and I had to shuffle my 8 deck shoe by hand for the rest of the night. Just like I did in class for 5 weeks. No problem.

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

Great stuff Tim. SOunds like you're new career will be fun for you.

So Tim - are your hours 8PM to 4AM? I'm still going to try to make it down there to see you.

senatorjm:

Thanks. So far it's been fun. Hopefully that won't change anytime soon!

MikeD:

For the time being, 8pm to 4am is a pretty good estimate of my schedule. I'm working those hours tonight (Monday night) and tomorrow night. Wednesday night I come in at 8 but am scheduled to work until about 5:30am. This Thursday night I'm off, and I haven't seen a schedule further out than that. This Friday is the grand opening.

Even though I clock in by 8pm, sometimes the pencil doesn't have me out on the floor until a bit later. Basically, I'm always out on the floor by 9:30 to 10pm.


Tim

I'm just a little curious about this pencil person.
This person asigns you a location, and he's incharge of the hourly scheduling?
He can asign you to a table that doesn't exist?
Doesn't sound like he was on is 'A' game!

Tim - Since I work a basic 9-5 job (actually, more like 6-4), I'll have to visit on the weekends. I'm usually in bed by 9PM!

Do you think you'll be working Fridays and Saturdays on a regular basis or will it change?

I don't know if I can realistically keep doing day-to-day reports now that I'm actually on the floor. At this point I've been on the floor 2 weeks, and I'm settling into a routine. Not much is changing from day to day now.

Lee-PA:

The pencil assigns tables, but he or she doesn't make the schedule. Instead, the schedule-makers give pencil a list of who's on duty, and from that list the pencil calls names and assigns games. The incident I described happened the very first night the new boat was open; ever since then the pencil has gotten his or her act together pretty well. Sometimes I still have to wait nearly an hour before they find an open table, but at least I'm no longer assigned to tables that don't exist!

MikeD:

Apparently, Horseshoe feels confident enough with me to allow me to deal any blackjack game in the casino (with the possible exception of the super hi-limit private rooms) and to bump me up to 40 hours. As luck would have it, I'm not working the Grand Opening weekend. I don't go back to work until Sunday evening.

Here's my schedule for the next week:

Fri 8/08 - Off
Sat 8/09 - Off
Sun 8/10 - 5:40 pm to 3:40 am
Mon 8/11 - 5:40 pm to 3:40 am
Tue 8/12 - 5:40 pm to 3:40 am
Wed 8/13 - 5:40 pm to 3:40 am
Thu 8/14 - Off

My guess is they want me to get a little more experience before putting me on weekends.

Out of the 7 days I've worked since the new boat opened, I've spent 4 on the main floor ($10-$15 tables), 2 in the high-limit room ($50 table), and 1 in the Asian room ($25 table).

The uniform issues seem to have mostly worked themselves out. I finally got the uniform pants that I was fitted for a month ago. They gave me 2 pair, which will now go into rotation with a one pair I bought for OJT. I also have 3 plain men's white dress shirts--still no official dealer shirts, but to the untrained eye they look the same. I have a gold vest and matching bow tie for when I deal the main floor, and a black vest and tie for high-limits. I finally have an apron that fits without cutting off circulation to all parts below my waist. I also have a locker in which to keep those vests, ties, and apron. Wardrobe Dept. dry cleans the vests and ties; I'm responsible for laundering my own pants, shirts, and aprons.

Tim

Just one more thing if any of you decide to visit the Horseshoe and try to play at my table:

I know at least 2 other dealers named Tim. We're all white guys around the same height (6'0", give or take an inch).

One of the Tims is about my age (early 30s), but has a shaved head and a goatee.

Another Tim is in his early 20s, fairly skinny, with brown hair and glasses.

Tim the Dealer, aka Me, is the heaviest of the bunch. I have short brown hair that is going a little gray on the sides. I wear contacts, but not glasses. My name tag has "Crown Point, IN" underneath my name.

The other Tims are good guys, and feel free to play at any of their tables. However, while there are many dealers named Tim, there is only one Tim the Dealer. Accept no substitutes.

Cheers,

Tim the Dealer

Thanks, Tim - I'm not sure I'm going to make it down this week. My main problem - I work in the northern suburbs and it would be a quite a jaunt to get down there after work. But I'll see what I can do!!

Tim,

I want to thank you for posting this. I too was just hired by the Horseshoe Casino my orientation week is 8/18. I am hired as a beverage server. Would you please give me your honest oppinion/insite on the wardrobe, or beverage server duties? Anything at all will help. I work days now, i am planning to moonlight...is that possible?