Poker Week

I work in the gaming industry. I deal poker for one of the local casinos. I know this sounds crazy and it is something that if you read this blog you already know. My rant today is the fact that yes, we work for minimum wage and we also receive tips for the job we do. If we do well, and put the number of hands out per hour that we should, then our overall tips can be good in the end. Now with that said why is it that our customers should care about what I earn working for them at the table. I am well aware of customer service and the fact my tips come from our customers. I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt my earning power. In fact I would want to try and enhance that and get my tips to grow. There was a conversation at my table the other day about tips and what we earned. I have always been a private person when it comes to my financial dealings. This is my first experience with tips and the ability to change what I earn. I started getting upset with the discussion and with the players thinking we earned a lot of money. One person said a dealer could earn $8,000 per month. Not where I am at for sure. I guess in Las Vegas it might be possible. I really don’t know and I am not interested in moving there to find out. I am happy where I am at and with what I make. Couldn’t we all use more? I guess I need to say remember your dealers because if you didn’t have them you would have to deal your own game. I played in the deepstack tournament on Wednesday evening. We had three tables with a couple of alternates so we ended up with over 30 players. I started on table two and was able to stay there throughout my time playing. Last week I was able to get to 12th place and this week I made it to 13th. I was closer to the final table with more chips but in the end I played a couple of hands that I will have to think about and see if they could have been handled differently. Last night I played live and since the fair is going on in the community no one played the tournament so we had a couple of hours added to the live game. My session this week was six hours and when I walked away at midnight I was up $30 for my time. Not great but it was not a losing night. I started with my usual buy in and in fact I bought into the game for an additional buy in. I was not doing well at the beginning and I think I was playing too many hands and was treating this live game like a tournament. I need to be patient and start slowly instead of walking in and being very aggressive. This game was a $2-10 Spread Limit. I am getting used to this spread and between the $2-6 and $2-10 I am enjoying this one more. I did get the Monte Carlo for Quad Q’s for $20 and then the high hand for the night at $100. That did help my bottom line for the evening. Today I plan on playing in a couple of tournaments. Have a fun day……