CRAPS DEALER CHRONICLES: Part 1. Anatomy Of A Las Vegas Dice Dealer

  I dealt dice (we are all called “dealers”, but dice dealers are often called “croupiers”) for 20 years on the strip here in Las Vegas. Dealing Dice was a very lucrative line of work. Back then, we didn’t really associate with other dealers who dealt other games like Blackjack, or Baccarat or Poker. All of the dealers in the various casino hotels had their own “game specific” click and these clicks would often meet up at bars like “Alias Smith & Jones” after work, to brag about “who was “GEORGE”, a term that describes a Big Player (10,000.00 and up) that is also a big TIPPER. “Wow we had that George on our table for five hours straight” is a common topic of conversation among the various clicks.  

  Craps dealers, back in those days, went “Table for Table” with tips. There are four dealers on a craps table, so we split our tips “4 ways” per table, per shift. By comparison, Blackjack Dealers sometimes split their tips across all three shifts and among ALL of the dealers other than craps dealers, poker, etc., and there was usually at least 150 ways to split. You get the picture?  

 Crap dealers are called “lumpy” when they first become dealers. That’s because they are not allowed to participate in talking to players until they earn the rank of “clerk”. They have to know the game well enough not to require continuous supervision for being mistake prone. They can’t talk to players until they have proven they can handle the action and they know what to say to the players. 

  Once you have put in a year or so as a dealer, working eight hour shifts and learning as much as you can about customer relations, and you don’t make mistakes in calculating payoffs, you graduate to “Clerk”.   

 Every Craps Crew of four dealers has a “dominant’” dealer or a dealer who knows how to generate tips. Dealers make minimum wage, so they rely on tips to pay their bills and pay for their lavish lifestyles. That dealer has usually earned his or her stripes by being “all business” when it comes to getting tips. 

 Dealers become “legends” when their stories of getting exorbitant amounts of tips start circulating through the casinos among the other dealers. Those particular dealers often become targeted by the management because of the sheer amounts of nightly tips they take in. 

 Remember the old Warner Bros. cartoons where the Sheepdog (Sam) punches a time clock at the same time the Coyote (Ralph) does and then they proceed to try and wipe each other out by Ralph trying to steal the sheep and Sam stopping him with ever clever ways that were always entertaining? That is exactly how it is in the Dice Pit.  

 Dealers make more money than Bosses. Dealers make more money than the “Suits” that run the joint. The Casino cannot control the tips that Dealers make. But they can control “who” is on “what” Dice Crew!  They control the all-important “SCHEDULE”. Often times, dealers would have to “pay” the schedule maker to get on a good Crew that makes lots of tips. Other “crews” would suffer and stand around twiddling their thumbs because there no one wanted to take the initiative to make tips. They were too afraid of getting fired for "Hustling Tips".

  Dealers usually have “table” nick names like “Hobie” for “hoby cat”, because that dealer actually lives on a houseboat on Lake Mead and the house boat is a Catamaran. Or “Lincoln” because one of the dealers always drives a Lincoln Continental. Or maybe because of a habit, the dealer has, such as: whenever a pretty woman walks by the table, the dealer will say under his breath: “Would I!” So now he is known as “WoodEye” and his name tag reflects it.  

  Dealers only work 6 hours of an 8 hour shift. They all take a 20 minute break every hour. If they want to eat a meal or make a phone call or go to the bathroom or something, they have to do it within the 20 minute break.   

  In order to maintain health insurance, dealers have to work a minimum of 20 hours per week. But when your main income is tips, that isn’t such a bad proposition. We always maintained a professional appearance on the game.  We smell good, look good and give the illusion of having a good time.  

  So, now that you know a little about Las Vegas Craps Dealers, we can get into the meat and potatoes of “how” we make (or used to make) our money.  

  NEXT: How I taught the Los Angeles Laker Girls how to play craps.