DISGRUNTLED DEALERS

I was going for the money—cheating players for the house—and the word had spread on the graveyard shift on which I worked: 2:00 a.m. until 10:00 a.m., and that I was the cause of the square-John dealers not making any tokes.  Tokes are what casino people call tips.

At the time, it was a small shift, only about five 21 games open, one craps and a roulette wheel.  Everybody got along, but the dealers were bitching about their tokes taking a nosedive.  I wanted to keep them quiet.

The dealers were saying, and I quote, “How can we ever make anything?  As soon as a big player comes in, Curley goes in and chops off their head.”   They were upset and I wanted to keep them quiet and happy.

I began something new.  When I came in to begin my shift I would make a production of letting the regular dealers, who were also beginning their shift, see me take $200 in five-dollar chips out of different chip racks from the various games and put them in the toke box for them.  I also did not accept a share of tokes.  I was making way more money than they were, and of course my not taking a share was another attempt to keep them happy. Besides, nobody ever toked me.

If it was a particularly good night for business and I had brought in lots of money, I’d make another production out of stuffing another couple of hundred or so in chips into the dealers toke box, which they later counted up and split along with the tokes they themselves had received from the lighter action games.  I was paying them off with casino money to keep the natives from becoming too restless.

 

MY GALLERY

Putting chips in the toke box did not keep my situation entirely quiet, though. Word got out and the sucker dealers who should have known better would come from the casino next door on their break, get a drink from the bar, and then as many as seven or 10 of them would stand in front of my game about five feet back from the players.

They were no-nothing idiots trying to see what I was doing.  They wanted to see a mechanic in action–something they had only heard about—deal the second-card, something.  They did not know what to watch for, but they bothered me, bringing unwanted attention to me.

There was a security guard employed by the casino.  He was a big guy, six-feet-six, and looked like he should have been a tackle in professional football.  He was 35 years old.  I had asked him if he had ever lost a fight.  He told me that he had lost a fight once when he was in the Army. That was good enough for me.  He also carried a pistol.

His salary was $17 a shift and payroll taxes were taken out.  I began giving him a $25 chip every night when I came to work, which I took out of a chip rack on a game.  He liked me very much for doing this.  I’d go over to him, put a green $25 chip in his shirt pocket, and tell him to go cash it out.  It was a bonus with strings, a non-verbal contract.  He knew what was going on and what I expected.

Not only did I want him to stay close by in case some night the “stuff” would hit the fan because I got nailed, but I also used him as a “gallery dispersant.”

When my gallery formed up, Bob would clear it out.  He was nice and calm, even friendly to them, as he physically bumped into the gallery members forcibly and would say, “Come on guys, let’s move it along. This ain’t no golf game.”   They didn’t offer him any resistance, but they would be back on their next break and Bob would have to move them out again.

I would like to mention that I am ready to upload my novel, The Cheaters, to Amazon.  I will do this within the next couple of days.  I have been told it will take approximately four weeks before it appears.  During this time I will be designing my own covers, front and back.

I think I might have been writing posts that are too long so will continue more about what I wrote about today in my next post, which will be within the next couple of days.  If some agree that some posts are too long and technical, please comment about it.  Or if you think they are fine, please comment about that.  Please comment, either way.  I will go with the flow.

Thanks,

Ed