Man, I love going to work this week. Chrismtas may be over, but everyone is still celebrating. And you know what that means--Las Vegas is busy with a capital B. We are making some great money this week, which is very nice--it all goes on my last paycheck before Sticky comes to town. Seriously, the casino has been packed every night, all of our table limits are up (very few of those vile $5 tables to be found, thank goodness), and our toke boxes are full.
Some of our best players are in town for the entire holiday weekend, and by 'best players' I mean biggest tippers, including the guy who once tipped me $200 because I cracked a joke that made him laugh out loud. And when it's busy with good players, the time just flies by.
Three nights ago, I came to work and found that I was actually scheduled to deal dice--that *never* happens. We only have three dice tables, but about 25 Craps dealers on our shift. Most of them are very territorial and get pretty pissy if they're not allowed to deal dice on any given night. So most of my dice time is always late at night, once other tables start to close down and the scheduled dice dealers take early outs.
But the best part of it was that I was scheduled on the High Limit game--$10 at first, then bumped up to $25. I *love* dealing the high limit game. It's like a well-groomed dog--no fleas! Of course, later on that night, I had four guys at my end just working me to death-- press it, press it, press it, take it down, always got to have lots of action--while the dealer at the other end of the table stood there dead, the extent of his effort was turning the puck from OFF to ON and back again every few rolls. I even broke a sweat, so it was quite a workout.
The table finally closed, and before I could go, guess who had to count down the bank with the boss watching. Yep, that'd be me. Normally, it's no big deal--anytime you close a table, you have to count down the rack. On most blackjack tables, it's only about ten grand or so, maybe $30K if there are pink chips involved. But this table was loaded. Banana chips, bitches!
So, it took awhile to count it all down, twice, and I believe it totalled up to something just north of 400 thousand dollars. Better double check my math...
As I was finishing up the second time, the boss noticed the beads of sweat on my head and asked if I was nervous or something.
I told him Not really, it's just that it's been awhile since I had my hands on half a million dollars...
Heh.
Speaking of big dollars, a good friend of mine is a floor supervisor at Caesars Palace and told me an interesting story that happened earlier this week. They have a couple of high-limit roulette wheels under that main rotunda right there in the front of the casino. Well, it was a busy night and the dealer had his back turned for a couple of seconds and somebody managed to reach into the bank and take 18 'chocolate chips' and walk out the door, unseen.
What are Chocolate Chips, in casino parlance? The brown chips, baby--$5000 each. Yep, somebody had the audicity to reach into the middle of the bank and grab $90,000 worth of chips, pocket them, and calmly walk away. The interesting thing is that nobody noticed for like ten minutes. The floor person keeps a 'scorecard' for each game and they *always* know exactly how many of the big denomination chips are on every game at any time. When he got back to this particular roulette table and noticed that they were short almost a hundred grand, there was a minor freak-out.
They called surveillance, who backed up the tape and saw the guy do the old snatch-and-grab, Linuse Caldwell style, and walk out the front door. Amazing.
But good luck ever cashing those chips. Yeah, there are always a lot of 5-grand chips in play there at the Palace, but it wouldn't cost the casino but a few thousand to change the design, issue new ones and void all the old ones (it's not like too many people hang on to those, and those that do, well, they know who they are). Word around the campfire is that the dealer and the floorperson got canned, too, so if you can spin the ball, I think there's an opening at Caesars.
Lesson for the day--keep an eye on your rack.
Me, I've never had any problem at all keeping my eyes on the racks here in Vegas. Especially the big ones. But I'm a professional.
Anyhow, tonight should be a great night, money-wise, second only to Super Bowl Sunday. Before I left this morning I saw the roadmap of table assignments--I'm dealing Pai Gow all night long. I haven't been scheduled on Pai Gow in almost a month, so it should be fun--my table is separate from the rest of the Chinatown Pai Gow games--I'll be in the 'Party Pit', right next to the bar and the band. I hope it's a good one tonight--The jazz duo we've had in there lately just sucks ass on a stick.
But it's going to be a long night, so I guess I better take a nap.
Mikey
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