A set of jumper cables goes in a bar and orders a beer. "Okay, Okay I'll serve you" says the bartender "but you better not start anything."
Relationships come in all varieties, the one I'll touch on here is you and your craps dealer. Who is this person dealing to you and can he/she effect your bottom line. What is your dealer thinking about and what are they all about.
The first thing to know is that over 90% of the dealers do not know a thing about craps or gaming from the players perspective. They are normal people who needed a job, took the training offered and gained employment. Some are nice, some are miserable. Some very smart and others have trouble spelling I.Q. Some are concerned for you, some couldn't care less, while others actually hope you will lose quickly and go away.
The craps dealer's used to be the casino's best. Dealing craps was a 40 hour a week job, dealers became very proficient and knew their livelihood depended on the player's tokes. Today, this has changed. With the advent of Harrah's taking over everything, the day of the full time craps dealer is numbered. They prefer multi game dealers and place personality and charm and looks over the dedicated one game professional dealer. The games are slower and more and more players are getting frustrated.
This I believe has changed the way that the savvy player can toke and get some advantage. These dealers know procedure and procedure only and a well placed toke means nothing to them....they say thank you and drop the tip and if there is a close call two minutes later don't expect it to go your way. They will call it the way the book says, whereas an oldtimer would make sure the tippers get the close calls.
I have also noticed that there is an abundance of mid 20 to mid 30's male dealers who get the craps training, get on the table's and become arrogant and very cocky. They believe that all players are flea's and should be deposed of as quickly as possible. This is especially noticeable on nearly dead games. The dealers are actually hoping to get rid of all the players so they can stand on a dead game and shoot the breeze.
Then you have the influx of asian dealers, very skilled with the chip handling and payouts but with all the personality of a broken pencil. The cries of "twee cwaps twee" being heard is becoming more and more frequent. This is very noticeable for a lot of older players who cannot see the dice land and rely on hearing the stick's calls to follow the game.
Obviously for dice setters and good dice influencers the main enemy is the protaganistic stick who crowds you, berates you for not hitting the wall and generally just tries to upset you. These guys perplex me the most and should be stiffed at all times. They usually don't care about the tips as they rely on other dealers to bring in the money to get the toke rate up. Of course you also have the break-in's who try their best but usually do not get enough training time so the game suffers while they get their on the job training.
So how does this all tie in to your shooting? There will obviously be a divergence of opinion on this but my advice is if you can find a table that suits your throwing style and you can profit from it, then ignore who is dealing....shut them out. Just like the big game quarterback shuts out the fan noise, the goalie who doesn't here the catcalls and the starting pitcher who see's only the catcher's signals and mitt, you too have to be able to shoot under all dealer circumstances.
Tip for good customer service and for good dealing. Don't feel you have to tip the miserable ass who blocks you, short sticks you and then expects a tip because you won.
Be focused, have a plan, shut out all outside disturbances or as Yogi once said:
"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else."
Besides being an APC shooter, Appistappis is a professional craps dealer who splits his time between Canada and Laughlin.
