With all the attention focused on the players and their hands, not much attention is paid to the people dealing them. With 57 events running from May 27 to July 15, by the time it’s said and done with, a crew of 850 dealers will have worked their asses off to keep the games running. Last year, 725 dealers were employed by the WSOP. Back in 1970, at the first WSOP, only one dealer was used, mostly because there were only six “registered” players. The point is there’s been a significant increase in players and dealers over the last 39 years of the World Series of Poker.
Tournament Director Jack Effel says, “We’ve come light years, quantum leaps throughout the years. This year we set a goal of 1,000 dealers and ended with a list of 930, with 850 showing up. You need that many because there’s approximately 300 tables going at any given time.”
For working the series the dealers earn $6.85/hour plus they still make a few hundred dollars per day splitting tips. They also receive small percentage of the entry fees paid by the players, according to Effel.
For a chance to work poker’s biggest event, dealers come to Vegas from all over the world. On average, about half of the WSOP are actually Southern Nevada residents, and at least 600 of them have worked the WSOP in past years.
New dealers were selected from a pool of 700-800 applicants who are required to have at least six months experience dealing poker. The selection process started in January, which includes telephone and then in-person testing of knowledge of poker and technical skills like pitching cards and overall attitude. Only the best of these are ultimately selected to work the final table of the main event that takes place in November.
Effel says, “Every year we get a little better at the process. If they show proficiency over the phone, and they have the technical ability to do it, we’ll take them.”
With so many hands being played each day, up to 500 per day (20 per hour), mistakes are bound to happen. Dealers are only human; apparently they mistakes too like misreading hands, miscalculating the pot, or misdealing.
Eric Chan, a 24-year-old University of Las Vegas student, has dealt in the WSOP since 2007. He says, “I’ve been wrong quite a few times, but I haven’t screwed up to the point that I can’t reverse it. It’s about keeping your cool and realizing that it’s just chips and just people at the table.”
Twenty-nine-year-old Doug Chase started dealing in 2004 and has traveled around the world working at various tournaments. He says, “There are definitely memorable hands. In 2005, I was dealing a game that was just way out of my league. Marcel Luske was sitting at the table, and he won a $10,000 hand.
“When the hand was over, he threw me a quarter, a big, green $25,000 chip. I said, ‘Thank you,’ and started putting it in my pocket when he said, ‘Wait, I threw you the wrong chip,’ and started pulling out a small one. I dropped my head and started to give it back and he was like, ‘Ha, ha—just kidding!’ He had the whole table laughing.”
Earlier this year, Chan also earned a little extra money when poker pro Antonio Esfandiari placed a bet with the whole table that Chan wrongly revealed a mucked hand.
The floor manager ruled that Chan was correct, which cost Esfandiari more than $100.
“It felt good to have someone come over and tell everyone that I had been right,” Chan commented.
When asked how it feels to hold the fate of a player and millions of dollars in his hands, literally, Chan replied, “It is unbelievably cool to be part of the action, dealing at a level that I’m not able to play at. It’s not who wins and loses necessarily; poker has a great community. Every single hand, I’m making nine people unhappy and just one person happy. Hopefully I get to make everybody happy at least once.”
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