Geoff from Strip Walking is a dealer at a local casino. These are his stories.
One of the first nights after I was fully trained and dealing blackjack on the floor, I became a part of an incredible blackjack story. Remember, we have the TriLux side bet, which is a 3 card poker bet with the player’s 2 cards and the dealer’s face up card. If those 3 cards make a hand that is Three of a Kind, a Straight, a Flush, or a Straight Flush, then they get paid 9 to 1 on the bet. The max bet is $50.
The $5 Table
A guy shows at my table up and buys in for $200. He starts playing $10-$15 per hand plus $5 on the TriLux bet. It was an up and down session for him but he wasn’t hitting the TriLux bet. After about 30 min, he had lost between $100 and $150 of his initial buy in. Some of us might be discouraged by this and cut our losses, or wander off to find another game to play.
Not this guy, he bought another $200 in chips and started betting $30 per hand plus $30 on the TriLux . He is in for $400 at this point, but he proceeds to hit the TriLux bet on approximately 5 of the next 7 or 8 hands and win his bets on all those hands as well. So he was gaining $300 per hand, he went from down about $200 to up almost $1500 in the blink of an eye.
The High Limit Table
He then leaves my table and went over to the high limit table. He started playing two hands of about $250 per hand with $50 on each TriLux bet. Each hand he had about $60o wagered on it. He could have easily lost all his winnings in a couple hands. But I knew this didn’t happen, because our floor supervisor ended up coming over and dealing to him.
A little “inside info”, you have probably heard stories about how casinos switch out dealers or have other little tricks to try and slow down people who are winning big… aka… on a “heater”. Well, some of this is actually true, and they switched dealers on this guy several times to break his rhythm, with the final dealer being my floor supervisor who is an excellent dealer, and very fast.
None of this worked, and he cashed out up over $17,000. Obviously, I have never seen anything like that, but I’ve only been a dealer for a few weeks. However, my floor supervisor who has been doing this for 15 years told me he has never seen anything like it either! Just a crazy hot streak this guy went on. As the guy went to cash out, he dropped a $500 chip and didn’t even notice. Security was called and the chip was returned to him.
The Tip
I don’t ever expect tips. They are definitely appreciated but never expected. It is his money, he can do with it whatever he wants. This gentleman capped off his amazing evening by tipping the dealers two quarters…. no, not two $25 chips… 2 actual quarters…. 50 cents… half a dollar… 0.001470588% of his winnings. I think it tells you the kind of person we are dealing with that he went out of his way to put down two coins as a tip, as opposed to no tip at all. No tip at all says “I don’t tip” while two quarters says “F*ck you”.
This guy is well known at our casino and is definitely a “Degen” (short for Degenerate Gambler) as the kids say. It’s very likely that “Big Wiener” might show up again in future Dealer Diaries. And next time an incredible blackjack story might work out in the casino’s favor…. karma is a b*tch.
-Geoff
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