NicksGamingStuff's Blog

Hello Everyone!

As I said in other posts the move here was a bit more expensive than I anticipated, and getting a job did not nearly happen as soon as I would have liked it to. I can announce that I am now a blackjack dealer at a place on Fremont Street. Until I am sure I can publicly announce where I work I will keep the name of the casino private. I got hired through their dealer job fair last week. The status is on call dealer, but I was told I would be given a regular schedule. I thought oncall meant I sit by the phone and wait to be called in for work.

October was a pretty rough month for me. I would go to dealer school for 4 or 5 hours a day, but after two weeks I had learned everything there was and I did nothing more than practice. I had several job interviews in various fields and nothing became of them. I was beginning to lose hope and plan a move back to California after my lease ended.

Working tonight was wonderful. All the players were nice, and patient with me even though they did not know it was my first day. I grew a small following tonight by a set of tourists from Seattle. They came back to my table several times after doing other things (eating dinner seeing a show). After inquiring how long I had been working and learning it was my first day they became very excited and proceeded to ask me about the move here.

I killed all my players tonight it was terrible! I made the casino a lot of money. I got at least 3 bj's per double deck, every time I had an ace showing I had it (except twice). I could give all the players 20's and hit to a 21 from a 4.

I did make some mistakes though I think it was from my nervousness. I was very nervous! I expected some kind of training from the casino about their various games, casino procedure etc.. Instead I received a pamphlet and was thrown on the game cold. One of my mistakes was paying a push, taking a push, taking a winning bet, and since two cards decided to stick together I gave myself two hole cards. I had a feeling I was going to be fired soon but the floorman said they were minor mistakes that could all be fixed easily. After my first break I was feeling more confident and by the end of the evening I had a good rhythm going.

We work 80 minutes on 20 minutes off. The majority of the time my table was full so I enjoyed the breaks very much. The game is entirely hand shuffled and dealt face up. Dealing face up made the job A LOT easier since my pitch likes to go off the table. After I returned from one of my last breaks the break dealer had killed my table so for the last hour or so I gazed out the door watching the maintenance workers lift something huge with a crane on Fremont st.

I was reading the past toke rates and it ranges from $8-$10 per hour a day. I received around $100 in tips tonight. Even though I was killing my players they were having fun. They said I am the kind of dealer where they can lose all their money but still have a good time.

One interesting thing is they stuck me in the party pit with all the girls in the skimpy outfits. All the BJ in their party pit pays 3:2. Over the course of a couple hours all the dealers were regular ones in the party pit.

Now that I have a job I am much happier, and hopefully I will get lots of hours and training to move onto the next place. The only downfall to the job is they charge the employees for parking. They do provide a free meal from a cafeteria (the food did not look too good though) so I guess it evens out. I am surprised they stuck me on swing shift (there it is 6p-2am). Putting me on a table cold and at the busiest time is like jumping into the pool.

Anyway that is about all I have been up to this past month. October was really rough but I am hopeful for the future.

So it has been about two weeks since I moved to Las Vegas. The drive was not too terrible, I left around 5pm and arrived at 2am. I visited PaiGowDan at his casino and stayed that night at Sunset Station, they got me with a $17 resort fee even though I was only there for about 7 hours. After spending the week at G2E talking to all the executives trying to find some job leads I ended up with nothing more than a look online and apply there, I enrolled in the dealer school (The learntodeal.com one). I should not be surprised that I did not find any job leads since the exhibition hall was only for the companies to sell their products/services, I just thought I would find a person who would give me some good advice on what to do. The move ended up costing a little more than I expected. Things I had never paid for before such as car insurance, car registration, renters insurance, internet, and a shopping spree at Target to stock my apartment with basic home essentials really took a hit on my wallet.

The dealer school is okay. It is not as structured as I would like it to be. Basically one can start whenever they want, there are no formal organized classes. The building is in the commercial shopping center off of sahara near Paradise. It is a large room with about six blackjack tables, two roulette tables, a craps table, and three poker tables. There are usually one or two instructors that walk around and show the student a thing or two then leave them alone to practice it. They first taught me how to shuffle, then chip cut, then to shoe deal, and finally I am on pitch dealing. I am not receiving as much attention as I would like but for the price of the BJ course ($300) I guess I should not have expected to receive a lot of attention. There are many students, many who I suspect are not from the area as the instructors have to teach them exactly what the game of blackjack is. Many also cannot do the simple math of adding the cards or figuring out the 3:2 BJ payout on simple bets such as $20 or $100. The one good thing is all the students who pass are getting jobs, but unfortunately they are all part time jobs. From what I have been told this is what is happening now with the dealers. Most of them are getting jobs at places like Arizona Charlies, O'Shea's, or the downtown spots. Hopefully I can start at O'Sheas, I think the tourist atmosphere will be more exciting than a sweat locals place. One girl said she has gone to audition at Arizona Charlie's twice and was made to wait for two hours since no players ever showed up for her to audition.

I have been applying to other jobs at the different casino groups such as security or managing the food and beverage outlets (something my past employment experience will support). I had really been hoping to be working by now. Although I am not broke, my bank account is about 30% lower than I expected it to be now. For those who are wondering I pretty much met my objective about not gambling before I got a job. I did a small project for The Wiz. I have maybe put $10 total into some penny video poker machines just to kill some time. One nice thing I discovered was free show tickets for locals. Unlike House Seats or Fill A Seat showtickets4locals.com is free to sign up. They do not have the big name shows, but I have enjoyed everything I have seen through them except for American Storm. It truly is free, no drinks are required or ticket fees are charged.

I am hoping I can begin working soon, I have not worked in 18 days and am finding myself somewhat bored. Anyway that is the status of where I am in my move. I am glad I moved, my life in San Francisco was in a rut. I am hopeful that I can audition after next week at a break in house or find another job. If I can find a full time job, I will hold off on dealing. Although I paid for the course I would be much happier in an office 9-5 type of job. My spouse is in Detroit visiting his grandfather. His cousin told him about "Partylite candles" and how you can make lots of money. I told him it is no good, but he was sold on her sales pitch. He was telling me how a woman made $30,000 one week selling them and how the kit is free. Unfortunately he is a sucker for things like that so I had to email him all the information on how those kinds of jobs are no good. Some people do make a lot of money, but I told him he would be better off selling Tupperwear, Cutco Knifes, Mary Kay, Avon, or Kirby Vacuums. With these scams the kit may be free but the sales person is usually required to buy a demo set and the company likely makes the bulk of their money on the suckers trying to make a lousy commission. He still seems to think I am wrong about the job being no good but he understands I would prefer him to get a regular job.

Hopefully I will find a job soon, it is the only thing I am missing in my life right now. Other than that I am happy to be on my own and enjoyed meeting some of the forum members at G2E.

Yesterday I bought car insurance and the premium came to about $550 for both mine and Max's car. I am glad I picked the apartment I did because the rates there are significantly cheaper. We have high coverage, low deductibles, accident forgiveness and road side assistance. I have never purchased insurance before but the price seemed ok. I also had my mom put the car in my name, it cost $15 at the DMV and they said the new title would arrive in 4-6 weeks. I wonder if the Nevada DMV will take the temporary piece of paper to register. I have almost all the stuff I am going to take boxed up and I think between Max's car and mine we should be able to fit it all. If not there is always UPS but I will have to repack the stuff for shipping. Geico said I can get renters insurance for about $200 a year for $20,000 coverage. Is this a good deal. They said since the apartment does not have central heating that is what made it expensive. I can get a discount for insuring both our cars and apartment with geico, but I am going to explore other options. The apartment has a heat pump, but I doubt this will be satisfactory, besides who needs heat in the desert? We are bringing our tennis stuff, I am sure there are tennis courts around. We are lousy players but have fun so if anyone is up for a game let us know. I decided to keep my 24 Hour Fitness membership since I feel I can spare $25 a month to have a place to go to stay fit. I will likely be going a lot before I start working since it is something to do. We are vowing not to gamble one penny until we have some disposable income, but I am going to try to go even further to avoid gambling 100%. I doubt this will happen but until we both have jobs we can not spare one penny in the casino. My co-workers are sad I am leaving, yet some are jealous I am embarcking on this adventure. I just cannot wait to have my own place that I am paying for for the first time. We need a mattress. I have looked at overstock.com and seen some ok looking memory foam ones for $400. We have also thought about one of those fancy aero bed ones. I realized it would cost more to rent a uhaul or do the door to door pod thing than to buy a new bed. I don't want some strangers mattress off of craigslist so if anyone knows about memory foam beds or where to get a good deal let me know. All of our sheets are queen sized, ironically for a couple of queens as my mother told me. I wrote this on my iPad so I apologize if things are messed up. I will write a post about driving from San Francisco to las Vegas and the actual move of our stuff.

As all of you know my spouse and I are moving to Las Vegas in 25 days! I would like to keep a blog here about our experiences moving as it may provide some pleasure for our readers. Anyway here goes the story:

The idea to move to Las Vegas came to me in late July after booking my trip to do the Mystere/Zumanity & Las Vegas gay scene article for this website. I had heard the cost of living was low, but was put off by the common phrase "Las Vegas, nice place to visit but terrible place to live". Well things at my current job at the card room had been going terrible for the past few weeks and I reflected on a promise I had made to my self, when I dread going to a job and cry on the inside when I wake up and realize I have to go to work later that day, it is time to move on. The parts of my job I am unhappy with are not important as I know I will encounter similar or worse struggles when I move to Las Vegas. Anyway I researched several apartments online and was surprised to find some apartments as low as $350 a month. Upon more research I learned that apartment, as well as several others were in a very bad part of town (near the Boulevard mall which I know is ghetto because it has a Sears). Upon further research I found a nice little apartment near Sahara and Decatuer that was only $495 a month. I researched the car insurance costs at all the different apartment complex locations and found this one to be the lowest. Although it did not include cable/internet/wifi like some of the others did, the safer environment and lower insurance costs are a significant savings in the long term. The things I keep finding out about Las Vegas just amaze me. The smog check I have to get to register my car in NV is only $20, even less with common coupons. Here in CA it is at least $75. Car insurance for my spouses car and mine with the minimum deductible and maximum coverage is around $110 a month! Items at the Whole Foods in the Town Square shopping center are about 25% less than they are at the Whole Foods by our place here in San Francisco. I could not believe that huge tub of sushi there was around $10 here in SF a smaller package of sushi is $15 minimum.

Since I only make $11 an hour+ tips ($15 a day if I am lucky) I realized that I would be making about the same amount of money if I took a pee-on job like I have now in Las Vegas and I would be actually able to live off of it. When I graduated college I had hoped to have a living wage paying job within a few months but found my self stuck in a cycle of $10 an hour jobs with no bites on the career type job application process. I feel that at least on the pennies I will make living in LV I can live off of it. Here in SF for $500 a month you are lucky to get a parking space.

I plan to go to dealer school, I am split between the recommended PCI in Henderson and another recommended, but not rated as highly learntodeal.com aka Casino Gaming School. Learn to deal is closer to my apartment but the facilities are a bit more rustic than I would like. I will visit PCI before I make a decision. My apartment is letting me prepay a 3 month lease since I will be moving without a direct job available. It is amazing the 3 months there is still cheaper than 1 month here in S.F.

Anyway I will be at G2E hoping to make some good connections to the gaming distributors, so if you are there meet up with me I will likely be tagging along with the wizard. I will keep this blog updated with the status of my endeavors.