Shortage of dealers at WSOP?

It appears, at least for now, there are sufficient dealers at the World Series of Poker to staff all of the tournaments and the cash games. Just two days ago, there were wait lists of 30 and 40 players for the some of the cash games, and yesterday, some players had to wait 45-60 minutes to get into a single table satellite.

There have been several dealer meetings in the past 48 hours both on and off site at the Series. Harrah’s has made one change that has met with much dealer approval. Pay is now based on the number of “downs”, the actually number of times a dealer sits in the box and deals a standard 30 minute session. Prior to that change, every dealer clocked in shared in the overall toke pool. Now this may seem a bit unfair to dealer’s who were assigned to the bullpen but here was the real problem. Some dealers were clocking in at the Series and then heading out of other jobs around town and coming back at the end of the Rio shift to clock out. Three of my friends played a tournament at the Sahara the other night being dealt by at least two “on the clock” WSOP dealers. To quote one floor person, those two dealers were caught, and ‘kicked in the nuts’.

To many dealers, Harrah’s has taken steps that greatly improved the situation. Not all the dealers feel the “down” for pay change will resolve the low wage issue.

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