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Wynn Blackjack Dealer Salary

 
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The dealers at the average Strip casino in Vegas make $50k-$60k. The average off-the-Strip dealers make $35k-$45k. I believe the average dealer outside of Vegas will fall somewhere in the middle, about $45k-$55k. There are also lots of different ways dealers get their tip money. Most of us know they either keep their own or pool. Top 50 Highest Paying States for Casino Dealer Jobs in the U.S. We’ve identified 11 states where the typical salary for a Casino Dealer job is above the national average. Topping the list is Hawaii, with Massachusetts and Rhode Island close behind in second and third. The “Salary” (Income) of a Pro Blackjack Player Blackjack Player EarningsEvery blackjack player has a theoretical “expected value” of their play. When you bet $100 on a hand, you’re going to win or lose $100 (assuming you don’t push, double, split, surrender or get a blackjack).

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Orly Graves doesn’t look twice as a group of friends sits down around midnight at the blackjack table and puts down $1,000. She compliments their shoes and grabs a hook, clasping it underneath the table so one of the women can hang her purse on it.
“That’s what you do, you anticipate their needs before they need it,” she explains.
Graves, 59, is responsible for monitoring four blackjack tables at Wynn Las Vegas, a five-star hotel and casino on the Strip. She works late-night shifts — 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. — five days a week. A former dealer herself, she makes sure the dealers are doing their jobs, that no money goes missing and the customers are satisfied.
Graves grew up in the Israeli city of Petach Tikvah before coming to the United States on a college basketball scholarship in 1980. She has been working in the gaming industry on and off for 20 years. In between, she also worked at a local Jewish day school and two synagogue Hebrew schools teaching Hebrew and Judaic studies.
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Though the two professions may seem worlds apart, she insists they are not.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency sat down with Graves to learn more about what it’s like to work as a dealer in Sin City. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
JTA: How did you end up working at a casino?
Graves: I was a schoolteacher. I loved it. At the time my boyfriend, who is my husband for the last 30 years, he was a manager in a casino. I really didn’t like casinos. I didn’t want to be part of it.
As a schoolteacher, you struggle. What do you make, 32 or 35 thousand a year? And I was madly in love with the children, it was definitely my passion.
So my [now] husband says, “Why don’t you go to dealing school?” I said, “I really don’t want to. But you know what? I’ll try it.” I went for three days and they hired me.
So I was a dealer for a couple of years and I was doing both, I was teaching and dealing. The money for dealing was excellent because you live on your tips. You make minimum wage and then whatever tips you make.
The money at this place is phenomenal. I got hired — not for my dealing skills, just for my people skills. Because we’re a people business.
Tell me more about why people skills matter in a casino.
It’s like in anything else in life, where you go to a restaurant, you go to a spa, you go to anywhere that you want to be taken care of, you want to be treated special. So the people skill is how to read people, be welcoming to them.
You deal with people who can spend $15, and you deal with people who can spend millions, so that’s where the difference is. You got NFL players, actors, actresses — they all want to be treated very nice, so you gotta know how to do it.
Wynn Blackjack Dealer Salary
Were you intimidated at first when people would bet large sums of money?
I was very scared in the beginning. It was like, “Oh, $25,000 chips!” But now it’s just a chip. It’s the people — I love when they come back and they look for me. People look for you because they had an amazing experience.
You mentioned how much money you can make working here. What has that money done for you?

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I was able to send my daughter to private school from first grade to the end of high school, and that’s huge. It’s a lot of money. It was an amazing sacrifice to make and it paid off. I’m very blessed to have this opportunity.
What types of sacrifice did you have to make?
What I mean is, you make a lot of money here and it can go to your head. You can go spend it all. And I think the sacrifices I made, I went without [spending that money] and I allowed my kid to have a private school.
As a schoolteacher, there’s no way you can afford to send your child to a private Jewish school in the U.S. It’s outrageous. So this job allowed me to do so.
Going from Hebrew school teacher to blackjack dealer seems like a big change.
It’s the same thing. Working with preschoolers and drunks after midnight that come to clubs and all that — it’s the same thing, if that makes any sense to you. That’s how I make sense out of it. To me, because it’s such a [change] — education to this.
But what you’re doing is you’re educating here, too. A bunch of 21-year-olds don’t know how to behave when they drink, and I say, “Hey guys, what do you think your mom would think about that, pulling your pants down?”
The environments do seem pretty different at the same time.
The environments are greatly different. Especially in here, you have a lot of high-end players, people who are going to spend 3, 4, 500 dollars a night on a hotel. How would you like to be treated? Like a princess, right? That’s the bottom line.
I notice you’re wearing a Star of David. Do you wear it to work every day?
Every day. And I get a lot of comments — some positive, some negative.
The Jewish people that come in here, they love to see that I’m proud of wearing this and I’m not afraid.
And then when the Arabs come — and I understand Arabic pretty well — they say, “She’s Jewish.” And they think maybe I will treat them in a different way, and it’s totally the opposite. I want them to feel welcome because I have no issues with them. This is open for anybody as long as you behave.

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  • Yearly salary of a professional blackjack player
Wynn Blackjack Dealer Salary

What is the salary of a professional blackjack player? It’s a common question I hear, but what would seem like a simple enough question actually has a fairly complex answer. First of all, the term “blackjack player salary” isn’t quite appropriate. Professional blackjack players don’t make a set amount of money every month like a salaried employee does. Playing blackjack for a living is more like owning your own business or working for 100% commission. Therefore different professional players make different amounts of money based on many varying factors. Some of the more obvious factors being the stakes the played at, the amount of time spent playing and the skill level of the player. There are also many less obvious factors involved in determining how much money a professional player will make. I’m not going to cover all of them here, but just a few of these additional variables include the quality of the blackjack games played, the card counting system used and the size of the player’s betting spread.

The “Salary” (Income) of a Pro Blackjack Player

Blackjack Player EarningsEvery blackjack player has a theoretical “expected value” of their play. When you bet $100 on a hand, you’re going to win or lose $100 (assuming you don’t push, double, split, surrender or get a blackjack). However, over time there’s an average value of that hand. In card counting, high positive counts create a positive expected value for a card counter and negative counts create a negative expected value. Knowing this, and knowing how to take advantage of this, is the foundation of how professional blackjack players are able to make money.

So exactly what is the total overall expected value for a professional blackjack player? Check out the examples below to get an idea. For simplicity I’m going to do some rounding off and I’ll assume only one hand is being played with all counts being played through (no backing out on negative counts).

Bellagio (Las Vegas)
# of decks: 2
Rules: S17, DA2, DAS, no RSA
Stakes: $100 units
Betting Spread: 1-5 ($100-$500)
Penetration: 68%
Counting System: Hi-Opt II with Full Indices
Hands/Hour: 180
Expected Value = $390 per hour
JA Nugget (Reno)
# of decks: 1
Rules: H17, DA2, no DAS, no RSA
Stakes: $50 units
Betting Spread: 1-4 ($50-$200)
Penetration: 7 Rounds (heads up)
Counting System: Wong Halves with Illustrious 18 Indices
Hands/Hour: 200
Expected Value = $285 per hour
Foxwoods (Norwich, CT)
# of decks: 6
Rules: S17, DA2, DAS, LS, no RSA
Stakes: $50 units
Betting Spread: 1-10 ($50-$500)
Penetration: 80%
Counting System: Hi-Lo with Sweet 16 & Fab 4 Indices
Hands/Hour: 220 (heads up)
Expected Value = $275 per hour

Needless to say, changing any of the variables listed would alter the expected value of an hour played. Now let’s assume for simplicity that a professional blackjack player played each of these scenarios for 5 hours per week. That’s a respectable 15-hour work week (nice, right?). Here’s what the 15 hours per week would yield in theoretical expected value…

(5 hours X $390) + (5 hours X $285) + (5 hours X $275) = $4,750 per week

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$4,750 X 4 weeks = $19,000 per month

Yearly Theoretical Earnings from Playing Blackjack

Blackjack

Wynn Blackjack Dealer Salary Calculator

Okay, so in this example you’re looking at $19,000 per month, which would then be $228,000 per year if you played for 12 months. These numbers are theoretical, meaning that your reality will not be exactly there. You might overshoot your theoretical (gotta love that) or you might fall short (not as fun). However, if you play enough hours it all pans out over time, or at least your results will be in the ball park of your theoretical earnings. Getting it all in cash is nice too.

Las Vegas Blackjack Dealer Salary

If you’re contemplating a career as a professional blackjack player, you have to understand your own personal circumstances. You might play more or less hours than this. You might play higher quality or lower quality games. You might not have a very high skill level or you might play at higher or lower stakes. You also need to know what kind of bankroll can handle these levels of action, but that’s not something I’m going to get into here. This is just a teaser to show you the potential of a skilled blackjack player rather than a guide on how to actually reach these numbers. If you want to know everything that goes into being highly successful, you’re going to need to do more than just read a few pages off a website. You might want to consider my next blackjack class. I apologize for the shameless plug, but whether you want to become a professional player or just make some extra cash on the weekends, my class is definitely a smart investment.