When the ilani Casino Resort opens April 17 near La Center, Washington it will deploy table games considered to be “elite” in the industry.
The casino insists on a minimum of 13 weeks of training and graduation from a dealer’s school for dealers to even be considered for a position. The training is free, but there is no guarantee that after being auditioned that candidates will be hired.
The 75 games the casino will deploy will include five “high-limit” tables. Games will range from $5 minimum to $25 minimum and considerably higher than that at the high limit tables.
The casino will also have craps, generally considered to be the hardest game to deal.
One of the candidates for craps dealer, Jim Edger, was interviewed by the Reflector. He said, “I decided to do it last November. I hadn’t set foot in a casino in 30 years, but I knew I could be good at it because I do well with numbers and I’m good with people. It’s a challenge and I like that.”
He comes to gaming from the “high tech” world, where jobs were becoming increasingly scarce for him. “It’s hard to start a career at age 61,” he said. “This is a rare thing you can with though.”
Another candidate, considerably younger, just out of high school, in fact, said he looked forward to possibly making a career out of being a dealer. “It’s something I think you could hold onto for a number of years,” he said. “I’m very young for a craps dealer, so I think it could take me far.”
The dealer schools operated five days a week for three and a half hours, where students constantly shuffle, handle chips, do math in their heads, all while being charming and friendly. The recent high school grad started out not being able to shuffle. But now, weeks later, he can do card tricks and add up chip amounts in his head without looking.
One entity that may not be looking forward to the impending opening of the ilani Casino Resort is the Oregon Lottery, which expects to lose $110 million a year in video lottery sales a year as a result.
One reason the lottery is expecting a big hit is that the casino will be the closest casino to Portland, Oregon’s largest city, where half of the lottery’s sales occur. It will be 24 miles away.
Recently the Oregon Business Report stated, “If these northern Portland zip codes see a 40-50 percent decline in video lottery sales, that means total statewide video lottery sales would decline 4.5 to 5.5 percent,” adding, “Factoring in additional losses of around 10-15 percent throughout the rest of the Portland region brings the statewide total impact to nearly 12 percent, relative to the no casino baseline.”
