Casino dealer prospects learn tricks of tables

The sound of crickets seems to fill the big meeting room at SugarHouse Casino, headquartered for the time being across Delaware Avenue from the silver-sheathed gaming hall emerging on the waterfront.

It's the click-click of clay chips, fumbled between the fingers of 55 aspiring dealers.

Standing around eight blackjack tables, some of the students look to be barely out of high school. Some could be coming out of retirement. But all hope to reinvent themselves - as table-game dealers when SugarHouse opens the week of Sept. 20.

The casino, on 22 acres in Fishtown and Northern Liberties, is running a free, eight-week dealer school for 215 candidates. And step one, as the recruits soon realize, is mastering the art of cutting chips.

"Push and pull," guides David Vatthanavong, an instructor, "like you're opening a can of soda."

His thick index finger glides over the chips, reducing a stack into even piles of four. Without lowering his eyes to look, he uses one hand to put the chips into two piles, then shuffles them back into a single stack.

Carlee Costello, 27, an actress and model from Runnemede, tries not to get discouraged. But her fingers are doing the Herky Jerky next to her instructor's waltz moves.

"Cutting chips is a lot harder than it looks," she says. Still, "I'm better today than I was yesterday."

SugarHouse will employ about 800 people, 300 of them dealers. Some of those jobs, particularly for harder-to-master craps tables, will go to experienced dealers. But most of the 40 table games will be manned by first-timers who began Tuesday to learn the trade.

SugarHouse interviewed 1,300 people for the school, set up on the ground floor of an office building. Applicants went through rounds of screenings, including games to determine how they interacted in groups.

The student body is split evenly between men and women, with 73 percent from Philadelphia.

"We worked very hard to bring in local people," said Wendy Hamilton, SugarHouse's general manager.

Each day, the four three-hour sessions start at 7 a.m. and end at 10 p.m. Those who can't make it on weekdays may go to class on Saturdays and Sundays.

Trainees learn to run blackjack games and three- and four-card poker. A few of the best students - with quick minds for math and agile hands for moving chips - also will be taught to run the roulette table.

If they pass an audition before SugarHouse pit bosses, they are all but guaranteed a job. "It's yours to lose," Rosemarie Cook, director of table games, told students.

Hourly wages for dealers are only $4 to $7, but tips - "tokes" in casinospeak - can run $20 to $30 an hour, Hamilton said.

"We knew going into this that there would be a lot of interest" in dealer jobs, Hamilton said. Some of it arises from the recession and the demand for higher-paying jobs. But some of it reflects a desire to learn a new line of work, she said.

That was what drew Steve Forchetti, who worked in the mortgage business until that industry collapsed and he started tending bar.

"It's a ground-floor opportunity, a totally new experience for me," said Forchetti, of South Philadelphia. "I'm looking forward to a career change."

Allison Lagera, 22, also of South Philadelphia, was hoping to find a "fun, stable job."

"I don't want to be an office worker," said Lagera, the mother of a 2-year-old boy. A casino, with its round-the-clock hours, would allow her to work a late shift and be home during the day with her son, she said.

Living in South Philadelphia - not far from the proposed Foxwoods Casino - Lagera is aware of the debate over whether casinos will help or hurt neighborhoods.

But, she said, "with the economy the way it is, why say no to a place offering a lot of jobs?"