Casino Stories with Casino Dealer Jay and Jon Holland

Heather: Hello and welcome to Vegas Aces. My name is Heather Ferris and we are going to be doing something fun. I love these videos. We are going to be doing casino stories. I have two guest here that are going to be joining me and telling me their stories. Do you guys want to introduce yourselves and give a plug?

Jay: Age before beauty.

Heather: Go for it Jay.

Jay: Oh no Johns the older one, maybe he should go first.

Jon: You go first Jay it’s ok.

Jay: Okay. Hi my name is Jay. I have been on Heather's channel a couple of times already. This is – I don’t know how many times I have been on Heather actually? I am up in Edmonton Alberta Canada and I have been in the industry for about 22 years now. I am part-time right now. I did work full time in the hospital. However I am still working for a company. I have been called back, but they don’t really need me right now. Not all the table games are operating. Once I get back I will be going on my 23rd year.

Heather: Wow 23 years. OMG that’s cool. Jon, do you want to go next?

Jon: Sure. My name is Jon Holland. I am up in Evington. I was in casinos for 19 years. I lived in 4 different countries, spent 6 years on cruise ships. So I had a pretty wild time. There are quite a few stories. Some I can say, and some I can’t. I have been out of the business for about 15 years though. I still like it and enjoy it and hang around the people that are still working casinos.

Heather: Okay so you gotta tell us the stories you can’t say. I want to hear those stories first.

Jon: There are lots.

Heather: Let’s get this party started. I always love these livestreams and want to just get right into them. The question I get asked a lot is what stories do you have about people cheating on your table?

Jay: Yeah Jon maybe you should go ahead and take this one.

Jon: Okay. I have one. I used to deal in a casino in Bristol, which is in England and back in Britain we used to have baccarat we used to call it punto banco. They had ten cent chips on them, because they would pay like the 20 full odds? Anyways, this player comes up, he was a well known regular and he was kind of seedy, and he had a fist full of these ten cent chips. Essentially he was playing with them, because back then you were not able to tip the dealers. As he was playing and he would sit right next to me, and I am dealing and I am looking and I am like hang on a minute. He had just stolen all those ten cent chips back. So he played them, I stacked them up and when I wasn’t looking he had reached back and had stolen them to play the game.

I was like WHAT! So I told the guy sitting box, my friend, I said, “He just stole the ten cent chips back.” He was like, “No he would never!” I said, “Yeah, watch this.” I said, “You punched me!” He was like, “What?” I said, “You punched me!” So I told the boss that he punched me and then we got him banned for being violent against the dealer. He was saying, “No I didn’t. No I didn’t!” The whole place was going, I didn’t see it. So we called security and they came over and he was shouting and screaming at me. He is like, “I’m going to kill you, when I see you outside. I’m going to kill you!” He was about a 60 year old guy and he was frail. I was like, “Go ahead, don’t hit me again.” So he would shout and swear and security took him outside. About two weeks later I was walking down the street in Bristol, me and my friend, I was like hey look who that is. I was walking up the street and he was walking up towards me and as soon as he saw me he looked surprised and then ran into the store. I wasn’t going to do anything, but he ran and hid in the store. That was the first one I could remember of someone cheating on a table.

Heather: OMG! That is funny. Jay how about you? Can you think of anything?

Jay: Well I do have some but because I am employed I am not supposed to be divulging any of them so it’s really hard for me to talk about it but –

Heather: Do you have any from casinos you don’t work at anymore?

Jay: Well they are not really bad ones, but as a dealer I would be dealing blackjack – there was one time there is this guy cheating. All he was doing was he was just pressing his bet. He thought I wasn’t watching, but basically I tipped off the bit boss or floor supervisor and just said this guy is cheating. He was just like, okay, keep on eye on him. I didn’t know what to do because I was a new dealer. So I was like dealing and I saw him do it and I was like, “Hey what are you doing! This guy is cheating over here.” I shouldn't have said that because what they wanted to do was see him do it in the act. But I was like “Hey! This guy right here!” (Raising his hand for attention)

So when I got relieved from the table and the floor supervisor was like next time don’t really tip the player off when you know that they are cheating. I was like, yeah, sorry about that.

Heather: Freaking awesome. Yeah so for any new dealers who are watching that is actually fantastic advice. If you know someone is cheating or anything like that, don’t yell it, don’t scream it, don’t do anything like that. Tell your supervisor discreetly so that way they can put the camera on them. They can watch them for a while and they can actually get evidence of the person cheating. That is what you want. You want them to get evidence of them cheating. So don’t yell it. Don’t let them know that you know what’s going on. Just notify your floor supervisor discreetly. He will put the camera on them. They will try to gain as much evidence as they can.

Oh my goodness. Now do you guys have any stories about card counters? While you guys are thinking about it – for example, my story for card counting is I had this guy on my table and he was card counting and everything and he asked me, hey do you think the casino is going to care that I am card counting? I was like dude you are on table with a continuous shuffle machine, cout all you want have fun. LIke you are not on the right table for that. Whatever. Sure!

Jay: That’s a good one.

Heather: How about you guys?

Jon: Jay you go first.

Jay: Yah well, here I am an acting floor supervisor at this casino and there is this guy and he was counting. I was going out with this pretty girl at the time, and she ended up in the high limit a few times when she was dealing. Sometimes she was dealing to him and this guy, we knew he was a counter, they said don’t worry about it, we are monitoring him. I was like okay. They weren’t really hard core on banning players or what not. They did like an analysis back then, but every time I would see this guy and then he was flirting with my girlfriend at the time. So I would come up and say, “Cut half the deck. Cut Half the deck every time.” And he would be like, “Bro, what are you doing?” I said, “I’m not your bro. Ok! Half the deck.” I would always do that. And he was such a nice guy too. But I was so mad at him. Who are you talking to!

Yeah abusive power there. I really shouldn’t have done that before. I ended moving up too. So every time, even if I wasn’t in the pit I would just come in and say, “Half the deck” to him. I don’t care. I was so mad. So I am sorry to you. Person that I am referring to. If you are online or what not. That is why. Don’t do that ever again.

Heather: Jon how about you? Do you have a story?

Jon: Yes, it kind of goes inline with your story Heather. I was working on a cruise ship. It was going in the Caribbeans for seven days. And there was this guy and he came in and it was the first night. And there was this one particular blackjack and the limits were not big but this one particular blackjack blew out and everyone was winning and we were having fun. The dealers were fun and making lots of money and it was really good. This guy kept standing at the end of the table, he was super loud and he kept saying, “I’m a card counter, there is something wrong with the shoe. They are cheating us.”

I was a pit manager. I was like, “You realize everyone is winning. If we are cheating, we are doing it really badly because everyone is making money including the dealer and not the table.” He was like, “I don’t believe you. This is not right. I’m coming back when you close.” I was like, “We close at 2 O’clock in the morning. If you want to come back you can see the shoe but look everyone is winning. Nobody is going anywhere.” And he was like, “I’m coming back!” So he came back at like 2:30 and by this time the table had closed and we had sorted the shoe. He was like, “What are you doing! I wanted to check the shoe!” I was like, “Dude, the table lost for five hours, what are you talking about? You can come back tomorrow if you want to check, if you want when we open up, sorry!” That was hella crazy!

Heather: That reminds me of this one player who swore to God that I had a magnet under my roulette table and he wanted to check it. I was like, “Dude you can’t go crawling under there. That’s not allowed!” No!

Jay: Yeah I had – a couple stories. There is one – Jon’s story reminded me of this one time when I was one ship. It wasn’t really a card counting one, although there is a reference to it. There's this guy from New York and he came in. He is just sitting on blackjack and I come around and he is holding his baby. He is in the casino in the afternoon, holding a baby. The supervisor comes and is like, “Sir you can’t have a baby here in the casino.” He got so mad. He was like, “What’s your problem! Is the baby counting cards or something! You think the baby is counting cards. What’s the count (looking at the baby)? You think this baby is counting cards? Come on guys!” I was like OMG. Anyways.

Heather: Some people.

Jay: Oh I can’t remember the second story I was going to mention. That story was just hilarious. That guy was – OMG. We were just all standing around watching him.

Heather: What was the other story?

Jay: Oh I am trying to think of what I was going to say because it was pretty funny too. I completely forgot now. My mind is a blank here. If I remember I will bring it up again.

Heather: Okay sounds good. My next question is, have you guys seen any naked people in the casinos? Recently we had a naked man carrying his clothes. He was actually naked and had a pile of clothes that he was carrying and he was holding it in front of the one area that mattered. He walked right into the poker room and he asked to buy in and sat at the game. Like what? Of course people are taking pictures and everything. Security comes and they are like, “Dude what are you doing?”

So do you have any stories like that of any naked people in the casino? Or possibly anything sexual? That works too.

Jay: Well yeah. So for those of you who don’t know Jon and I worked together at the Palace Casino. It was the largest mall at one point in the world. Still the largest mall in the Americas. There was the casino on the second deck in this mall, and they ended up building a nightclub right beside it. All the things we would see in surveillance – I had a license at the time, so then they would be like, “You need to see this.” I was like, “Do I?” They said, “Yes, please come in.” We had access and we would watch videos and Halloween would be one of the days you would see a lot of activities going on in our parking lot just because we shared a parking lot. There was a lot of stuff going on. If a lot of girls in fairy suits wanted to relieve themselves, what better place than outside the poker room. There is a camera there because the poker room is 24 hours. So they didn’t realize that. So there are a lot of videos on stuff like that.

Heather: Oh my goodness.

Jay: There’s more. There are videos of people doing it in the stairways. Heather I know you have stories of that as well.

Heather: Oh I have a ton of stories. I bet that is one of the things that security enjoys I guess the most is looking at the cameras in the elevators. That seems to be the area that people tend to you know. How about you Jon?

Jon: For people that don’t know, there are formal nights on the cruise ships, where everyone would dress up in like tuxedos and things like that. So the dealer would be in a tux and that sorta stuff. There was this one night, there was this couple, these two guys that came on. They were fun and really loud and over the top. When it came to this formal night they came in and they walked through the casino. From the top up they had this beautiful tux jacket on and shirt and tie and looked immaculate. But from the waist down they were nude and they just had a G-string on and was like – they would walk around, because they came up to the craps table we could just see them from the waist up and it looked totally normal. But when they walked away and all we saw was this nude butt walking away. The captain got so annoyed, because you know there was dinner with the captain and you would go into the dining room. He got so annoyed, he told security they need to get pants on or they get off tomorrow. He was going to boot them off the ship the following morning. You should have seen these guys. They just didn’t care. They were just walking through the casino like no big deal.

Heather: OMG. I have seen some people down on the strip and on Fremont street and there are some guys wearing a thong in a huge public area. And they just strut their stuff and show everything. They are proud of every ounce of it. Every single ounce.

So my next question is, do you guys have any stories on celebrities? You don’t have to say any of the celebrities' names because that will get some people in trouble. My celebrity story for example was when I was at the Hardrock. I don’t care if I say the Hard Rock because it is defunct now. I used to work at the Hardrock, it was graveyard and I was going on break. This celebrity was there and she is basically only known for her celebrity-ness. She is one of these beautiful women that is just sorta snobby. She is walking in front of me and she is drunk as a skunk. She trips and falls flat on her face. Her skirt goes over her head. No underwear on at all and she is so drunk that she can’t get herself back up. So I am looking at her bodyguards. Her bodyguards are not doing anything to help her up. They are just standing there. Finally a cocktail waitress comes over and helps her up. She was like, “Don’t touch me! You just want to touch a celebrity. Get away from me!” And then she stumbles away. I looked at the security guard dude and I was like what the F just happened? He was like that is why we are not supposed to touch her or help her or do anything like that. We are just here to watch her and make sure nobody hurts her. She does that every single time. We had one guy try to help her and he got fired. So that’s my story.

Jay: I really want to know who that celebrity is.

Heather: I will tell you after.

Jay: Okay! For me there are not too many - there are not a lot I can say because of the confidentiality. However we did have a hockey player once and he was a big boy. I can say he was a defenseman and he played for our team and he was really good and he made a lot of money. I got to deal blackjack to him. The guy would shoot the table and whatnot. He had been in care – which was really cool. You know you are like trying to talk to him and then he is just quiet. I kinda cleaned him out one shoe. He is like whatever. He goes in his pocket and reaches out this big brown poo hundred dollar bills. Because our hundreds are brown, right. He is like boom (put pile of money out). He said, “Let’s try again.” I was like, ummm color change, or money change. I was like holy cow. This was the first time I was like in awe. This guys was like shooting – he had his own table. Then after he was done playing and they were like asking if he was hungry. He was like sure. He goes upstairs, he was watching another hockey game, but he had like three tables full of food. I have never seen anybody order so much food. He had all these plates at the tables and like two drinks. He was like eating so much. I was like holy crap, I want to be that guy. That guy was so crazy.

Heather: OMG that sounds so awesome.

Jay: He was awesome. He actually tipped.

Heather: Oh cool.

Jay: Yeah. He was a cool guy. It’s like a dream player. He was like Oh well. It didn’t matter if he was winning or losing. But for me at the time it was a lot of money, but to see it for the first time like that much, it was like WOW. I was like can I borrow some?

Heather: Right? Totally. How about you Jon?

Jon: I remember – I will go back onto the cruise ships. There was this one singer and she was one of the patrons of one of the ships when they brought it out – one of the older ones anyways. Her son got caught trying to steal – fraudulently used someone else's bar card in the gift ship that wasn’t his or his families. He was trying to buy a watch and it wasn’t his or his parents. They didn’t know who he was. It was like this kid under 18. So they had to come up to the casino and say – her whole posse was there as well and they came into the casino. She wasn’t really that big of a player. She would play like $5 blackjack or $10 blackjack, whatever. They had to say, “Your son was arrested by security for stealing at the gift shop, do you want to come bail him out?” She was like a patreon saints. It was so funny. It was so embarrassing. Everybody knew about it. She was like, “What?” She like, sheepishly left the table to go and bail her sketchy son out for stealing from the gift shop.

Heather: Was she totally red? I would have totally died.

Jon: She was.

Heather: Have you guys ever had any players or dealers or floormen that were really superstitious? Anything that stands out in your mind with superstitious. Doing or sayings or anything like that?

Jon: I worked for one. He was literally crazy. He kept this dice that he kept in his fridge in his cabin. He told a dealer once to throw the shoe off the table because it was losing. He said, if you don’t do it I will fire you. Yeah there are lots of crazy people. He would change the stick every couple of rolls if he didn’t call seven outs. If he did call seven outs – he used to call it singing. They used to call it singing years ago. For British people anyway. If you are on the stick and keep calling winner they would say you are singing. He would get so mad. He would say, “Get that Welsh guy off stick he can’t stop singing.” Then you know you get pulled off or get benched off tables because you can’t call a loser. What are you doing?

This is how crazy he was. If one night it won he would go to work the same way every day until it lost and he would figure another way to go to work. It is just – I don’t know. I think there are as many people who are superstitious who gamble as there are people that work in casinos who are just as superstitious. I have met lots of managers who are like, “I always have to stop at this stop because we won last time.” It’s just crazy.

Heather: Yeah. I had a floor supervisor who sweated the money, which is pretty much the same as being superstitious. They were like do this or do that. They are trying to change the cards. Or maybe if I switch the dealer that will change it. I was like, dude you need to stop. Really. That is like old school. That was like in the 90’s, early 2000’s. How about you guys?

Jay: Yeah well this one is not really so old school. There was this guy that was beating us up. Like baccarat, blackjack, whatever this person was playing was just killing us. So one of the executive host started to try to put cards of like 7’s under the dice table. We had this dinner gala which was for excellence and customer service. So we had a lot of our staff that were part of that. We ended up grabbing one of the signs. Because they had these huge signs there at the banquet. It had certain areas. Like this section was 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6. So I grabbed the 7 and we kept it under the table. Just for no reason whatsoever. Yeah let’s be superstitious now. None of us were except possibly the business person. I have the sign still.

Heather: You still have it?

Jay: Heather you have been on our channel as well and on our show. A lot of the time I have a lot of things that I keep. I am a pack rat. But I do have that huge sign. I will have to show you some time. It’s in my basement. It’s this huge 7. We ended up putting it under the dice table and didn’t tell anyone about it. Of course it didn’t work. But it was pretty funny. Just for fun right?

Heather: Oh man that is pretty funny.

Jon: The first table I worked on, craps table, back in Cardiff, a long long time ago, in Brittan – like two place double and in a field – two place double and 12 place triple. Theona, who is crazy, said oh “I want it to say pays seven.” So what he did is he said pays even but it was really close to seven and it was really close together so it read pay seven. He thought that would be unlucky. And he was like, what? It made no sense at all. I was like, okay you own the place, you can put whatever you want on it.

Heather: People are very interesting. I had one guy who he thought it was unlucky for the dealer to touch his money before the cards came out. But he would leave his chips in this sloppy ass pile. You know so I had no choice, I had to straighten it up. You have to actually see what you have. The camera has to – you can’t have a pile, literally a pile of chips. You have to have a stack of chips. Then he would yell at me and tell me how unlucky that was and I was going to make him lose. I was like clean up your freakin pile.

Jon: I feel for this player. He didn’t have any money but he was really superstitious back in Cardiff. He would stay in the box until 10:25. Back then it was like the bar would close at 11:00. He would stay there until 10:25, he comes to the table he would refuse the dice three times around. And then he would get – I think it was $100 nothing really and then he would smash the dice because he got a 3 and a 1 and then he would throw it. But every time I would roll, he would say the same bet, even though it wouldn’t make any sense. Because it would say “50 crap, dollar 11, dollar the line.” And we would be like ok. We call the bet up normally. Nobody else would call our bet. But he would always call that bet when it would come up. He had a mustache and he was an older guy and we would call him no cash-tache. He was just annoying and he had a mustache.

Heather: Okay the last question. This is the last story of the video. Have you guys ever experienced someone – do you know what a stroker is? Like do you guys have that terminology up there? So a stroker is someone who walks around the casino looking for inexperienced or sloppy dealers and then they go and take advantage of those dealers so they make more money. Have you ever experienced something like that?

Jon: When I was a trainee – back where I am from there are all experienced – like I said we had a – roulette is the prominent game in Britain. The place I worked in we had 20 tables and 12 of them were roulette. They were all regulars and they would go in a flyzone hunting. As soon as they saw – oh he’s new! They would all swarm on you. When you were a new dealer you were like, oh man, they are going to tear me apart because they know I am going to make mistakes. These guys were just terrible. After a while you were like yeah yeah yeah. Once you got to know them you knew exactly what they were trying to do…Go!

Heather: You wise up. How about you Jay?

Jay: Well I think the only times that I have experienced that when I am the new dealer. I think the worst time that I had any issues with players was when I was dealing poker. It was just the first few days. We ended up going through the training and they just threw us on the day after and it was like OMG this is ridiculous. Our baccarat training at the time was only a day. Our poker training was like maybe a week tops. We were just thrown into the fire. So you could see a lot of people trying to take advantage of you because they were going out of turn and what not.

I just remember – I know exactly the game because I jumped in the afternoon and I was like OMG I don’t want to be here. I will tell you this, I learned craps and Pai Gow Tiles way before any of the other games. Roulette was like one of the last games that I learned and poker was in the middle. So when I got on there I was like, I just don’t want to deal this game. I sit down. The first hand I did a misdeal. All of a sudden someone says, “This guys sucks!” I was like oh God. I am so sorry. They put me in ten shifts in a row, because that was our probationary period. After the first hand it was like hell for me. I was like I can’t do this! There was a bunch of guys in there 70s and 80s. This is their game. They have been there every afternoon. They are the regulars. They just got into all these arguments and what not. But then you can tell that other people knew that I was new so they would come in and bet out of turn and do everything just to be annoying, right? It’s like ok!

Heather: Even the dealers, like stroked you basically.

Jay: Yeah pretty much.

Jon: I believe you would ask for like when I was on roulette and they knew you because you were shaking like that and the bats are like that. They would always ask for weird payouts. I want – back then it was weird, this casino I worked in, they used to have 25 center roulette and up to whatever they wanted to play. But they used to call 25 cents or dollars. I don’t know why but they would always call them dollars. 50 cents, dollars which was 25 cents. You get people like, “I won 42 dollars in the cash payout.” And you are like, what? Just because they are trying to mess with your head and be a pain. It would be like what?

Heather: They do that on craps. Yeah. They do that on roulette, they do that on craps. Same thing that happened to me when I was on craps. I had this guy come up to my table and he’s – what was it like 36 and 8. So I put 30 on the 6 and 30 on the 8. He hits an 8 and he is like what the hell are you doing? I said 60 on the 8 not you know. My fault, I didn’t book the bet. Because I didn’t book the bet my floor supervisor gave it to him and I learned how important it is to book the bet that day.

Jay: Yep.

Jon: We used to have a – back when I first trained, just because – this guy was about five foot tall and he is like this little old Jewish guy. We used to call him Albert the boss. He came in and he placed like one unit across minimum and bear in mind our minimum was like $1.50. Multiples on $1.50 on 6 and 8 and $1.25 on a 5, 9. Two 50s on 4 and 10s. He would press by unites up to whatever it went. The 25 cent chips that would be his odds and he would stack them to whatever. He knew if you messed up, he would go ballistic. He would absolutely lose his mind. He was only short and you are like, “Hi sweet old man.” And he would come in and if you messed up his one press he would blow up! He was this crazy lunatic. To be honest when I got more experienced I could deal to him all the time. I just to do it on purpose just to get him mad. Come man I am just joking with you, here’s your money. He was terribly – he would be the only one, he would intentionally come in as soon as the table would open so he could be on his own to play. He was terrible.

Heather: Oh man. I would really love to keep you guys here all day and talk about all of these stories. Unfortunately we can’t. I hope we can have you guys back for another casino stories. Will you guys tell people where they can find you?

Jon: Sign up for Heather. Sign up for Jays channel. It’s always fun. Sign up for these two guys they are the best. I don’t have a channel. These are the guys to sign up for.

Jay: You can find me on casinodealerjay YouTube channel. Heather is on there as well. I am also on social media so I do have an instagram account and ticktock account. I have been showing a lot of chip tricks. We will kind of go through a few more tutorials. I will be getting back with that. Jon and I have our live streams every Wednesday. It's called talking craps. It’s all about casino industry talk.

Heather: Sweet.

Jay: Heather you have been on a couple times. We would love to have you on a few more times. You can catch Heather on there as well.

Heather: Appreciate that. If you haven’t already check out their YouTube channels. This is Heather Ferris reminding you that Education can change the world. Have a great day!