The first night of training was fun!
There are 8 of us being hired, although myself and another guy are the last of the group to get trained. I guess our security checks were slower than usual thus our hiring was delayed.
The training took place behind a screen in the boardroom, with 2 BJ tables and a bunch of extra furniture. Classy :D We have a week or so of training to go through after which we have to pass a test (written and practical) to be cleared onto the casino floor. Next we filled out the usual paper work and stuff. I think we get our passes and a tour of the casino today.
The 'advanced' group got set up on one of the tables. They basically played with one of them dealing an entire shoe while the others played BJ. I was stunned to see that they were issued REAL casino cash chips. Our trainer would occasionally look over to see how they were doing, but they mostly ran their own training.
On the other table, myself and the other guy started our training from the beginning with a math drill. We were given a sheet with fifty 2 digit addition problems and had to try to correctly finish in 1 minute or less. The other guy blew through his in like 40 seconds, but I missed the last 2 and making a mistake on the last question. The trainer was impressed, saying that most people don't come close to finishing, and make several mistakes. Whew.
Next we learned how to shuffle and cut the chips. I should say 're-learned' in my case. I thought I knew how to shuffle before but how wrong I was! The trainer corrected my bad habits and soon I was shuffling like a pro. Cutting the chips properly is very tricky to learn, but I think I am getting the hang of it. We were given a deck of paper cards and Red Shores tournament chips to take home and practise with:
We must be OK actually, because we quickly moved on to learning the procedure for dealing a clean game of Blackjack. We were shown that there is a proper way to do every single movement and motion on the table After a few shoes of demonstration then we got to try. Standing on that side of the table is a bit intimidating and it took a few cycles but we slowly came around.
After a 15 minute break we re-capped the lessons from the first half and we were shown proper tray management. Obviously the most important part of the training so far and we went slow to soak it all in. After that the trainer dealt us a shoe while we learned some advanced lessons in the game, such as splitting, double downs and awkward chip bets. (If you split aces at RS you only get dealt 1 card per ace! WTF?!) Next was our turn. It went OK, and I had a lot of fun learning and improving my skills.
We continued to deal shoes until it was time to go. Our trainer said that we did very well to get through as much material as we did on our first day of training. Most other trainees are way behind were we are. Good to see that Las Vegas experience pays off for me somehow!
Day 2 of training is tonight and can't wait to get back there and learn some more!
