The best analogy I can come up with looking back at my first week at dealer school is the birth and growth of a child. For me, this is my rebirth into a new career.

I arrived on tuesday for my first day of school at just before noon. With my main goal being that of becoming a poker dealer, It was decided that I should start learning poker first. My instructor for poker was Chris, a 29 year old guy who had dealt in the area since he was 21. After the formalities of filling out some paper work it was time to get down to the business of learn how to deal.

Sticking with the birth and growth analogy, it was now time for me to learn how to crawl. The "crawl" of poker is the shuffle. I thought, no big problem, after all I'd dealt in home games before. As is usual for most people in most situations, my preconceptions where wrong. There is a very detail way to shuffle the cards which, as most things the dealers do, is set up so the overhead camera's can verify that you are doing things correctly.

First up is how to cut the cards and then shuffle them together. It took a little while for me to get this down but once I started concentrating on keeping my palms down on the table as Chris had instructed it was a snap. Next came the strip, which is a procedure of holding the cards with one hand while pulling some off the top of the deck with the other till you have stripped the whole deck. I got that right away but it's undoubtifully the easiest part of shuffling. Final piece of the shuffling puzzle was the cut. Most important thing to about the cut was to do it with only one hand and not to cover the deck after the cut.

Now that I had learned all the different parts of a proper shuffle it was time to know how they fit together. It goes like this - shuffle, shuffle, strip, shuffle, release, cut. The release part just simply means to set the deck on the table and show your palms prior to cutting. After praticing this for most of the first day, according to chris, my shuffle was looking very smooth.

Fanning out the cards on the table came near the end of day one. It was by far the most fun I had on day one. To me its a very cool looking thing to be able to do. The idea is to spread the cards out in an arc with even spacing between each. To the uninformed, it probably seems like a cute parlor trick with no real purpose but it does have a function. When you start a new deck on the table the suits should already be sorted and in order. To check the suits you fan the cards face up and then count the cards in threes(A,2,3 - 4,5,6 - 7,8,9) and then 4(10,J,Q,K) in each suit. Next you fan them face down and check the backs while using a finger to kick them into the middle of the arch for a wash. A wash is mixing the cards together with both hands before beginning the shuffling procedure.

While everything on day one came fairly easy day two was a different story. I arrived on wednesday and Chris starting me out on learning how to pitch. Pitch, the technique with which a dealer delivers the cards to the players, is of critical importance for two reasons. If you are constantly turning cards over while pitching you are going to slow the game down and upset the players, resulting in less/no tips. Also, if you have a poor pitch technique that uses your wrist instead of your fingers you won't last as a dealer because you will damage the nerves in your wrist.

Wednesday was a very fustrating day for me. At first it look like I either had parkinson desease or should have reconsidered that 10th mocha at starbucks. To practice first Chris has someone just pitch straight ahead of them till they can do in smoothly and consitantly. Then he starts them pitching to a table as if it was full of players, but instead of dealing a specific amount of cards to each player, he has you keep going till you pitch the whole deck. Well I never made it past pitching straight ahead on wednesday. At first I was flipping over at least a 1/3 of the deck, but even the one's I didn't looked more like luck then skill.

By the end of wednesday I was starting to show improvement. I was only flipping over a couple of cards per deck and the rotation was looking much better. On thursday I decided not to waste the gas to drive Fresno and back when I could just practice my pitch at home. By the end of the day on thursday I was blowing through the deck rapid fire and not flipping any cards over.

Upon arrival at school on friday I showed Chris my improvement and he started me on pitching around the table. Wow, it was like i couldn't pitch at all again. I was flipping cards over left and right as I tried to deal to each position at the table. Chris said I was trying to go to fast and wanting me to start pausing before each pitch. His advice was like magic and within an hour I was pitching well to every spot at the table.

Once Chris was satisfied with my pitch it was time to start to learn game control. First up was a quiz on the game rules for hold'em. I got all the questions right so he began to work with me on all in pots and show down procedures. I also learned how to count and organize my bank, correct way to muck cards, where to place the pot and board on the table, how to collect bets at the end of each round, how to count my stub, and probably a few things i'm forgetting at the moment.

By the end of friday my head was swimming with all the new details of how to deal I had learn. I'm eager to start back next week on monday. So far so good. I'll try and get a midweek update in but if not I'll do another blog next weekend on how week two went.