“Mom and dad moved to Michigan when I was 13. My mom started dealing at the casino and she became the poker room manager. I learned how to deal poker for the friends she worked with. They taught me all of the games, but craps because that was the hardest. I took a dealing class in high school and started dealing in casinos when I was 18. I have small hands and the hardest part was learning how to push 10 stacks of chips with one hand without pushing them over because. They put me in the high stakes room and I was the cooler. In college, I sat in the breakroom and did homework until they called me down to work a table and take everyone’s money. It wasn’t rigged, I am just good at what I do. I had it.”

“I learned how to deal craps. There is a lot to learn because there are so many different payoffs. You have to be quick because within a second someone could win a million or lose a million, all with one role of the dice. It’s complicated, but it’s also one of your best chances for winning. There are so many things I had to keep in my head and I had to think about the what ifs of each roll. There are a lot of procedures to follow and someone is always watching. You can’t touch yourself because it could be a signal or stealing chips. When I first started dealing craps, my heart beat fast, I couldn’t breathe, and it felt like I was going to pass out. I had to remember poker chips are not real money until they cash it in. I was a part of the entertainment and I didn’t force them to sit down and give chips to me. If you start thinking of it in real terms, it will freak you out. That is a car payment, or you could have bought my house with that one roll and you just lost it. You learn so much about people’s personalities when they are playing and you can tell the ones who can afford to lose money. There are also people who come to the table with their last $40 to try and win their house payment. People lost and got mad at me, but people also won and that was exciting. It’s all luck and being in the right place at the right time. You could be losing and some guy splits the face cards and breaks them up, then you start winning. I saw a guy win $1.5 million on one roll and his average bet was $1 million per roll. I don’t know what he did, but he acted like $1 million was $5. He came into the casino with 2 Stein Mart bags filled with $2 million in cash and began to play. He was down $3.5 million at the end of the night, but he had been down over $11 million. That was a lot of money and inside I was having panic attacks. Dealing was fun, exciting, and mentally draining. I miss it every day and would still be dealing if I hadn’t had my boy. I don’t want to work nights and miss out on his life.”