Vic Taucer on Craps Dealing and Casino Training

Vic Taucer moved from Las Vegas craps pits into casino management, dealer education and table-games consulting. CrapsPit published this interview in 2014, but the conversation reflects an earlier period in his career. It is preserved as an edited industry archive—not as current employment advice or a claim that every biographical detail remains unchanged.

From the dice pit to casino education

In the original introduction, Taucer said he broke in at the Nevada Hotel in 1976 and soon moved to the Mint. He later dealt or managed games at properties including the Marina, the old MGM, Castaways, Silver Slipper and Caesars Palace.

At Caesars, he proposed offering gaming lessons on the casino floor and helped develop the instructional programme. He also taught dealing, worked with Danny Bohan on a dealing school and casino-event business, and moved into college-level casino management education. The interview describes him designing dealing and management courses, writing textbooks and consulting on table-game training.

Training and recruitment at Paris Las Vegas

CrapsPit: You were hired as director of casino training and recruitment for the opening of Paris Las Vegas. What did the work involve?

Vic Taucer: He described a multi-stage interview process for dealer and supervisor applicants. Human Resources conducted the first interview; candidates who advanced met with Taucer and then senior management. He said he also wrote table-games policies and procedures, designed pre-opening training for managers, supervisors and dealers, and coordinated employee orientation.

The durable lesson is that dealing skill is only one part of opening a pit. Recruitment, internal controls, supervision and consistent training determine whether the games can operate correctly at scale.

What changed for new dealers?

CrapsPit: Were opportunities better for new Las Vegas dealers than when you started?

Taucer: At the time of the interview, he believed skilled new dealers could move to stronger Strip jobs faster than in the 1970s, when several years of experience—or knowing the right person—was often required. He emphasized attitude and the ability to handle the layout.

That answer belongs to its period. Hiring conditions, wages, tip policies and required experience change by property and labour market. It should not be read as a current promise of advancement within 12 to 18 months.

“Going for your own” versus pooled tips

A large part of the conversation concerned a once-common system in which dealers kept the tips made at their own table rather than pooling them across a wider group.

Taucer remembered that model as better for strong dealers at busy tables in the older, smaller casino business. It forced dealers to learn both the mechanics of the game and how to interact with players. He described the ideal as making the player aware that the dealer was present and attentive—not merely using aggressive tip solicitation.

He also said the system did not fit the larger corporate casino floor. With more properties, more games and uneven demand, he believed pooled tips offered greater stability. He recalled Caesars moving to pooling in March 1987 and supported the change.

Dealer craft is also people craft

Taucer’s strongest operational point was that a dealer must do more than calculate payouts. The role combines game protection, procedure, pace, accuracy and guest relations. A technically quick dealer who cannot communicate can still damage the table; a charismatic dealer who mishandles bets creates a different risk.

In his consulting work, Taucer said he developed customer-service, guest-relations and procedural-compliance training. That combination explains why casino education cannot be reduced to memorizing multiplication tables.

Casino growth and pressure on table games

The interview also captured Taucer’s concern that table games no longer held the same position within casino economics. Asked about unions and dealer pay, he supported better wages but worried that increased labour costs could lead operators to replace staffed games with more machines.

This was his industry opinion, not CrapsPit’s forecast. It remains historically useful because it shows how an experienced table-games educator viewed the tension among staffing, tips, automation and casino revenue.

Casino Creations and teaching

Taucer explained that the casino-event business grew from work with his partner Danny Bohan. After Bohan retired, Taucer continued the operation; his wife Garnet later managed more of it while he concentrated on consulting and training.

He also discussed returning to college teaching, producing a table-games management textbook and building a casino-management publishing series. The current Casino Creations experience page still describes his background in casino training, curriculum, textbooks, consulting and operations. That external page supports the broad career outline, but this interview remains the source for his personal recollections.

How to read an archival interview

• Statements about hiring, pay, unions and available jobs reflect the interview period.
• Memories of individual casinos are firsthand recollections, not independently audited histories.
• Operational observations can be valuable without turning the speaker into an authority on player odds or guaranteed outcomes.
• Old email addresses and invitations to apply for part-time work have been removed because they should not be treated as active.
• The transcript was edited for clarity, repetition and broken formatting while retaining the substance of the answers.