Bally’s Twin River Casino Dual Rate Floor Manager Andrew Toye, right, speaks to Community College of Rhode Island students Douglas White and Austin DiStefano inside a simulation casino on the school’s Lincoln campus on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. Toye is the lead instructor for the free Introduction to Table Games Dealer Training course. (Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
LINCOLN — Their odds looked pretty good when three men placed their chips down for a game of Blackjack: Each had a hand adding up to no more than 14.
But all three went bust when they were hit with another card. Instead the game served as their inaugural lesson for the number one golden rule on the casino floor.
The house always wins.
“We got to keep the lights on somehow, folks,” dealer Andrew Toye told them.
But at least the unlucky trio didn’t actually lose any money. The house was actually a second-floor classroom at the Community College of Rhode Island where six tables originally from Bally’s Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, each with a CCRI insignia, were being used to create the experience of being in a casino.
Toye is the lead instructor for the Table Games Dealer Training class, which is part of a new gaming and hospitality-based curriculum CCRI has developed with a $5 million investment made last year by Rhode Island’s sole casino operator. Coursework doesn’t officially begin until Monday, Oct. 7.
Thursday’s demonstration was meant to serve as a soft launch for state and casino officials to get a glimpse at the simulated floor some mistook for the real deal half a mile down the road.
“If I didn’t know any better — I thought I’d be at Bally’s,” said Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi.
It certainly does appear that way with the same carpeting used on the floor of the Twin River casino. Craig Eaton, Bally’s head of Rhode Island operations, called the simulated casino space “sizzling.”
The table games dealer training class is offered for free with 30 students enrolled this fall who will learn how to deal Blackjack and novelty games like Spanish 21, Let it Ride, Three Card Poker, and Texas Hold’em. Training also covers how to break down different chip types, currency handling, and customer interaction. Students must pass a test to complete the class.
“Once you’re done with this, and you pass your test, you can go in and start working right away,” Eaton said.
There were some aspects of casino life missing from the classroom: the rows of blinking slot machines and the smoke that tends to fill Bally’s two Rhode Island facilities. CCRI’s course website does note smoke is part of the job, along with noise and odors.
Bally’s Corp. has long opposed efforts to ban smoking at its properties. This year, the company’s Board of Directors also opposed an activist shareholder proposal calling for a study on the economic costs and benefits of going smoke-free at its May 16 virtual annual shareholders meeting, calling it “unwarranted and unreasonable.”
But that effort to go smoke-free does appear to be gaining momentum, as the House Committee on Finance on the final day of the legislative session voted 10-0 in favor of a bill meant to clear the air inside the state’s two casinos.
The bill never went to the floor, but the symbolic vote shows a smoking-ban is an issue the Rhode Island House of Representatives wants to see become reality.
Gaming tables at CCRI were originally from Bally’s Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas, which is scheduled to implode Oct. 9, 2024. (Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
Investing in Rhode Island
Bally’s partnership with CCRI is part of the $100 million investment the company is required to make as part of legislation passed in 2021 granting a 20-year extension to International Game Technology to run the state’s lottery system.
Eaton said there were some gulps from company officials when Bally’s Corporation Chairman Soo Kim first pitched the $5 million idea last year, but they knew such an investment would pay dividends by creating a pipeline of new employees to Bally’s casinos.
The table game class does not yield any certification, CCRI’s Director of Workforce Partnerships Cody Fino said in an interview.
If I didn’t know any better — I thought I’d be at Bally’s.
– Rhode Island House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi before ribbon cutting inside CCRI classroom
The idea of getting steady work was the reason Jeff Ararat of Pawtucket decided to sign up for the program. Ararat, who works as an actor, said roles aren’t being handed out on a silver platter.
“I’ll get breaks, but I don’t know when I will have my next gig,” he said. “Having this keeps the charisma going.”
That, and he was told by his future instructor Bob Douglas that new hires tend to work later in the day.
“That’s what I’m looking for — I can audition during the day, sleep, and then make some money,” Ararat said. The starting wage for table dealers is $35 an hour.
The introductory class runs for six weeks spanning 96 hours of training with classes running for Monday through Thursday from 3 to 7 p.m. Students have the option to pop in on Fridays for extra practice or for make-up work. How often a new cohort needs to be trained at the community college is ultimately up to Bally’s, Fino said.
“The buzz around the room is that Bally’s might need another cohort before New Year’s,” Fino said.
CCRI is also working to develop curricula for gaming security, culinary arts, and hospitality and tourism.
A seven-week online hospitality and tourism course is set to start Oct. 31. It will be taught by Jill Guindon-Nasir, who spent 16 years with The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company in roles such as area director of entertainment travel and senior corporate director of global learning solutions and organizational development, according to her LinkedIn.
“And it’s already full,” Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs Barbara Nauman said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.