A venture into the hypnotic lure of the casino

Doug Maag's fingers feel like they're frozen. The late-September night air on Isleta mesa has stiffened his knuckles and he fondles a worn deck of cards in a cramped employee breakroom to warm his fingers. He's due on the casino floor in 15 minutes. "People have a love-hate relationship with us," said Maag, a blackjack dealer at Isleta Gaming Palace. "They'll kiss us when they win and they'll curse us when they lose." The casino is full when Maag takes his first table at 8 p.m. He'll stay until 4 a.m., tossing cards, mentally adding to 21 and scooping cash off green felt tables. Maag is one of 140 blackjack dealers at the palace, a casino owned by Isleta Pueblo, just south of Albuquerque. The gambling hall never closes, and an army of orange-shirted, bolo-tied dealers is always flipping cards and making bad jokes. Maag, 24, is one of the soldiers, but he doesn't think of the game as a battle. "I'm on the player's side," he said. "You aren't going to find anyone rooting louder than the dealer, because people don't tip if they're losing." Dealers receive minimum wage — $4.25 an hour — but they make much more in tips. No one will say exactly how much more because dealers want to avoid the Internal Revenue Service, but casino managers estimate dealers earn between $8 and $12 an hour "We live and die by tips," said Maag, who also refused to say how much he makes, but did say he now makes double his old salary as a reporter in Hobbs. On a Friday night, Maag arrives at his first table as the exiting dealer whispers that the table is cold and the players are fleas — poor tippers. Maag ignores him and works the group, mostly unshaven men in flannel shirts and T-shirts with cigarette logos. "OK, now everyone think good thoughts," he tells his table as he shuffles six sets of cards. "You can blame me if these cards aren't good." Courtesy laughter. The next round begins. Maag throws lots of 19s and 20s. Then he busts. Everyone cheers, including Maag, who pockets several tips. On the next hand, he hits a blackjack and clears the table. Everyone moans. Hot. Cold. Up. Down. So it goes for a half hour until his first break. "It's a different kind of job," Maag said. "You can have thousands of dollars being pushed around the table in less than a minute. It can be a lot of pressure.

The game, the drama, watching things unfold. It can be really exciting and then, in an instant, it's over." In the smoky breakroom, dealers eat frozen yogurt, rub each other's .backs and play no-ante rummy while talking about lousy tippers, estranged spauses and new cars. Slapping cards on a blackjack table is probably the last thing Maag, a Syracuse University-educated journalism major, expected to do for a living. But after a year and a half at tiny newspapers — including a seven-month stint as a business reporter in Hobbs — Maag decided he wanted to do something else. He worked as a press secretary for Senate Republicans during the 1995 legislative session and hoped to land a permanent spot with the state, but when the legislators went home in March, Maag didn't have a job. He moved to Albuquerque and tried to find one, but no one was hiring. During the legislative session, he saw gambling grow as a major industry and decided to find a temporary job at a casino. That was four months ago. "I started doing this to make money while I was looking for something else," Maag said. "Now I love it. I'll probably stay here for a while." Some do stay. Others leave quickly. Their reasons for doing the job vary as wildly as the number of ways you can hit 21 from a shoe with six decks. Monica Van Orman was a housewife. Now the 21-year-old mother of a 2-year-old son deals cards and cracks jokes for a living. Her husband, Robert, 22, quit his "mundane" job as an assembler at Honeywell and joined his wife as a dealer at the casino. "Before, his job was just a job," she said. "Now we have fun while we work. I like that my family thinks I'm important here. Like I'm a big shot because I'm a dealer." Jan Rudas, "39 and holding," left a $50,000 a year job as an accountant at a San Diego car dealership to deal cards. "You don't have to carry anything home in your head or your attache case," she said. John Williams, 44, a former logger in Washington state, moved to Albuquerque to care for his ailing 90-year-old grandmother. He'll deal poker here as long as his grandmother needs him. "Sometimes it's a hard job because dealers get treated pretty bad," he said. "People throw cards at you, curse at you. I know where they're coming from so I don't take it personally."

Most of the time, though, Williams likes his job. "It's not much different than playing in your kitchen with a bunch of friends," he said. "You build a rapport with the people who come to your table. You get involved in the drama of the game." Maag likes to tell a story about a little old man who lost a stack of money at a table, took out a pocket notebook and scribbled the dealer's name. Next to it, he wrote the word "poison." "I have regulars, people who think I'm lucky," he said. "Some see me and walk the other way." Other dealers talk about a guy who came to the casino a few weeks ago, won $7,000 in two hours and didn't tip any of his dealers. "A real cheap bastard," as one of the dealers said. Maag finishes his dish of chocolate frozen yogurt, puts the conversations out of his head and returns to the tables. A short, middle-age man in a rumpled, button down shirt takes a seat at Maag's $5-minimum table. He hands over $30 worth of crumpled one dollar bills. Maag's smile falls, he breathes a slight sigh and unballs the money for the overhead cameras. Then he brightens. "What are you, man, a stripper?" Maag asks and the other gamblers laugh. A few minutes later, the man hits a 20 and Maag says, "If you win this hand, you won't need to jiggle it for money anymore." The man wins and smiles. More laughter. And so it goes until 4 a.m., when Maag deals his last hand. Although his eyes are drooping, the casino is still wide awake and the tables are full. It could be Las Vegas, but once outside, you remember that it's not. Albuquerque shut down hours ago. The only thing Maag can do at 4 a.m. is cash in his tips, slip on his jacket and brave the cold morning air on the dark mesa. He needs his sleep. After all, in just seven hours Maag will be back at work, shuffling, dealing and like the gamblers, hoping a big one hits.