Advocate, The: True tales of a hotel card dealer

Confessor: Christopher Allegra Location: Las Vegas Favorite industry films: Casino, Vegas Vacation Pet peeve: "People who complain that we're taking their money when they can get up and move to a different table or just not play."

Any good tips on how to get comps? Pretty much anybody can get comped for the buffet at the MGM Grand if they're playing for a while and they have a players card. To get anything more significant, you have to bet, say; $25 a hand for so many hours. You have to be the one to ask, though. Unless you're a real high roller, they won't come looking for you to offer you comps.

At the MGM Grand, you cater to the superrich. How are they treated differently? Some have special requests, like that only men can be in the room or only women, or maybe that there needs to be nine glasses of water on the table and nobody is allowed to touch them. If they suddenly want a Nathan's hotdog and there's no Nathan's hotdog around, I'm sure they'll get it. But it's rewarding. The biggest tip I ever got from a single customer was $260,000. He was someone very famous in business, but we're not allowed to say who. All our tips are put in a pool and shared evenly with all the dealers working that shift, so I didn't get all that money, but it was definitely a good day!

Any big goof-ups? These people bring their wives or girlfriends or boyfriends or husbands or whatever and you never know who's who exactly. Another dealer I know says to one guy; "Oh, where's your wife. and she's sitting right there, but last time the guy had come in with someone that's not his wife. Discretion is important.

So is the tourism board's current motto true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? Oh, yeah. You see these little Mormon boys from Utah and they're drinking and partying and having sex and then they go back to their Utah lifestyle going door-to-door with their pamphlets, and they never say, "I picked up three guys in Vegas." So basically, yeah, it stays here.