The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook
by Dan Paymar, Donna Harris, Mason Malmuth

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Book Reviews of The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook

Book Review: The best introduction to Dealing.
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of The Professional Poker Dealer's Handbook

With two other engineers, Dan started Educational Data Systems. Their goal: to write a BASIC language interpreter and disk operating system for the Data General Nova computer to handle up to sixteen users. As far as we know, this was the first time-sharing system ever to run on a minicomputer. When the company began manufacturing its own computers Educational Data Systems became Point 4 Data Corporation.

Always the idea man, Dan then developed an accessory for the Apple-II computer which he sold via his own mail order business and through retail outlets.

In 1989 Dan changed his career direction about 180 degrees and returned to school ? to become a poker dealer. That same year, he moved to Las Vegas.

After five years working as a poker dealer, playing some poker, and getting interested in video poker, Dan became an instructor for poker dealers at Casino Gaming School. Not satisfied with the instructional materials then available, the original edition of this book was born. Starting as a booklet of fifty pages, the text evolved as new situations and questions came up in class that were not covered. In 1995, the second edition of the original text, with eighty pages, was published and sold in gaming bookstores.

About Donna Harris: Donna Harris was born and raised in California and came to Las Vegas in 1979 for the World Cup of Darts, which was held at the Sahara Hotel. She was the first female official for this event. Like many Las Vegas visitors, she was fascinated by the prospect of building a career in the casino industry, and in 1980 she returned to Las Vegas to deal blackjack professionally. Her first job was at the Golden Nugget Gambling Hall in downtown Las Vegas.

That same year, after becoming intrigued by the game of poker (which was played directly across the pit from where she dealt), and then playing poker after work, Donna asked to be transferred into the cardroom where the legendary Bill Boyd was the manager. Her initial position was as a "shill dealer" ? a dealer who only dealt when the "regular" dealers were out of the lineup ? usually to play poker. Her other early job duties included brushing tables, getting fills and player?s checks, and "playing poker" as a shill. She dealt poker until 1985.

In 1982 Bill Boyd retired, turning the cardroom over to another legend, Eric Drache. At that time very few women were in poker management and Eric felt that many of his regular customers, who originally played in "smokey back room" type environments, would not respect the decision of a young and inexperienced female floorperson. However, Donna persisted and was given the opportunity to succeed.

In 1998 Donna became the cardroom manager at The Mirage, where you can still find her today. Donna has also held positions in both The World Series of Poker and Grand Prix of Poker tournaments held in Las Vegas. Her experience includes traveling with Poker Cruises International, whose routes to most ports in the Caribbean and Mexico have now been taken over by Card Player Cruises and Classic Poker Cruises. She was also aboard the first "poker cruise" to England on the QE II in 1985, and worked poker tournaments in such exotic locales as Marakesh, Morocco, and Port Vila, Vanuatu.

About Mason Malmuth: Mason Malmuth was born and raised in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1973 he received his BS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech, and completed their Masters? program in 1975. While working for the United States Census Bureau in 1978, Mason stopped overnight in Las Vegas while driving to his new assignment in California. He was immediately

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