From The Floor To The Stream: How Blackjack Dealers Adapted To A New Market

Casinos often struggle to find a dealer who can offer exactly what they are looking for. Some of the best blackjack dealers can call on many interpersonal skills; they tend to be social people, and they know how to keep a game ticking over in a jovial manner.

In a conventional casino, dealing with people face to face, often on a rowdy weekend when alcohol is involved, it can take a special type of person to work these unsociable hours, keep a smile on their face, and know how to rapidly turn over quickfire blackjack rounds to keep the pit bosses happy; it’s a real juggling act.

In online casinos, there’s still a need for the social side of things, with the live in-game chat often acting as an avenue for people to speak to the dealer directly. Those who play blackjack online will know just how much of a range is out there; there are multiple different types of blackjack variants and table games.

For live dealers, though, they had to adapt to online blackjack. While the market for conventional casinos remains, it is important to have flexibility. Those dealers who have adapted to this new dynamic have given themselves the best possible chance to continue working in this enormously fast-moving, rapidly evolving industry.

Moving With The Times

Those blackjack dealers who have the charisma and social awareness to navigate the quickfire nature of blackjack are a valuable asset to the brand they represent. Some believe that charisma is essential for those in leadership positions. Ultimately, it depends on the industry you are in. It is not a necessity.

For instance, in sports like basketball, there is considerable emphasis on players with Hollywood appeal who can become crossover stars. The 1990s were a golden age for basketball, and charisma and skill were the two main factors that determined whether a sports star had what it took to become a global superstar.

This demand has now shifted online and to social media, where likes and followers have become the new benchmarks for driving an audience. Casinos have quickly adapted to this change, and while they have been at the forefront of it for over 30 years, the technology that has helped to bring live dealers into the global market has meant that all of the factors that made great live dealers some of the most underappreciated staff members a casino had on its roster.

This is equally true for dealers who can generate and maintain an online audience by interacting with the live in-game chat and ensuring they do not miss a beat in back-and-forth banter with players at home. This is an element that exists through the market, and dealers who can do this properly will not have trouble finding work in the industry.

Sorting Out The Priorities

In conventional casinos, there’s a much higher demand for live dealers to be more aware of their surroundings. When dealing with shoes in a conventional casino, and blackjack players face-to-face, there’s a higher risk for card counters and those looking to use nefarious means to get one over on the casino.

However, in online gaming, issues like card counting are completely eradicated. This means that, instead of having to keep an eye on every player, their betting habits, and identify those who might be looking to pull the wool over the casino's eyes, online dealers have a different role.

They can focus on the social element, let their hair down (in a proverbial sense), and focus on the game and the customers rather than having to police the whole situation, as they often do in a conventional casino.

By freeing up this time, this resulted in a market where dealers were able to churn out games more rapidly, identify those players who might be taking heavy losses and refer them to the safe gambling tools on their site, and how to understand the complexities and differences of dealing with a live game where many of the players could be dotted around the world, rather than sat around them in a conventional local casino.

The Future Of Live Dealer Blackjack

Over the next couple of decades, we don’t know how blackjack is going to shape up. While it’s almost certainly the case that technological advances like AI and VR will reshape the gaming landscape as we know it, there’s still going to be a demand for games that involve a human element and a social connection, especially in casino games that thrive on that back-and-forth interaction.

For all the advances these innovations bring, if we completely remove live dealers from online blackjack and platforms opt for tech-only solutions, this will harm them in the long run. For those live dealers that can retain customers and bring people back to the site, they are valuable and will continue to be treated as such.