NORTH RANDALL, Ohio – The upper concourse of Thistledown Race Track has been transformed into a classroom of sorts. One in which more than 600 students will spend four hours a day, five days a week for the next 12 weeks learning the skills they will need to work as dealers in the new Horseshoe Casino Cleveland, set to open March 26, 2012.
They were chosen from the nearly 12,000 people who applied and the 4,000 who were interviewed. “We searched for Cleveland’s finest and we found them,” said Tosha Tousant, vice president of table games for Horseshoe Cleveland, who is overseeing the academy.
They included people like Nicole Ashbrook of Cleveland, who showed up bright and early for her first class.
“You know I was out there in the car sitting there waiting and I had the butterflies in my stomach,” she said.
Within minutes of the first session starting, though, she was at ease. Ashbrook doesn’t see this as a job, she sees it as a career.
“This would be a life-changing experience to actually get a job here,” she said. “Just think about it waking up every day you’d be excited to go to work at a casino.”
Horseshoe will offer employment to students who successfully graduate from the academy. The students are not paid but the training is free.
Table game positions were recruited first because they require the most training, especially in a market where commercial gaming is a new industry, Tousant said. During the intense, 240-hour hands-on training, students will learn game rules and techniques to deal and operate popular table games – craps, poker, blackjack, Pai Gow, roulette and Baccarat.
This day, though, was all about the basics.
“This is what a card looks like and so this is how you count your cards,” said Tousant. “This is what chips are and this is how you count chips by denomination. ”
As the future boss of these dealers she was here on this first day to oversee yes but also to put these students at ease.
“You are me 18 years ago,” she told some of the trainees. “I had never been in the casino industry and I was taught so look at me now, I’m living proof that you can be an expert in table games.”
To teach the course, Caesars brought in 23 employees from 14 of their locations around the country including Atlantic City, Chicago, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas, New Orleans, St. Louis and San Diego. They will live here in Cleveland for the next three months.
The academy is being held at Thistledown racetrack in the Village of North Randall. The Cleveland-area thoroughbred horse racing track has been owned and operated by Caesars Entertainment since July 2010.
