Table Games Open Up Hundreds Of New Jobs At Maryland Live! Casino

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY, Md. (WJZ) -- Voting machines have barely cooled down, and now table games are heating up.

Following voter approval, the first roll out of games like blackjack and roulette were announced at the Maryland Live! Casino at Arundel Mills.

Alex DeMetrick reports the casino now needs to find hundreds of new workers.

David Cordish's casino is betting with pretty favorable odds to be the first in Maryland with live table games.

"We're going to bring 150 plus live table games to Maryland Live! Casino, and we expect to be flipping cards and rolling die by early spring," said Robert Norton, President and General Manager of Maryland Live! Casino.

Right now the Arundel Mills casino's table games are all electronic--surrounded by 5,000 slot machines. A tour through the heart of the casino shows management has already mapped out where all those blackjack craps and roulette tables are going.

"It'll run right down this space all the way down to the wall down there," Norton said.

Moving table games in is the easy part. Finding dealers to work them is going to take work. That's because it will take an additional 1,200 people to service live play--800 of them dealers. That kind of experience is not common in a state new to table games.

"So what we're going to do is conduct our own school, our own training--which will take a number of weeks--paid for entirely by us. There's no tuition," said David Cordish, chairman of Cordish Companies.

And because the argument to expand gambling was to keep money in Maryland, Cordish vows to fill as many of these kind of jobs as possible with Marylanders.

Applications for the dealer school will be accepted through the end of December, with training beginning in early January.