Bilingual Blackjack Brings in Unexpected Heavy Traffic

In most US casinos, the language of choice used by blackjack players is English. In fact it is rare to hear a dealer speak anything but English while dealing with gamblers. The Primm Valley Resort and Casino however recently changed this situation when they introduced two bilingual blackjack tables. These tables at Buffalo Bill’s are labeled “mesas bilingue” and the dealer is fluent in both English and Spanish. Even the table has text in Spanish for players to read such as “el dealer debe pedir carta con un 17 suave” which means “dealer must hit soft 17.”

As the news went around about the bilingual blackjack tables, Spanish players began to come out of the woodwork and gamble at ease. Maria Macedo, a 26 year old casino veteran from Cuba, was surprised by the sight of the bilingual tables and the amount of crowd and activity around it. She noted that players would call out to other players and invite them to play Blackjack exclaiming that the dealer spoke Spanish.

These Spanish blackjack tables have brought several Latinos to the casino, many of whom are playing blackjack for the first time. “One older lady from Mexico said she knew how to play but wasn’t comfortable speaking English in public, so she didn’t play… We should have had this a long time ago,” said Macedo.

This blog entry was posted on Thursday, February 3rd, 2011 at 9:36 pm and is filed under Blackjack News.