All bets may be off for professor of gambling

In the shadows of the Italian Market, in a second-floor walk-up, the old gambler leans on the blackjack table, with an ever-present cigarette in one hand, and his bet in the other.

Under his trademark white Phillies cap, his jowly face is deadpan. John Palumbo is none too happy with those around him.

For one, blackjack isn't his game. "All you need is one idiot," he explains in a measured voice, to ensure that you and your money soon part.

Palumbo, 75, a lean man with gold jewelry, silver eyeglass frames, and street-gathered wisdom, prefers craps, a game he can control. He made his legend running back-room games in South Philadelphia, until Atlantic City casinos killed the action and "took all the money."

Palumbo went on to teach a generation of A.C. dealers on his dining room table. Then three years ago, with slots coming to Philadelphia, he opened the Casino Dealers Training Center with his sons, Jerome and John Jr., a former Atlantic City box man (who supervises craps tables) and floor boss. Palumbo's gut told him that table games weren't far behind. No one leaves money on the table.

But after he reinvented himself, gaming threatens to wipe him out again.

For now, Palumbo is teaching the art of blackjack to a young, blue-eyed dealer with a buzz cut, who, before coming to his school, made his living climbing trees. Palumbo's goal is to teach him what he's come to know, that when it comes to dealing, procedure is everything.

Palumbo surveys his student's every move: Does he control the chips? Does he remember to call the cards? Does he deal the first player with his left hand? If not, his back is exposed, and the last player could slip in a few tricks. Does he point? Dealers never point. Gamblers are superstitious.

With his chip stack dwindling, Palumbo ups his bet to $175. His first card is a queen; then comes an ace. Win or lose, Palumbo is reticent. Until one of his students does something stupid, like making him drag on his cigarette while he waits to get paid.

"Come on, come on," Palumbo says, banging on the table, while the dealer, 29-year-old Ryan Myers, three weeks into the seven-week course, stands frozen, his eyes skyward, counting the 3-to-2 payout in his head. "You're still a little slow. You're not practicing."

Myers finally divides Palumbo's winnings in a zigzag of three stacks.

"Not at that angle," Palumbo barks. A dealer pays out in a straight line.

Palumbo's dealer training school is at Eighth Street and Passyunk Avenue, across from a patchwork of stores that includes a massage-equipment center, a locksmith, and an auto-repair shop. In the front, there's Palumbo's cluttered office, two blackjack tables, and a poker table. In the back is the craps table.

Five of Palumbo's 13 students have scored next-round interviews at Harrah's Casino in Chester, with hopes of an audition. Others foresee a job at SugarHouse when it opens in Fishtown.

"You need two table games under your belt to get an audition at a casino," Palumbo explains. "If you have craps and blackjack, you have a job. Those are the two most important games on the floor."

Palumbo guarantees his students will pass any audition.

"I know from experience what they look at. They look at your hands, and how you control the checks. You got to have the hands."

He goes on: "I don't care how beautiful you are as a dealer. I don't care how ugly you are as a dealer. People aren't looking at you. They're looking at the cards and the money."

Palumbo appreciates the complexity of the gaming industry. In one conversation, he blames it for crushing the camaraderie and money that flowed between neighborhood gamblers. In another, he talks of huge opportunities the pending casinos offer, a second-wave economy for young people, without fancy degrees, who want to earn a respectable living.

"For a young person, he can come to school, get his two games, and start making 30 grand a year," says Palumbo, who worked 25 years as a union carpenter. "And the casinos give you open buffet, clothes, and the temperature is always right."

Palumbo started gaming when he was 23 years old, rolling dice and calling shots in wild craps tournaments over the concrete of John Hay playground in South Philly. He and the guys played in the park, on old iron factory floors, dirt cellars, wherever they could get a game.

Later, he ran higher-stakes games that were neighborhood staples.

In 1980, across the river, as the South Jersey resort town evolved into a neon gambling capital, Palumbo decided to go to dealer training school. He remembers how his teacher, John Ciccine, was such "a nut," such a stickler for hands that "the Tropicana hired the class before we were done."

Everyone except Palumbo. Palumbo says the gaming commission refused him a license.

"Let's just say I got into a gambling pinch. Two pinches." He explains that in the late '70s, early '80s, he got busted for illegal gambling.

He stayed in the game by teaching. Palumbo guesses he trained, at no charge, 50, 60 protégés with designs on dealing in Atlantic City.

"Anyone with a nephew or cousin who couldn't pass his audition, they sent them to me," Palumbo says. He taught baccarat on pool tables. He chalked out a craps set on the back of his dining room tablecloth.

"Marci" - Marci Baccari, his cousin - "used to run out crying," Palumbo remembers. "Today Marci is a pit boss at the Taj Mahal."

Palumbo also taught Joey Dolpies, a baccarat floor boss in Vegas, and Joe Sarnese, now vice president of table games and marketing at the Hilton Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City.

Palumbo's decades in gaming have made him a realist who plays the odds. But new laws around dealer training make his future anyone's guess.

The Department of Labor and Industry recently announced that casino training schools must get state approval and adopt curriculum guidelines and proficiency requirements.

Palumbo says he is awaiting a site inspection. Until then, after he wraps up classes Friday, his school will shut down.

"If we don't get the certification, we're out of business," he says, tossing up his hands.

For Myers, the blackjack dealer-in-training who lives in Roxborough with his girlfriend, when his tree-trimming gigs dried up, "something inside sounded good," he says. He'd like to deal at one of the city's new casinos, then one day don a blazer as a pit boss, who makes sure the table games run smoothly.

A few feet away at the poker table, 40-year-old Alicia Pekarski is also hoping to deal a better future.

For a year and a half, the single mother has worked nights as a cashier at Parx Casino in Bensalem. She gets off work at 5 a.m., goes home, kisses her sleeping daughter and checks her homework, and grabs a quick nap before coming to class.

A few weeks ago, "I couldn't even shuffle cards," says Pekarski, wearing gray sweats and sunglasses in her blond hair. Now she deals seven-card stud, Texas Hold 'Em, and, after the day, Omaha High-Low with cool confidence, though she admits she sometimes struggles with what beats what. "Truth is, I'm doing it for the money. Everyone talks about how great the tips are for dealers."

Palumbo, who lives three blocks away from the school, doesn't get to the casinos like he used to. Most days, when he's not at his school, he can be found at FDR Golf Club, where he works as a starter and enjoys golf privileges. He also holds the city's 2007 Senior Amateur Championship.

But there's no doubt Palumbo, a widower with five grandchildren, misses the action. He softens when he rehashes legend. There's the one about "the cougher" who'd hide a $100 chip in his mouth whenever he coughed. And years ago, he says, there was a guy who somehow turned $1 chips into $100 chips. "He had to be an artist," he says. The dealers didn't catch on for hours, until the ink soiled their sweaty hands.

"So now you know why I pound procedure," Palumbo says to Myers, bringing his story full circle, "and why everything has to be exactly right."

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