When it comes to personal problems, no one in Las Vegas is immune. From gambling to drinking, drugs and relationships, everyone suffers in the land of Sin City. Wining and losing is the norm, but cheating is another story…

Dealing is just another job; it seems glorified in the movies and television. The Discovery Channel and the Travel Channel can't get enough of this place. Every week there's another film crew in the casinos and on the Strip trying to convince everyone this is some magical place so they can sell more tickets, but to the dealers and the cocktail waitresses, from the bartenders to the change and cage people it's just an eight hour ordeal like any other…or is it.

It seems that in the dealing profession there is rampant alcohol and drug use, there's more gambling problems then any other positions in this town, but why?

Maybe it's the fact that we see people lose that could have won had they taken our advice, people that could have won more had they just listened to us. We see the biggest jerkstrokes winning thousands while throwing the dealers a couple of bucks after six or seven wins, and then we have to win it when he plays our bet on the hand. How lucky we have to be to win that eighth hand just to make two bucks while the guy rakes in a couple hundred, and God forbid he gets a double-down hand or split hands where he has to squeeze out another dollar to cover our bet. After eight hours of paying some asshole in one hand what it takes you a month to make working, or taking some poor schmucks life savings while he sits and waits for a free beer.

And so Shelly wasn't immune to any of it either. She came to Vegas to get away from a bad marriage like just about everyone else. She would have a cocktail on Friday nights after work and maybe one or two on Saturday. She didn't smoke, never took drugs. She was 36 and never really lived. Coming from a small Midwest town she wasn't even exposed too much more than Sunday night Church Bingo and maybe a couple of lottery tickets a week.

A little too old to start cocktailing, she learned to deal in two months while spending what she had left in her checking account to live on 7-11 hotdogs and Hostess cupcakes. She broke in at a small casino in North Las Vegas making a $20 bill if she was lucky on a Saturday night. She made her way out to my casino and was a pleasure to have an intelligent girl, cute and personable, just what it takes to make decent tokes in this business. It didn't matter to the other dealers if she was fast or not, as long as she smiled and dealt at the same time, she would be an asset. Until one day.

She had picked up the same habits almost every Las Vegas dealer was prone to, drinking, gambling, and losing. Not just losing in her gambling but losing in her whole life. She would get her toke envelope in cash everyday and lose it every night. The end of the month only saw her begging money from a different dealer until the dealers caught on and quit giving her money. But it's not as easy as quitting when you're losing. It just means you have to work a little harder at raising cash.

She was sitting in a Strip bar, down to her last roll of quarters when a drink showed up in front of her. She didn't even ask who bought the drink before she drank it down. Then when another showed up with a roll of quarters, she had to know who was putting up the $10. A nice looking guy walked over with cash in hand and Shelly was in love…again. After a couple of hours of this guy buying rounds and rolls, he let her know he was expecting the money back; he was in for $160.

But Shelly wasn't a whore, just a lush and a loser. When she told him she didn't have the money to pay him back, he told her it was simple, she could pay him back in a couple of minutes, and sex wouldn't even be involved.

"I know you're a dealer and what I'm going to ask is quick and simple, all you have to do is flash your hole card a few times and when I get the $160 back I'll quit and you won't even see me again."

"I wouldn't even know how to flash a hole card" she said.

"I'll show ya, it's simple." And he took out a deck of cards from his jacket and began to show her how simple it was to just crook your wrist for a split second while burying the hole card. He did it several times and it looked easy. The next night they met at the same bar and she managed to eat another $200 in quarters and dollars, and by the end of the week she was in to him for almost $1,000. She was scared, and when he and two friends showed up at the end of the week telling her it was pay-back time, she thought about leaving town but she knew he wasn't going to let her out of his sight until she paid him back.

At work she was almost afraid to walk on to the game. The three guys were there watching her. One on a poker machine, one in the restaurant and the other sitting at another blackjack table. She came onto a dead game and one-by-one they merged onto the table. One on each base to cover the table. She was shaking a little at first but after a couple of hands she seemed to get the move down and actually became confident in the move. At first they took it easy, taking less than $100 apiece. But that just led to greed.

The next day they came back. They had rooms at the hotel and had a reason to be there the next day. Together they took almost $500 and although it wasn't apparent to anyone else, surveillance had an idea something wasn't right. The same guys, the same dealer, the same play, and the obvious was when they would stay on busting hands at times they should normally hit, and hitting hands they should normally stay on. One guy had hit a hard 17 telling Shelly with his 17 and her 9 showing, he couldn't beat her and hit it with a 3 and winning the hand for $75.

Surveillance began to tape the game as they built a case against them. The next day when they were taking their last shot, up almost $1,600 between the three of them, a floorman walked up and taped her out as security approached the players. Four security guards took the three players off the game as Shelly was handcuffed in the pit in front of the rest of the dealers to make a point.

At the trial they showed the surveillance tapes to a jury that only took 20 minutes to decide to case. "Had you done this for one day, maybe two days, we probably wouldn't have caught the move since they were playing small bets, but the third day when the bets began to rise to over $100 and the player on third base hit a hard 17, it was obvious the cheat was on." Said her shift boss as he left the courtroom a free man, and Shelly and her three cohorts left the courtroom in shackles free to spend the next three years playing cards with the other inmates. Now Shelly cheats to win cigarettes, but she's up against the best of the cheaters doing hard time.