Paul Dutsch captains one of the most in-demand tournament crews in the country. He and his crew work year-round – from Mississippi to Maryland, they run tournaments for the World Series of Poker, the Beau Rivage all the way up to outside Chicago. This February, he’s running the Potomac Winter Poker Open at MGM National Harbor.
In a world where Tournament Directors campaign for the Poker Hall of Fame or transition to corporate “big picture” roles, Dutsch fills his off days finding rooms for his dealers and food comps for his players.
Dutsch never imagined himself in this role, or in any kind of supervisory role to be honest. He’ll tell you that he found his way into poker “by way of a misspent youth and a series of bad life choices.”
“I used to play a lot of poker and hung out with guys that worked in the business,” Dutsch said. “They would tell me, ‘If you hang around us, you’re going to end up in the business.’ I said, ‘No, no, no – not me. Y’all ain’t getting me - no shot.”
“They got me,” Dutsch relented. His career path up the poker ladder was less than linear. As an 18-year-old from St. Francisville, LA, population 1,557, Dutsch had his eyes set on rock ‘n roll.
Dutsch fell into dealing poker after working in music management. 'I could play as well as anyone else'
“My whole life I was drawn to music,” he said. “Most of the state and music schools focused on classical music and I didn’t like it all. In the 80s there were only two schools that had any kind of contemporary music program. Berklee (College of Music) was certainly the most progressive – they had ensembles for heavy metal and country music.”
“I was certainly a fish out of water,” Dutsch joked. “Where I was from, I could play as well as anybody else. But when I got there, I found out I didn’t know anything at all. The first thing they do is give you a test and I knew nothing. I heard other guys play and realized quickly where I was. People would see me with my guitar and ask if I played and I’d say, ‘No, I’m holding it for that guy.’”
Dutsch is an accomplished guitarist, played on and off in bands his whole life. While at Berklee he was in a band with Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. At some events, Dutsch will let his hair down (pun intended) and play in jam sessions for player parties.
He worked in music management for a number of years and in 2003 he took a job dealing cards on the graveyard shift in Louisiana. “I dealt exactly four months, they needed someone to be the graveyard supervisor and I was already on the shift. I had supervised previously, I went to my boss, told him I was interested he said, ‘Well, then you’re the guy.’”
Dutsch worked for a couple of years before Hurricane Katrina re-shaped the entire Gulf Coast. His commute in Baton Rouge went from 20 minutes to an hour each way because of the influx of displaced people.
Eventually, Dutsch and his wife picked up and moved when he landed a job at the Tunica Horseshoe. “I went from being a graveyard dual rate to being the co-manager,” he said. “I did that for a couple of years and just decided one day that I had enough of managing a poker room.”
“I decided it wasn’t for me,” Dutsch continued. “I was afraid that if I kept doing that, that’s what would I keep doing right up until the day I died. That didn’t sound like what I wanted to do with my life.”
He went home, told his wife, and to his surprise, she said if he felt strongly enough, then resign. So he did.
Moving to Mississippi
“Things were great for about two months – I went back to playing poker and music,” said Dutsch. “My wife woke up one day and said, ‘Well, what are you going to do now?’ I said, ‘I’m good, having a great time.’ She didn’t agree and I had to find a real job.”
Dutsch worked exactly one tournament as a dealer before fate stepped in and Dutsch met Eric Comer, a supervisor at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, MS. Comer invited him down and he helped run the room.
Dutsch made the jump with the intentions of working on the cash side of things. “That didn’t last long as Comer talked me into getting on his tournament crew,” Dutsch said. “I tried to talk him out of it and told him that I didn’t know anything about tournaments.”
“He said, ‘Look, all the players know you, they respect you and I can’t get anybody else like that. I can teach you the mechanics of running a tournament, but I can’t teach what you have,’” said Dutsch.
Comer took Dutsch under his wing and taught him the business side of poker. Dutsch had a lot of people who helped him along the way, but Comer left a mark on Dutsch’s career.
The rest, they say, is history. “I was the shift manager for a number of years, he moved on and asked if I’d take over running tournaments,” Dutsch said. “That’s how I got here. I never set out to do it, I was never a young person in the business who wanted to be a TD. I just kind of fell into it.”
A family affair
If Dutsch earned his stripes in rooms around the South, then he got his officer’s commission at the World Series of Poker. He worked summers in Las Vegas as a floor supervisor and transitioned to running events around the country.
Dutsch built his team starting with Heather Ohlman, aka “Momma”, as a dealer coordinator and supervisor. She’s been with him for a dozen years and says she’ll stick around as long as he’ll have her.
“We are a family,” Ohlman said. “Our relationships with each other go beyond poker and we spend time together away from the game.”
Heather Ohlman, aka “Momma,” has been with Dutsch for more than a dozen years. She’s more literal than figurative when calling the crew family. Her husband of 30 years, George, is also on the traveling crew. In fact, we counted three married couples that travel with the crew with a couple more “situationships” under the radar.
“We’re together with this crew more than we are with our families,” Ohman added. “Paul takes really good care of us. When he gets us a gig, he makes sure we’re taken care of financially and takes care of places to stay – which affects everyone’s bottom line. The few extra things he does for his dealers keep our staff solid with very little turnover.”
Meet the crew
Early in the series, a dealer had a medical emergency at the table which required EMS response and the tournament to be paused. The situation turned serious and coworkers were crying as he was being attended to.
Floor supervisor Jenna Lytle, one half of another working married couple, was first on the scene. Lytle kept the dealer conscious speaking with him, holding his hands and rubbing his chest. Dutsch’s crew came together in a moment of crisis, took care of their own, and got him immediate care. Lytle's bedside manner calmed everyone in the room. The intensity and care she brought calmed others in the room.
Ohlman and Lytle were more than miffed when EMS wouldn’t let them ride in the ambulance to the hospital. But they went straight there and were with him throughout the night until he was released.
The event hit Ohlman particularly hard. “I’ve worked with that employee for 17 years now. We were scared, we all shed a few tears. We prayed and hoped he’d be alright and we’re so glad that he pulled through,” she said.
Daniel Harris is a longtime supervisor and has worked with Dutsch for a generation. “It’s been 18 or 20 years – I’m not really sure,” he said. “It’s a pretty tight-knit group that works well together.”
“I don’t want to speak for other crews, but we’re like a family,” Harris said. “We travel from state to state, it’s a brotherhood. Everybody looks after each other. It’s my family away from home.”
Chris Hight has been on Dutsch’s crew since 2016 and laid it as simple as Mississippian deer hunter can be. “He’s the best boss. He’s the best boss there is,” he said.
“He’s too good, he cares,” Hight said. “On other teams, you’re just another person. You can always be replaced. Pretty much someone has to die for another floor spot to open up on this crew.”
“Getting floor spots on any crew is tough because there’s so few of them out there,” Hight continued. “So, it’s a tough gig to get. Paul does a really good job of promoting from within. He’ll take dealers and use them as dual rates a couple of times a year to get them used to flooring before throwing them to the wolves.”
“He doesn’t put you in a spot to fail,” Hight said. “He treats everyone with respect, he’s not just good at his job, he’s a good man.”
"Pretty much someone has to die for another floor spot to open up on this crew," Chris Hight (above) says. Joe Theroux is one of the young floor supervisors that Dutsch has been building up. “I stay with Paul because of the crew he picks. They’re all the cream of the crop,” he said. “This isn’t a breaking-in crew, this is a place where you have to have a couple of years of experience. You have to show up and be dependable.”
“We go out with each other away from work,” Theroux said. “I’m not sure what Paul puts in the water but we’re all goal-oriented and professional-minded, that makes a difference.”
The secret sauce
Dutsch’s crew might have the lowest turnover rate in the industry because Dutsch looks out for them first. “I don’t overhire for events and sometimes I cut my dealers a little bit thin because I want them to make money on the slow days,” Dutsch said. “My dealers that are here are getting to work, we had barely enough dealers to get the largest flight done and that’s how I like to staff it.”
“That’s why the perception is that someone has to die,” Dutsch laughed. “It’s just because I try to take good care of my people and in return, they all come back. I try to be a good boss. We’re a family on the road together - we get sick together, we have family problems together and we lose loved ones together.”
Dutsch’s crew’s secret sauce at the base level is fun. “You gotta have fun,” he said. “You can’t just grind all the time. There’s a time and a place to grind, but you can’t grind two weeks of tournaments all the time. I don’t care what side of the table you’re on – poker is supposed to be fun. We lose that sometimes.”
“You have to have fun in poker because, then why are we even doing this?” Dutsch asked. “If you just want to make money and not have fun, go get a day job trading stocks.”
“Comer told me something that stuck with me that I found to be very true – ‘Your group – if they don’t care about each other, it ain’t going to work.’"
Photos courtesy of Danny Maxwell
