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When it comes to gambling, Robert Pierce has proven he absolutely knows when to fold ’em.

The 46-year-old San Jacinto resident said the only time he ever dipped his toe into the world of casino gaming, he set aside a couple hundred bucks and made a trip to one of Southern California’s palatial gambling emporiums.

“I said as soon as this is gone, I’m done,” said Pierce. “I won a little, lost a little more. Won a little, lost a little more. Won a little, lost more.

“Pretty soon, you know, after like three or four hours, the $200 was gone and I walked out the door and never came back.”

Now Pierce is considering walking through that door again, but this time through the employee entrance.

Facing a midlife career change, Pierce recently enrolled in Mt. San Jacinto College’s two-year-old casino dealer program at the community college’s Temecula Education Complex.

The non-credit, career training certificate lasts eight weeks and costs $1,000. MSJC offers separate courses for table games and poker games. Private school fees can typically range from $1,200 to $2,500, depending on curriculum.

There are over a dozen casinos within a two-hour drive of the school and according to Peter Harrison, who operates a private casino dealer school in Temecula, the time is right.

“There’s a lot of demand for dealers right now,” said Harrison, the owner of Jack Black Casino Dealer School which has operated in and around the Inland Empire since 2001.

MSJC Community Education and Workplace Training Director Teri Safranek helped get the program started after getting a similar program off the ground at Palomar College earlier in the 2000s. She said it was eventually discontinued when the college closed its community education program.

Tribal gaming is reportedly a $30 billion industry in the U.S., with California commanding a huge slice of that pie at over $7 billion, according to the Indian Gaming Industry report produced by California economist Alan Meister.

Enrico Butta, a former Palomar instructor who is now a consultant for the MSJC program, said a lot has changed in the 26 years he has spent working in the gaming industry in Las Vegas and Southern California as a dealer and teacher.

“It’s become a more generally acceptable thing to do,” said Butta.

School officials say upon receiving their certificates students can make between $55,000 and $85,000 a year as a casino dealer.

Pechanga Resort and Casino Vice President of Table Game Operations Mike May said there are not many public colleges that offer such programs. He didn’t know of any other in the region.