I said if he hands you $100 on a $44 dinner bill and says keep the $6. Yes you know and say something.

$100 on $44 dinner bill. Keep it. You have no idea what he wants or thinks. You thank him and move on.

You're conflating the idea of "I don't know what this person wanted to tip me" and I know what this person wanted to tip me but I'm going to ignore that and benefit my self.

On is theft.
One isn't.

Hypothetically you're telepathic and literally 100% sure. Theft or not?

Not taking advantage of/being there for the customer's best interest is EXACTLY your job in the customer service industry. That is, if you're good at it.

This.

Your logic distills down to:

"It is not theft because theft is a crime, and a crime requires the chance of conviction."

Which reduces further to:

"It is not not theft because there is no chance of conviction."

Even if we were to grant you your premise that there is no chance of conviction, which is hilariously wrong and bad, that is not how we define crimes.

Theft is often defined as the unauthorized taking of property from another with the intent to permanently deprive them of it. Within this definition lie two key elements:

1) a taking of someone else's property; and

2) the requisite intent to deprive the victim of the property permanently.


http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal...-overview.html

I think it is dealer theft to accept $1 tips when a preflop raise takes down a $3 pot in 1/2nl. Does the dealer question this ridiculous tipping spot? Nope they just pocket the money even tho they know its wrong.

I have been be criticized by a player because I said something when he tossed me a green chip.

I have been written up at work for giving a tip back (it wasn't because of the size of the chip .... but the message from management was clear .... they want you to thank the player and pocket the tip period.

Now I would still say something if I thought the player mistakenly tipped a higher denomination chip ---- but it is not theft to take what is given to you. In this scenario it is possible the player wanted to tip a green chip. Now if the player says "Here's $2 for you" and tosses a $25 and $1 then you can compare it to theft.

The waiter who is told keep the change can't know that you thought the change was $4 when in fact it was $54.

We can agree that its scummy behavior. We can agree the the dealer should have said something. But I don't think we can call it theft and it certainly is nothing like taking a chip out of someone else's stack.

If the intent was clearly to give $2 (which everything implies in the case here), it is absolutely the same as taking $24 from another player's stack, except the money leaves the game immediately instead of being taken off slowly via rake/time.

It is not theft to take what is given to you. It is theft to take what is given to you knowing the amount given to you is too much and was meant to be less. This isn't rocket science.

What was the backstory where you were criticized for asking about a green tip? Would be interested to hear.

This is not comparable. In the case of the bank teller overpaying you .... you know how much the teller is supposed to give you.

So how is it not directly comparable if you know how much a player is supposed to/standardly gives in this spot? We're not discussing this on the basis the $26 was ambiguous, we're discussing it as it was clearly a mistake and supposed to be $2.

If the pot was $30, was this $25 chip in it? I think it is important because it is very likely that there were at least 2 $1 chips in this kind of pot but very unlikely there was a $25 chip in it. That means he would have to grab for his stack to make this tip and instead of grabbing in one stack he would have to grab 1 chip from two different stacks. If the $25 chip was in the pot that means there can't be other than $1 chips in it making it doubtful to make a mistake with so few chips with one of them clearly standing out. Also the player would have put these chips on his stack and not noticed that the big chip was missing and he would just be stacking a few white chips.

I would assume the green chip was in the pot or the player had a dirty stack. If not, this is almost certainly not an accident thus no reason to say anything or any theft.

Right but how would the betting go for a $25 chip to be in a $30 pot. It can only be done by a bet on the river, change cannot be made before the last bet for the pot to be big enough. That means if the winner (tipper) called with the chip then there would be no $25 chip directly in the pot (assuming the dealer doesn't instantly collect the pot and give change to someone who already showed the winner). Only if the bettor someone didn't have any small chips (I mean there are $5 chips right, the bet would have to be around $10 for the math to work out) is there a chance this $25 chip gets in the pot.

My best guess is that when this is unintentional the tipper had a dirty stack, in which case the dealer should speak up. If he grabs one white chip from one stack and a gren chip from the other, don't see anything unethical about not speaking up.

OP you have more info of exactly what the situation was? There's room for more than one interpretation of the dealer here.

Yeah just to be clear all my previous post operate under the assumption this was clearly meant to be $2 to the tipping player, the dealer, and all other players at the table. If there's any ambiguity at all saying anything is way out of line.

I don't disagree with this. But if a player who is under no obligation to tip at all .... tosses me a tip. I can not know that the amount he intended to tip me was anything other then the amount he tossed out unless he says something about how much he is tipping. I might suspect that he made a mistake ... but I can not know it.

There really was no backstory. It was a $5 $10 game. The player was not a regular player in our room. pushed him a pot that was not particularly large. He tossed me a green chip without saying anything. I broke it down into smaller chips (including $1 chips) and set it in front of him expecting that he wanted change .... and he just lit into me about how he didn't ask for change and don't you guys accept tips here. There was no indication at all that he was joking he seemed genuinely offended, I apologized grabbed the chips thanked him put them in my pocket and moved on.


{I've told this story before ..... dealing in a room where green chips didn't play in the $2-5 game which was usually the only no limit game we had. One day a bigger game was going (either $5-$10 or $10 $25) and one of our regular $2-$5 players was in the game. Our $1 chips were blue but many people complained that they looked similar to the $25 chips. The regular player was the kind of guy who reliably tips $1 per pot except small pots. You would never get more than $1 but you could count on that $1. The player was a kind of gruff old timer not particularly friendly to anyone at the table or in the room but not the sort of guy who would cause problems either.

So I push him a $200 pot its a small pot for that game I expect he is going to toss me $1. He looks around through his chips picks up a $25 and tosses it to me. I call him by name and say "Thanks, but do you know that is a $25" as I toss it back to him. He looks up and thanks me and puts it away .... but never replaced it with the $1 he thought it was. So my reward for my doing the right thing was that I didn't even get $1 from the guy who always gives $1. (And I know it was an oversight on his part so I'm not really upset by it)

Lol at a guy being generous enough to both give you $25 and a big enough ******* to tear into you when you check to make sure this was his intent to make sure you don't unknowingly steal from him. Poker players truly are a different breed.

And yeah that second story is totally standard and happens like once per month in the games around here.

Well basically by doubting that he wanted to tip $25 he takes it as "so you're saying I am cheap?". Some people get really triggered when you imply that you don't expect them to this generous. Honestly I can understand why a dealer would think "yeah just gonna take this because i don't want another ****storm".

Yeah I mean it's one of those things I for sure get but I don't really at all. Like you assume if a dude has enough life/common sense skills where he can afford to tip a poker dealer $25 he should have the sense to know both this is a very non-standard tip, that the standard is $1, and that the dealer is just looking out for him; so it's just a weird spot to take a lot of offense or cause a scene over.

Never really posted in this sub forum before but this came across my new posts when I was going to bed yesterday and I responded. Discourse seems pretty good here and beings I've been playing full-time while dealing and running games on and off for about 8 years now you might see me around here a bit. So if you see some of my very passionate (and sometimes admittedly very wrong opinions) in other threads don't be surprised.

Keeping the tip is not theft, ppl.

Imagine the convo:

Player to police: That dealer robbed me!
Police: How?
Player: I gave him a $26 tip when I won a small pot and he kept it!
Police: lol.

Just stop w/ this idiotic argument.

Thank You. This is what I am saying.

Once again, whether they could be convicted or not - if the player's intent is clearly $2 it is absolutely theft.

The much better (though this is kind of where the disagreement seems to be) police analogy would be giving a fast food drive-through a $50 and them only giving you change for a $20. The police aren't going to LOL in that spot.

Once again, totally operating under the assumption that everyone but the tipper knew he intended to only give $2 here. Definitely not saying that a player tipping large always and immediately constitutes theft.

What is it with you guys named Timmy?

I knew there was a reason I consider Seinfeld to be the most overrated show of all-time.