There will always be some subjectivity to it, but as a rule Rapini's solution is supremely fair. It probably wouldn't end up varying too much if implemented by reasonable people. You'll always get the occasional doofus who blames the dealer for bad cards, or overtips the hot female dealer.

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this is wrong?

Only if you have 0% chance of banging her. Most people have at least a 1% chance

This thread is always a good read.

1) There are plenty of tipped 'contractors' but generally not in the restaurant business. See taxi driver and stripper to name a couple where the individual may be leasing or paying a fee per use (car/couch). But in all cases it would depend on their contract of employment.

2) As a true volunteer you don't need a 1099 since you aren't supposed to receive compensation. You don't 'file' it yourself as that's the organizations responsibility. You 'report' it on your income tax form and that may be where you are using the word 'file'. Don't forget about your expenses when you 'work' or volunteer as these may be deductible somewhere on your return.

One of the more interesting 'volunteering' opportunities that I see is at major sporting events, like golf tournaments. I've seen where volunteers need to pay (as much as $90) for their 'gear' when the organization 'accepts' their application to be a volunteer. I can't remember how much my sister paid to be a volunteer at the Atlanta Olympics ... but it wasn't cheap.

3) All tippers have that fine line to walk knowing that we are 'expected' to make up the difference between the standard wage and what the tipped person is actually being paid by the employer and compare that with the service they provide, good or bad.

To me it's odd that a person's 'standard' tip increase just because it's a higher level location. By default 'the bill' is higher at these places so X% of a higher number is a higher tip 'automatically'. Tipping more or less based on better service/attitude makes better sense.

4) Tip what you want for the situation. Tipping a larger amount/percentage for special occasions (BBJ) is well within our human nature. Do we tip the cage more when we cash out 'bigger'? We rarely see a sign that expressed that tipping is 'required' .. only 'appreciated'. GL

In restaurants, the higher price/higher tip thing works out pretty nicely because the staff at higher-priced places usually need to have more experience and knowledge to deliver the higher level of service those kinds of places offer. For instance, I have a friend who started out at a server at a big well-known, medium-/low-end bar & grill chain type of place. He now is an assistant GM at a fine dining restaurant in a major city having worked his way up through three or four very well-known finer dining restaurants in that same city.

The stuff he needed to know at his first job were whatever special they were pushing on customers that day/week and pretty much nothing else. The stuff he needed to know at his last serving job included every ingredient of everything on the menu, wine/beer/cocktail pairings, and much more.

So it would be a little weird for him to get paid the same at both jobs. An easy-to-understand proxy for paying more for the higher level of service at higher-end places is tying the tip to the bill.

He's not getting paid the same if he waits tables at 'higher' job. By default the bill is higher. $30 for steak here ... $70 for 'same' steak there. 10% 'standard' tip at both places and then go from there when you judge service.

Granted he may have to share tips with server/busser at some higher end places and you can take that into consideration.

We may be agreeing here, not sure. I'm trying to say that your 'standard' shouldn't change simply because something costs more. Your expectations may change, but does that also mean that our standard is different as well? GL

When people say they are tipping more at a higher end restaurant, they're talking about the absolute dollar amount, not increasing the percentage. Not sure how you missed that.

Super Tip Man

The scene: 2014 WSOP - Satellite Pit
I just finished dealing a $275 NLH STS, and a guy I liked won straight up with no chop, he seemed pretty cool all game and played well.

He tipped me $150, which is pretty decent for this buy in - he also won some side action too.

He stuck around for a bit and we talked while I was resetting the table. During this time the table behind him just finished their STS, and after everyone left we could hear the floor give condolences to the dealer for getting stiffed. The guy immediately turned around and gave the dealer $50!

This guy will always be one of my hero's in the poker world.

Two questions one personal and one for a friend.


For friend

Are you supposed to tip slot attendants on a handpay? If so how much?


Personal

If tournament has a dealer add-on, do they expect a tip at the end too? I'm playing my first tournament in ages soon and may just sit out because I don't think they are good value if there is some kind of tipping obligation on tourney cashes.

I have no idea re slots, but the add-on for tournaments is a built-in tip for the staff.

I didn't know what to say on slots either!

So think of dealer add-on like the 18-22% they add on parties of 8 or more and don't tip absent exceptional service? That makes sense/sounds good to me!

It's always up to you whomever you tip. Years ago, I got my 1st royal in video poker and it was on a 50c machine. $2k payout, hand pay. I think I toked $40. Less than an hour later, I hit my 2nd royal, on quarters, a progressive, $2300+. I think I toked $50 on that, but maybe it was a hundo feeling extra happy with 2 in a day.

As fas as "dealer add on" and tipping. For me I look at it as upfront juice. Tournaments that have a "dealer add on" are notoriously high in juice already. Often 30% or more. For a player, this is unbeatable long term. I don't care how bad the players are. The best players will only cash in the 18% area. The "add on" generally speaking is there because without it, the dealers mostly make a horrible hourly from the tournnaments, $6 per down not out of the ordinary. The $5-10 add on, may actually only add $2 per down to the dealers pay. In some casino's they may get $12-14 per down with the add on and regular juice. It's hard to say. But it's less than dealing cash games for the most part.

******Don't think every 30 mins is worth the toke rate. It isn't. 2-3 tables and a 30 min break. Sometimes more downs, some times less downs, between breaks. I worked 6 hrs today, dealt 8 downs. That's 4 hrs of actual work. Forced out at 6 hrs due to not enough business, new shift coming in. This is normal.

Personally, if the juice is over 20% (I would bet it is), I wouldn't tip unless I took 1st or 2nd, and even then, it wouldn't be a lot. But that's coming from a long term perspective and too high, unsustainable juice to beat. And I'm a good tipping dealer!

One caveat to above. Say the tournament is $125 buy in. $25 juice, and $3% of prize pool to "staff" (includes everyone in the room, including the porter). That's $28 on a $125 buy in. Crazy high, and normal today. But if it had attendence that gave me $3k for say 4th, on up to say $15k+ for 1st, as a dealer myself, I'd probablly tip $100 for 4th, $200 3rd, $300 -400 2nd (about 11k) and $500 for 5th. But that's a fairly big field and + side payday. If they had a $20 "dealer add on" I'd likely tip 1/2 to 3/4 that amount.

Not all places give the dealers part of the juice or prize pool so that "dealer add on" is all they get unless winners tip at the end. Something to consider before deciding to tip or not tip on a win. If the dealers are getting a % of the prize pool plus a dealer add on I would not tip extra. If all they are getting is the add on then I would tip extra.

For selfish reasons, I'd like to add that since the poster didn't specify that the tournament was in a casino, if the tournament is taking place at a charity club or something of the like, it's highly likely that the dealers are volunteers and aren't actually getting paid from the house and they rely solely on the dealer add-on and the tips left at the end.

Working retail for 2 years i always appreciate servers and dealers for crap they deal with. Try to tip when i can especially if i run good.

Other day guy won a big pot at Commerce and tipped 20 dollars. That is very generous but he took a lot of money off table lol

I've heard 3% is a normal number for tournaments that take a percentage of the prize pool for dealers, so if the tournament doesn't, I would lean towards 2-3% (including any dealer toke add-on). I am mostly a cash game guy and only play an occasional tournament for fun, so I probably round up to the nearest $20 when calculating that or just keep the hundreds and tip the rest.

Tourney is 120-20-5 dealer add-on for 25k total chips. Only playing because a friend is in town from Saudi Arabia. I highly doubt I play well enough to get in the money but say I won a couple hundred by cashing, it would seem dumb (to me) to tip $20 when my profit is $65-75. Also, I don't want to be labeled a stiff because it is my favorite room to play at the moment.

He tipped $50 on hand pay in low-mid four figures and said the guy looked at him like a cheap bastard.

Last tourney I played at was at a place with volunteer dealers and I just grabbed extra 10-20 "tip chips" and gave them whenever I sucked out or got a top 15 hand. Figured I'd probably lose (I did but after playing 4 hours, worst feeling ever) but I wasn't going to tip any extra if I didn't win first place because the payouts were so low and I gave the dealers the lower variance option.

1) You can tip anyone you wish to tip. I know some very good slot attendants and some very bad ones. The good ones get tipped pretty good since they try their best to keep up with their area .. just like a waitress.

2) Dealer add-on ... In the 120-20-5 the '20' is rake, not the tip. The '5' is typically the 'optional add on' for the dealers. The dealers 'may' get nothing from the house from the '20' except their normal hourly wage.

You should notice that each dealer will 'sign' into the table when they sit down, typically on a paper or in the Bravo system. Once the tournament is over the house will calculate how many downs were dealt by each dealer and divide up the tips accordingly.

DO NOT think that tipping the dealer at final table (in a casino) will only go to that dealer. Most casinos would fire a dealer for excepting a tip and keeping the whole thing. In charity rooms it could be much different as I've seen dealers vying for final table 'rights' since sometimes all the tips will only come from FT players.

I was having an exceptionally good couple of days and in the early stages of a tournament I was tipping the dealer at the end of the down. All the chips went into the tray and were collected for disbursement in the tip pool when the table broke. The dealers were getting a kick out of being tipped this way and it kept it light at our table for a while. I know this may be stunning to some who know my tipping practice at the cash tables!! GL

Since the value of the add-on chips usually make it almost mandatory, you can look at it as:

125 + 20 with 4% of the prize pool being withheld for dealer tips.

I know most live tournaments aren't really the value proposition they were 10-15 years ago (which I blame on the abundance of casinos in the country). But one thing I really wish changed was the dealer add-on. It used to be a really small % of chip stack and also cost more in relation to total buy-in. The $500 tourneys were bigger "events" and attracted more people. Blind structures sucked more but the juice was right and I feel like the dealers made off better. I'm not sure what the tipping "culture" was then but I feel like I usually only personally tipped the TD and cashier on small (infrequent) cashes.

I feel like if they made stacks of 20K and gave me the option of getting an extra 500 for $5 up to say 2k, I'd be more inclined to give $20 and dealers would make more for protection of not being able to go completely bust in first few orbits. Now I feel like I have a gun to my head to pay the add-on because even though it's a super small % of buy-in, it's a comparatively large % of a starting stack. Just food for thought.

We need to pay the dealers somehow. Are you saying you would just rather we charged you the extra $5 or $10 up front so that we could give it to the dealers? That is the other option. A lot of players don't like the idea of us taking money out of the prize pool to give to the dealers because they feel that tipping should be optional and if we take it out of the prize money that is making it mandatory.

Without the "dealer add on" the dealers would be getting paid their base wage to deal grueling hours of tourney downs. $5-$8 an hour most places. Relying on the winners to tip means one tournament could be pretty good money to deal and the next might be worse than minimum wage.

There are plenty of places that take 3% for the "staff". And the dealers year in and year out make $6.50-$7.50 per down. But I've seen the floor staff envelopes. And I mean floor staff that never even touch the tournaments. Wonder where the problem is.

What he is saying is that with a $100+20 tournament, 10K starting chips, taking a $10 dealer add on for 5K chips isn't really "optional".

You are just sugar coating a mandatory tip.

I agree. Sounds like a big problem to me. Floor staff here do not get any of the tournament tip money so our problem leans the opposite way.
I never seen anyone mention 10k + 5k bonus but I know what he meant anyway.

Either way it is more optional than 3% of the prize pool and I would guess most places are more like mine where it is 8k + 2k bonus or 20k + 5k bonus. You may be surprised how many people don't take the option.

Ultimately the issue is that we have 3 options.
1 - Dealer bonus
2 - 3% take out of the prize pool.
3 - Self dealt tourneys. aka no more tourneys

I know what I said probably doesn't make sense to some people but I'll try to explain my position. I think it could be boiled down pretty simply to the fact that I don't like to be forced to do something I would have done anyways. But I REALLY have a problem with this situation when it is under the illusion of a choice.

Honestly there is a fourth option, creating a tipping culture in tournaments where the tipping occurs during the tournament instead of after. I used to play at a room that allows you to tip with special tipping chips during tournaments. A lot of people bought the chips on top of their dealer add-on and tipped throughout the tourney. This place still has the crappy (in my opinion) dealer $5 add-on for like 20% of a stack but I still had no problem tossing a few brown chips around and a lot of others did the same. The dealers weren't even very good there but I felt like they weren't hustling for tips as hard as some other rooms I've played which probably contributed to me tipping more too.