The worst dealer in the world deals a winner every hand. And while doing it they misdeal, split pots incorrectly, misdeal, push pots to wrong player, misread hands, deal the wrong game, deal in players who should be out, and deal out players who should be dealt in and don't remind the players to pay the player who put up the time pot (all of this happened to me last night BTW).

The difference between a bad and a good dealer might be only 20% more hands per down, but it can be a lot worse in making the game more frustrating, less fair and driving off players. To me it seems unfair to only tip a great dealer slightly more than a bad dealer.

And it's the exact opposite of arbitrary. At the end of every down the dealer knows exactly how well I feel they did. When I win no pots, but they remind me about the time pot, never misdeal, get hands out fast, and never chop/push a pot wrong, that's a great down and great service demands a good tip.

One important part of this approach is to try not to hold grudges. If a bad dealer has a good down you have to tip them, it's not only fair but communicates to them your expectations.

What should i tip on a BBJ if I win the big end for $25k?

$100 tops

This might work in theory if every player was doing it; the good dealers would get rewarded and the bad players punished. But when you are the only one doing it, the primary effect is to punish dealers who are dealing when you win a lot; the variation in how many pots you win in a down is going to be much greater than relative dealer skill within a down.

But if you are expecting everyone at the table to adopt this, it's not going to happen, nor should it. You are expecting every player to alertly evaluate the relative skill of every dealer on every down. Who wants to spend the mental energy doing this? And it should not be the job of every customer to set the hourly wage of each individual employee for each and every hour. If you are trying to affect a wholesale change in tipping culture, I think your efforts would be much better spend trying to eliminate tipping entirely and get dealers paid a living base wage instead.

It's really no effort to grade a down. I always remember dealer mistakes and slow dealing, and I always notice fast pitching and error free downs. A great dealer i'll just tip the max up front, even if they have a bad down they have dealt too many great ones not to get tipped the max.

I'm not a casino employee or political activist. I don't have any control over how dealers are paid, other than my own tips, and that's all i'm trying to control. If others do it too, fine, if not, that's ok too.

You seem really hung up on the idea that some dealer might push me lots of pots one down and not make as much on one specific down. First, it's very rare i'm winning more than 3 hands per down and great dealers get $3 every down from me, so they are way ahead over time. And the same dealer might deal to me 10 times a week, so it all works out quickly. Lastly, is bad dealer who pushed me lots of pots isn't getting tipped at all no matter how i tip. If you constantly make mistakes and slow the game you aren't providing good service.

From the dealer's perspective (I'm a dealer)...

If I'm dealing my A-Game then I'm perfectly happy with a $1 per pot, regardless of size. I aim to give an experience good enough that most players would be happy to ship me a $1 per pot.

When I play, I always tip the dealer $1 per pot no matter how big or small, regardless of if it's a good down for them or not. If they are doing a good job, I tip $2 per pot. If they are doing an excellent job, then I always tip $2 per pot + even more if I scoop a medium to big sized pot.

For example, if I'm playing $1/$2 or $2/$5, and the dealer is doing an excellent job, and I scoop an $80 pot, I will tip $4. If I win a $120+, I will tip $5. $225+ and I'll throw $7 or $8 bucks.

I would think I tip heavier than most because I'm also a dealer.

But again, if I'm dealing and I'm doing an excellent job, my mechanics are top-notch, I'm controlling the action well, zero mistakes, and dealing at 1.5x-2x speed, and I'm really on top of everything and dealing a solid down, then me personally I'm very happy with a $1 per pot regardless of if you win a $10 pot or a $1,000 pot. It works out best for me that way.

At this rate, if you play only 20 hours a week, you will be tipping over $5k a year. Bye Felicia.

good post.
basically i've adopted a policy of tipping terrible dealers really bad, good ones really good and the mediocre ones a dollar or two (on bigger) pots.
i'm sick and tired of god awful dealers thinking we're supposed to just throw money at them. it's even worse at plo.

it's also one thing to be new and learning and another to just a)not give a **** b) too stupid to keep track of the pot, calculate side pots quickly,chop pots quickly etc or c) both and expect to make a good living dealing. of course when players reinforce their horrible dealing with good tips they have little incentive to improve.

and it also sucks that the really good dealers don't make that much more than them. like yea they might get 20-40 pct more hands out but even that 20-40 increase in tips isn't enough.

As a UK dealer we are literally fighting over cash games rather than tournaments. Think we've been tipped about 4 times in the 6 months since I started.

Get me a good PLO game though and they bloody love it

Villain never tips dealers. Hero (former dealer) calls him on it. Villain responds that the dealer is the only one at the table guaranteed to make $$$ (specious argument at best). Hero responds that if no one tipped there would be no games (right on). Personally, I tip $1 per pot. More if dealer is halfway competent & pot is "big". I see very few players stiff a dealer. I have nothing more. Lock it up.��

Hello, I played my first live tournament today (I've played thousands online). $150 tourny, 86 runners, 3k 1st, 2k 2nd. I finished second. I realized at the end I had NO idea what to tip the dealer (who was great, helped me do blinds & antes while I was trying to figure out my stack size since I am not used to doing that). 1st place guy tipped him $100, what should I have tipped??

Did they take out/charge anything that was labeled as going to the "staff"? Did they have a "dealer add on"? Or didn't you read the fine print?

If they did, players usually consider that sufficient.

If not, or if you want to be considered a "nice guy", you could have followed the winner's lead and tip 3.3% or about $50-$60. (3% is roughly what they take out for tips when they do)

Anywhere from 1-3% is solid for a good tourney cash imo.

Edit to add - I would cap that at 1k, unless I won the main event. Then I'd probably tip idk 5-10k on a 8 Mil score?? I can dream.

The answer to "what should I tip" is always - whatever you feel comfortable with given your satisfaction with the service.

There's a lot of factors - does the tournament have a dealer add on that's funding dealer tips? is this in the US where dealers only real income is from tips or elsewhere where the dealer might be making a decent salary already? how many dealers were involved in the tournament and for how long? how does the room split tournament tips between dealers?

But when it all comes down to it - in the US at least - if you give 3-5% you won't be called a cheapskate and you won't be getting Christmas cards from the dealers either.

Good stuff here on stuff to consider re: tipping the dealer at a tournament.

Another question - should anyone other than 1st or 2nd place tip the dealer(s)?

Very early on in my play I didn't know that typically tournament tips are pooled and I sat down in one after a very successful cash session waiting around to start the tournament. I typically tip cash games at the end of the down ... see previous discussions in this thread.

So I have a really good down in the tournament and when he gets up to leave I reach into my pocket and toss him a couple of reds. The look on his face was priceless. He immediately called the floor over and they were equally 'stunned'. They ended up putting the tip in the cash section of the tray to be 'collected' later. Each subsequent dealer was equally stunned/pleased to see the chips handed out so early in the proceedings.

Short story long ... I still don't think I have a handle on how this goes, so I always ask a dealer or 2 when it's near the money bubble how the tips are handled and go from there. In large BI events I keep my chip stack count at the end of each level on my phone ... I now also keep track of the dealers and will tip them extra the next time I see them in a cash session if I did well while they were in the box.

I know in the charity rooms I play in the dealers 'lobby' for tournament final tables since that may be the only place that tips are received .. and generally they aren't pooled. Tournament shifts do get paid at a higher hourly rate, but I don't think it's anywhere near enough to make up for lost tips at the cash table. GL

Interesting. The cash games I play in Leeds (both PLO and NLHE) see virtually no tipping.

A lot of times I'm the only one who tips.

As a UK dealer you have to pool your tips though...?

I don't normally play tourneys but was killing time with a friend from Atlanta on last week and he wanted to play one at my local casino. Long story short I chopped it 3 ways and had a bunch of bounties. There was a dealer add-on and I decided not to tip based on the add-on and the fact that dealers who I know are really good most of the time were really taking their downs off and making mistakes that they should not have been making. They were also talking quite audibly about players at cash tables who were tipping big and bragging about sucking up to them. Just really gave me a bad taste in my mouth at the time.

I'm regretting being petty but figured I'd ask some of you what you thought.

"There was a dealer add-on" tells me you've already tipped, so don't feel bad. The rest of the stuff you posted is gravy.

Thanks for reassurance! I actually did the math after posting, $10 add-on x 130 entries. Unless my math is way off on how fast the tables got consolidated, it seems like they made decent money - not to mention the greens they were bragging about getting from seat 6 table 5.

In an attempt to sound as neutral as possible I shall post this in a slightly different way than initially planned.

Hero - somehow dashingly handsome in spite of the balding nature of his scalp and maintaining a solid 80lbs overweight frame. Hero is incredibly proud of his image here.

Hero's stakes are 1-2 to 2-5, and H tips on literally every pot where H get pushed some chips (any chips) if the dealer does their job. If it folds to Hero's small blind and he/she/they/it raises and win the $2 big blind he/she/they still give the dealer $1 while invoking Roy Scheider and stating "this game needs a bigger [boat] - amount of action".

In my mind the dealer's job is to control the action in every hand and push the pot when hand is over. Tips only ever withheld on the rare hand a dealer makes a *big* mistake that causes a mid+-size issue, even then I still usually tip as a massive softy.

Not joking, will tip basically on literally every pot I win (even if I lose money getting quartered or whatever).

Anyway I was playing in Arizona (Talking Stick) a few weeks ago, ended up winning a ~$700 pot at 2-3 300 spread because I am a genius and got AA vs KK. I tipped $3. This is actually more than I would usually tip for a pot of that size (in a room I know I tip exactly $2 in pretty much every pot I win over ~$100, and I play low stakes never above 2-5 and mostly 1-2/3).

2 or 3 of the regs laid in to me - 'wow you're not gonna flip Jamie a red?' - 'I bet Jamie wishes he'd dealt me the AA there it would have been a better investment'

It really affected me honestly.

2 of my closest mates here in NYC (I'm from London) work in the service industry so I've really learned the ins and outs of the tip-enhanced career here, even if I haven't worked in it myself.

Was I out of line? I'd like opinions from all that will give.

I've been playing live for 6 years pretty regularly (1418 hours of NLHE and PLO tracked at this point and a bunch of untracked nonsense home games and ridiculous wild card games I play with friends.

Anyway thanks to the rather large amount of whisky etc I've consumed tonight this has been a long winded and extravagant way of asking 'would you rather save the life of a starving child who you never meet or will meet, but you do learn later in your life that the child turns into a massive dickhead, or instead would you rather have an actual literal working light saber?

Oh also please confirm I was not a total bellends in the tipping question that at this point tbh is kind of secondary because it's 5:47am and my mates are very keen for me to not type on my phone any longer.

You are absolutely over-tipping, and $3 is a lot for a $700 pot, though I suppose that's relative to the stakes. They were extremely out of line for shaming you for "not giving enough".

I agree with the other players being out of line, but what I think this poster meant was "$3 is a lot for a $700 pot, though I suppose that's relative to how I tip".


Yeah, he is generous in his tipping. He knows it. If they were out of line for telling him how to tip, aren't you out of line for telling him how to tip as well?


$3 is perfectly fine. Obviously tip what you want. If you value how you feel about tipping more than the money, there's no reason to be stingy. If you're trying to eek out every dollar to pay the bills, then maybe you don't have your priorities straight. Only you can decide (and yes, those guys were way out of line)

I play mostly 1/2 and 1/3 and tip pretty much the same - $1 on nearly every pot - I've tossed the dealer $1 on a split pot where I lost money. About the only time I don't tip - barring glaring errors - is if I win 2 $3 pots in a row.

There was one spot where I had a raise and take it pre like 4 times in the row. The dealer joked he was just going to push me the blinds. I said "2 for me 1 for you" and the two of us where happy with the deal.

If the pot is over $200 I generally go to $2 and over $500 3-5 depending on how much I like the dealer.

I consider myself an over tipper btw. In the sense that I (and TheGramuel) tip more than is customary or expected or required. Poker for me is a hobby/side income. If I were playing professionally I'd probably dial it back.