$120 sounds about right.

If it's nine handed like the old days, that's $13 per hour per player. Pretty close to $6 per 30 minutes when it was time-rake, and that doesn't include tips. Now I appreciate pot-rake more (if it's $5 max).

If they can make more money with the space, they are in fact losing money with poker. Just not in absolute terms but those are pretty irrelevant anyway.

Actually it all does matter. They would not losing money but there is an opportunity cost. But a lost opportunity is not loss no matter how suboptimal the space utilization.

When our poker room opened there was a list of goals/expectations/desires that were monitored. All the goals were met except one .. residual gaming by poker players and any spouses/namesakes related to those players. And the Table Games Manager has been holding this over 'their' heads throughout.

Just like gas at a 'gas' station, it's an attraction to get you on the property buying other stuff that has vastly more profit associated with it. (That's why they're called convenience stores now.)

Slots bear very little long term expense while poker is very labor intensive. These points have been hammered home in many a thread.

Back to this thread. What's amazing is that I know of plenty of businesses that would absolutely love to make $120/hr on their 'production' employees .. and yet there's still a battle within a casino over the value of poker over 'floor space'. That should tell you a lot about the expectations of profit within those walls. GL

What's funny about that is that the even higher ups would love for the table games manager to join the unemployment line and for all table games to be electronic.

Please show me a room where a dealer averages $30hr in tips. I will move in a heartbeat.

I don’t really see the connection here. Replacing manual labor with automation is something almost every employer would like to do if financially feasible.

Table games in a casino are something where customers expect a human dealer because it’s part of the overall experience.

$120/hr in total REVENUE, not profit. And that includes $30 that goes straight to the dealer's pocket.

I just think it's funny that so many table games managers have a certain air about them when it comes to poker, yet in reality they would be phased out completely too if it were up to the casino.

Of course it's not going to happen any time soon, but with more and more virtual craps, roulette, blackjack popping up at pretty much every casino you go to, you just know the executives/tribes are thinking "would you effin marks just play these virtual games instead, it's the same exact game".

Not sure why people are debating profitability for the casino, that wasn't the intent of the OP. As to the original point, I think $120 is on the low end for sure of what comes off the table an an hourly basis. Rake/time charges, promo drops, dealer tokes, tips for cocktail waitresses on complimentary drinks. Worse if it's a place that charges for alcohol and lets people buy booze/food with chips.

What the cost of goods sold for the casino is on booze is irrelevant to the OP's question/comment. If there are 9 drinks ordered on each table every hour at $5/pop, it's still $45/hour coming off the table

I'd be surprised if dealers at Jack Cleveland weren't pretty darn close to this. Sure, you have chops, tiny pots with no tips, and the people that just flat out stiff the dealer but I see people tipping Redbirds and $2-3/winning hand on the semi-reg.

Whatever the number, the amount coming off the table for tips is not the same as the dealers take home hourly tip rate at end of night. Dealers also have dead spreads, break time, tournaments, etc., making their earning rate much lower than the amount coming off the table.

Mod: Let me also request that we Not make the tip rate number itself a focus here, or I will move it all into the tipping containment thread. Thanks.

It is irrelevant. The comment was in respond to a follow-up comment's assumptions of how much of that $120 go towards casino expenses/tips.

It's not $45/hour by the way. The $120 is coming off the table regardless of whether patrons order drinks or not.

Yes of course, which is why I said I think $120/hour is on the low end

Only if your card room doesn't comp drinks.

Which is pretty much everywhere except Vegas and where else?

When I say 'make' that means in 'sales' (total rake). Of course business have expenses that come out of their revenue. If a room is running 8 tables at $120/hour rake per table that's $960 in revenue .. not a bad number (for that hour). Of course there are hours in the day that produce much less in total rake.

And it certainly 'does not' include the presumed $30/hour in tips. Tips go into a separate bin from the rake.

dinesh has pretty much laid out the difference between a 'dealing' hour and what happens in total during a shift. Two vastly different numbers that are still well misunderstood in these forums. GL

Basically everywhere without state laws against it. Atlantic City and basically everywhere in the South like New Orleans, Lake Charles, Biloxi, Tunica come to mind for example.

It's been a while (over a decade) since I had to do numbers on a poker table that I can't be sure if we guesstimated $137 or $167 (pretty sure it was 167) per hour just in rake for the lower limit non-timed games. Didn't include tips, which were far better on the low limit games that paid the most in rake.

I haven't been there in probably over a year and they haven't even been open for a while now of course, but, at least the last time I was there, at the Borgata in Atlantic City the 5/10 NLH (and I think the 10/20 NLH, but that didn't run as much and I only played in it once and I don't quite remember) was time charge at $6 per half hour and went to $4 per half hour if the table got under some number of players (forget what). The 5/10+ NLH games play 9 handed max.

So at a full table that's $108 leaving the table per hour to rake. There's definitely more than $12 per hour leaving the table in tips to the dealer and cocktail waitresses.

So, yep, over $120 leaving the table per hour in that time charge game.

Tend to agree with the above. Higher stake games tend to be slower, so casinos agree to go the time charge route. The Players don't mind either since some of the time they play 'high card' or something similar to see who pays the whole charge at the push .. if you're lucky then you don't pay rake at all during a session. GL

Pretty sure people have very different opinions on this and I'd like to hear from players who have played both high and low stakes at multiple casinos.

My experience about high stakes in regulated US card rooms is Vegas-only and there I never felt higher stakes moved at a slower pace than lower stakes. If anything, the opposite.

Hahaha, I never realized until reading this post how "dumb but strong" the rake box takers are. You definitely have to be strong, some of those boxes are full of chips and are the size of a basketball.