I never said 10-handed. 2(9 * 4) = $72. I'm sure with the casino taking $120+ per hour off each table they can contribute $8/hr to make the $80 figure I came up with.

But... do you deserve $80 an hour? Do you deserve $43 an hour? Those are genuine questions - I am not insinuating that you do not deserve it - I just want to know your honest opinion of your worth and/or what you think the fair market value is for the job.

Also, you take breaks in a busy room after 1 hour of dealing? I have never heard of that. Are your downs 45m instead of 30m? I have heard dealers griping about doing 8 downs in a row.

1 out of 1000 full-time dealers average $43 per hour? How much are the other 999 making?

If one brings up dealer wages in this thread, it is met with "The room pays me $7.15 an hour!!!" and when you ask what his or her average hourly is per year in tips, it's either met with an honest, "I'm not going to tell you that" or a dishonest, "Eh, I really don't know." If they were averaging $10 an hour in tips, they would be letting you know.

One dealer used to give us easy money in the $30/$60 stud8/razz game back in the day before the boom. Magically, after he gave up on poker and stuck to dealing, he was able to move out of his parents' house and buy a new car and seemed quite content with the extra money, time, and less stress he had.

Hey man, I already said I tip stellar dealers extremely well, even if I don't drag a pot, so spare me the indignant routine. Too bad there are fewer than 10 of them in several states combined. But these are technical games that most dread dealing except for basically them, and the cream of that crop are sharp as fcuk.

Sorry boyo, but running the game and keeping the pot right is babysitting. No doubt there are those who can't do it, but those are shitty dealers that should be working in a different career but never do so because you keep feeding them.

Being able to control the table and keep the pot right are the bare minimum requirements of the job. Somewhere along the way it has become thought of as being a really good dealer, and it's the tipping model that perpetuates it.

Occasionally it will be 8 in a row, but mostly it's 2 or 3. And sometimes 1 or even 2 breaks after each table. You'll only hear them complaining on the rare days that it's 8. Rooms like to keep more dealers than needed on the schedule because their hourly costs them very little and they want extra capacity in case it gets busy or people call in sick.

I said public rooms, illegal underground dealers make significantly more.

Idk how much they make. Probably depends on the room. 20-28 an hour after tax and tip outs seems about right.

Remember, if I make 40 dollars at a table, and that’s what you see, that could be the best table of the night. I could easily see 3-4 tables making less than ten dollars at each. Add on 3-4 breaks. Suddenly I have like 80 dollars going into the second part of my shift. If I stay on pace or hit a nice table, I might exceed my average, or I might go cold and break a few tables in a row.

Yeah at any moment I could hit that tip that will make my night, or the nice tipper gets hot and throws me a bunch of reds, or the fabled limit games with 30 second hands and 1-5 dollar tips every hand. But you are just one guy, sitting there, watching the context of one table. You have no idea what happens when we get up from your game.

I made about 27 an hour or so before taxes. Pretty decent money for a job you can get without a college degree but I wasn’t exactly rolling in the money.


I am shocked that the degenerate gambler’s life got better after he stopped playing in games he can’t afford.

Thank you.

I was talking about public rooms.

Bro, that's why I said average tips per hour over the year because any one day doesn't matter; you're going to get table after table of stiffs on one day and you're going to get a guy that literally tipped out over 3 stacks of green in a 90m session, tossing a green to any white shirt walking by. The entire table was peppered with floor and dealers on break wanting to get some love.

Yeah, yeah, I know you've never had such a lavish tipper and I've never seen one like that before and haven't since, but you get the point. BTW, that guy was a complete ahole and treated dealers with contempt when he came back the next day and got stuck.


$27 seems pretty good. Compared to many other trades out of the gate, that's rolling in money and the risk of electrocution or falling off a roof is near zero.

So if a $2 per person per down rake was taken, that would be $36/hr full ring and the house could pay $4/hr for $40 per hour in the box and $4 on break. Why would anyone not want that model?

And btw, I'm consistent with my thoughts on tipping. It should be done away with everywhere, and yes, I know that would mean menu prices go up at restaurants. That would only matter to people who stiff.

Indeed. Lots of dealers would complain less about pay if they only dealt cards while at a casino.

I’m ok with getting rid of tipping, I just think that you are way overestimating what the average dealer makes. People don’t make anywhere near 80/hr. And yeah it would be great to make 36/hr but my understanding is that dealers in other countries don’t make near that, in fact they make significantly less. So of course people want to keep their salaries going at the level that they are used to.

If we got rid of tipping, the service would go down and so would the quality of the dealers. People that have been dealing for awhile would have to find new jobs for sure. They’re not going to want to be dealing for 20-30k a year.

I didn't say the average dealer makes $80/hr; I said it would cost each player and the casino only $4 per down to reach $80/hr. To get dealers $40/hr while in the box, it would be only $2 per down.

If a dealer isn't happy with $40/hr while in the box, then this is a top dealer in a niche market. That can be worked out for them, as well.


I seriously doubt it. You guys act like no jobs are compensated based on performance and this is some kind of new thing. All the tables are tracked electronically and customers have mouths that can speak up (and boy do they) when they're unhappy.

If a dealer is too comfortable making $40/hr with no tips allowed and starts getting lazy, fire him or her; if a dealer busts ass, then give him or her more money. Every freaking job works that way and it's easier than ever to track a dealer's performance.

You are incorrect. Suppose a meal costs $100, the sales tax of 10% makes it $110, and a 20% tip makes it $130. If the menus price equals $120 to offset the tip the sales tax is now$12 not $10 so the total bill is $132. Often the concept of tipping, "resort fees", or other charges of that nature are a way to make sure the extra money goes to the business or employees not the government,.

I said if tipping is eradicated, the cost of the meal would be more to the customer. $130 or $132 > $100.

Or did you mean that I'm incorrect that only stiffs would care? If you're worried about paying sales tax on tips, then you're probably pretty close to a stiff.

But yeah, tipping and resort fees are a scam by the employer to make the business more money.

In your example,

$100 food sales
$10 sales tax
$20 added gratuity, restaurant fee, whatever you want to call it
$130 total bill
$2 for you to play lotto

So I'm not seeing the problem.

I mean the business cares that the extra money goes to the government. They; correctly in my opinion, feel that if they are the ones that are going to get yelled at for the high prices they should be the ones to benefit.

You sound like a small business owner who pays his few employees cash under the table with this veer you're taking. I guess all positions should be tipped so corporations can get a tax savings. You want that UPS package delivered safely to your door? Venmo the driver $20 first to ensure UPS can save on payroll taxes.

So I used to tip in life beyond generously- I would tip more than my boss. For great service. Now, I hardly tip because we are now expected to tip in very strange locations irregardless of poor customer service without any recourse.

In poker- attitude and efficiency goes a long way for me. I simplified my tipping to this.

$1-2 for any post flop pot won over $50, $5 for any over $100-200

I dont go higher- but as a new player I stiffed a jerk dealer who ended up calling the floor and and steamed away screaming.

?

Is it a requirement to tip better than your employees to become a boss at the company you work at?


Elaborate.

Makes sense.

What does this tipping protocol have to do with attitude and efficiency?

He called the floor because you didn't tip?

Let's wind up the tipping Thread in December .. perfect time!

1) Regs .. do you tip 'your' Dealers extra in December?

2) Have your tipping habits changed since we are now inundated with 'suggested' tips at more and more locations these days?

3) Have your tipping habits changed now that we are farther and farther 'away' from Covid and/or your financial situation has waned since CV?

4) If you feel you're an exceptional tipper .. just watch a low limit PLO table or a 'Scooper' of a 2x Board Bomb Pot .. WOWO (in my area). GL

Tipping should increase with inflation. Regs were tipping $1 per pot 15-20yrs ago and are still tipping only $1 per pot today. Prices for everything, groceries, gas, rent, etc are a zillion times higher now and people still feel $1 is sufficient?
In Vegas gas is still $4.50/gal, so a dealer would have to get tipped on 5 pots just to buy 1gal of gas. To fill up their car they would need to deal 100 hands and be tipped on all of them…Increase your tips people!

i would play more poker if they raked an extra dollar out of each hand and i never needed to tip

well since most people don't carry around spare change or 50c chips you seem to be implying that $2 should be the new minimum tip, which means you think $50-60 per hour should come off the table and into the dealers pockets in addition to what they already make in their hourly rate. I know inflation is bad but you dont need $120k to survive unless you specifically live in NYC or SF. if $1 per pot is really not enough to survive like you imply then we should start seeing massive dealer shortages in casinos all across the country, i suspect that is not going to happen anytime soon.

If only you had the option to alternate tipping $1 and $2 per pot…

You ever think to ask the billion dollar casino that employs you to make you whole or nah?

Why do you expect the person playing the same limits 20 years ago to tip more when they're just as affected by inflation and winrates at each stake have gotten tighter relative to 20 years ago?

It also seems that you forgot what a tip is. What it's not is a wage disbursement.

Especially since that billion dollar casino is now taking $7-8 per hand (or more) instead of the $4-5 they were twenty years ago. After a certain point there will be so much money coming off the table that there wont be any games left to deal at all.

this has been proven false time and time again

the vast majority of players (at least the ones you want to have at the table) doesn't care enough about the rake to stop playing

just look at the waiting lists at Boston Harbor

It's not that they care about the rake, it's that they run out of discretionary income to throw at the game.

The higher the rake, the more the most consistent winner in the game (the rake) is taking off the table.

Hypothetical example of a fixed-limit HU game between a player that has a 5 big bet per hour edge over the other player:

Game 1: no rake; each player starts with 50 big bets. On average, the player with a 5 big bet disadvantage will go broke in 10 hours.

Game 2: rake of 5 big bets per hour; each player starts with 50 big bets. On average, the player with a 5 big bet disadvantage will go broke in 5 hours.

Game 3: rake of 15 big bets per hour; each player starts with 50 big bets. On average, the player with a 5 big bet disadvantage will go broke in 2.5 hours.

In the last two scenarios, the losing player that plays for fun played far fewer hours, and the winning player who plays to win money won far fewer dollars.

I know, I know, this is where you're going to tell us that the average fish has unlimited funds because they don't keep a log book or have a stop loss budget

I think one dollar a pot is more than fair.

you wrote a big wall of text which absolutely does not disprove my point

fun players lose way more to winning players than they lose to rake, unless we're talking some absurd $100/hand rake

yes they will run out of discretionary funds about 10-20% faster with higher rake, so what?

games will still run

I only play time charge games, but someone mentioned $7 per hand being raked? So if that's a small fixed-limit game, say $10/$20, that means over $150 an hour is being taken out of the game. There is no $10/20 FLHE full ring player that can win 8 big bets per hour. The rake is the best player at the table by a very, very wide margin.

Higher rakes means winning players win less.

Higher rakes means break-even players become losing players.

Higher rakes means losing players lose more quickly and lose interest in playing.

But yeah, I get it, you're not interested in that, so let's talk reality. Were you around back in 2002-2006? The games were so soft that playing any two cards in late position was profitable to a good player.

The games have dried up massively at all stakes since then (that's not even up for debate), and it's because losing players got tired of having their nuts kicked in and took up some other hobby, yet you're here pimping ways for them to lose their money faster and trying to suggest it will make no difference. Just lmao.

idk what point you're trying to make with this

all I said was games will still run

this has been proven beyond reasonable doubt so far as the rake has been steadily increasing over the years but live poker hasn't lost a step

not interested in discussing your 3rd grade math either, seems like you have so much free time on your hands that you're willing to spend it by searching for some hidden subtext that's not there and then arguing with it