(I copied this from my personal blog)
How Much Do You Tip the Poker Dealers?
This is a sensitive topic for some folks, but it really doesn’t need to be.
Tipping is a personal decision that should be made by the individual poker player. Nobody will force you to tip a poker dealer (the exception being some tournaments where a portion of the buy-in is set aside for the dealers). However, as a former poker dealer myself, I would like to share my personal opinions about tipping your dealer. And my opinion isn't "Tip them a lot!"
The fact of the matter is that poker dealers work for tips (or “tokes” as they are called in the business). Dealers usually make a meager hourly wage from the casino and rely on your tokes to actually make a living, much like a waitress or a bartender. Our poker room pays dealers $4.26 an hour. That’s hardly enough to live on.
So, the age-old question is “How much should I tip a dealer?” As with so many questions, the answer is “it depends”. If you feel that a dealer deserves $1 for the pot that was just pushed your way, then toss him a buck. If you feel like tossing him $5, then do it. If you feel like stiffing him, so be it. Maybe you feel that you should only tip the dealer if the pot you won is over a certain amount. Fine. It’s your choice.
Maybe you feel that a dealer is doing a great job, is entertaining, etc., so he deserves a tip. But maybe the dealer is slow, making a lot of errors, and not being very courteous, so he doesn't deserve one. All of these things can influence how much you tip a poker dealer.
Another age-old question is, “Well I’m playing poker to make money and tipping isn’t required, so why should I do it at all? It cuts into my profit.” This is true; it will cut into your profit. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Let’s say nobody ever tipped poker dealers. What would happen?
Well, nobody would want to deal the game, that’s for sure. At least nobody competent enough to deal an efficient and accurate game. Nobody who knows the rules and regulations well enough. Nobody who cares enough about the game to make sure it’s run fairly. If you could flip burgers at McDonald’s for more money that a poker dealer makes, who would deal the game?
I suppose the poker room could just increase the rake and take a portion of it for the dealers. How does that sound? Now you
ARE forced to tip the dealer, even if it’s the worst dealer in the world who has a bad attitude. I prefer to have the choice of who I tip and who I don’t and how much, thank you very much.
Whatever you choose as far as what to tip, don’t let others at the table influence you. I’ve seen players get angry because another player is stiffing the dealer. Some players will actually go so far as to toss the dealer a buck or two themselves when another player stiffs them then rub it in the face of the stiffer. "This is for the stiff....."
Other players get mad because their opponent tips a lot. The “you tip too much” player may feel that “players money is leaving the table” when someone tips big. Well guess what? It’s that individual players’ money, even if he just won it from you, so he can tip his whole damn stack if he wants.
On a few different occasions when dealing myself I had a player say, “You bring this in and you get half the pot”, and they lived up to their promise. I liked these players as a dealer.
Bottom line: tip what you want. Period.
Last edited by juanez; 05-31-2011 at 05:09 AM.
Reason: Formatting