I don't understand the question. This is the "tipping containment thread". My question is clearly, concisely, and articulately stated. You completely ignored answering it, instead offering some bizarre analogy dealing with your 9-5 which has zero to do with anything. It's relevant to the issue at hand. Nowhere in the OP does this say that this is the "tipping in casinos with a set rake structure" thread.

"Let the players deal". Ever played in a home game? Think this is just that simple a solution, eh?

Pretty steep, given that the average rake in a casino for a 1/2 NL game is probably $3

$5 in CA.

Angus why are you assuming 1 dollar a hand I usually avg way more than that I have had 60.00 tips at a 1-2 table and 100.00 at 2-5 for 1 HAND !! Most people are generous not stiffs

I meant the average that ends up being taken, not the max rake. If the max rake is $5 in CA for a 1/2 NL game the average rake is probably like $3.25, $3.50

You said it yourself, that's a specific single hand. Not the statistical average. I doubt you average "way" more than $1 a hand. A few posts ago I guess that a 30-hand hour might generate $40 in tips. Underground club that plays deep where people liberally fling it around, maybe it generates $50.

If your tip are eliminated but the casino decides to pay the difference then the casino's cost for dealers would go up 233%, not the 70% you suggest.

Since dealers are only one of many costs encountered by the casinos due to poker, the casino's increase in cost would be far less than the above 233%.

So the second 70% in your post is in the ballpark. But can you explain in greater detail? Why not 130% or 25%?

Angus: Thanks for the info about tax structures. I agree, a 2:1 markup seems rational; a 6:1 markup, as our PA dealer suggests, does not seem rational.

There's a Home Poker forum. B&M and HP aren't 100% distinct, and i'm appreciative of information from the home poker world posted in this forum that might be relevant to B&M poker. However, i don't see the connection that you're drawing here. The fact that B&M casino venues might have to change their rake structure without tipping has nothing (EDIT: OK, has little*) to do with whether home games can survive without tipping.

I did no such thing. I offered two plausible home game solutions, one of which you found interesting enough to rebut:

It has been in the home games i've been in. Maybe i just play with honest folks, or maybe i'm a sucker.

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*Has little, because the theme of, "You can't keep freeloading off the dealers or the structure will have to change to a fixed price," is common between the two games. But the cost structure of the casino is totally different.

Or maybe you just aren't into answering the question posed. It's got nothing to do with honesty or being a sucker. You have a dealer at a "true" unraked home game because it gets more hands in and makes the game run more smoothly, plus allows for the players to have more freedom of movement since they don't have to worry about when it's their turn to deal. They might want to get up for a beer, go outside for a smoke, engage in convo, focus on their play, etc. Having a dealer who knows what they're doing also eliminates dumb mistakes which obviously occur when random people deal.

Dealer gets tipped for this convenience. Cost of having a good time. However, if all the anti-tippers here enforced their policy, then this person doesn't make money and wouldn't deal and the structure would have to change.

Relevant question regardless of whether this is Home Poker or B+M. If you'd like, I could start firing off a laundry list of questions about what this site calls "non-traditional home games", which are basically B+M cardrooms in people's houses.

Although I agree that I don't think the rake would have to triple to pay dealers a fixed wage, there are 3 variables that I think would make it a bit higher than you suggest..

1.) Most dealers outside of Vegas do not make minimum wage. When I started in AC, I made $4.00/hour. The casinos would have to not only compensate for the difference in minimum wage, but also account for the approx 2 hours of break for each dealer. If the dealers are making a fixed wage, they are now going to make that fixed wage for their breaks, not the $4.00/hour.

2.) Not all pots in 1/2 are going to get to max rake. If you sit at a 1/2 table and keep track of how many times max rake gets achieved, in one down I would say approximately 75% of the time (and that would be at a pretty decent action game.) I would say on average 2 or 3 hands are going to be won pre-flop without any rake. If you're paying the dealers a fixed wage, those hands count, too. Of course, even if you raise the rake to $12, it is not going to hit that number all the time, maybe 2 or 3 times per down (at most..)

3.) Tournaments: Most dealers do not like to deal tournaments because of the lower pay compared to cash games. Now that a lot of places take out a percentage for dealer tokes, that will need to be replaced in the fixed wage. How do you pay the tourney dealers when it does not matter how many hands they deal? In a lot of rooms, dealers rotate between cash games and tournament tables, so tournament fees would have to increase.

All of this is a moot point, however... since tipping is part of our culture, I don't see any reason why a casino would opt to pay the dealers more and ban tipping. It will never happen.

Here is a tipping question I have regarding a BBJP in which I recieved tableshare. The BBJP I hit was at Harrah's Saint Louis on 11/20/2011 and the total JP was $126K with table share of just under $8K as it was 6 handed and took place at 2am at a 3/6 LH table. I am looking for a dealer and player prospective in regards to the proper tip on this? 2 People who were locals thought that $500 was the proper amount. This was way to high imo. Thoughts?

Actually, it's not relevant in this thread or anywhere else in the B&M Forum because the B&M Forum is for discussion of legal live poker rooms.

This. It's not happening. People can suggest going to different models all they want, but it's irrelevant, tipping is going to remain in place. It goes back to my earlier critical-but-accurate post - people can fire off all the "better dealer pay model" all they want, but it's nothing but code for "I don't want to give the dealer money out of my pots or stack because I want it for myself". No one has the guts to come out and say this. The whole "we need a better model" thing is just cover. If there were increased rake instead of tips, they'd be happier because they were forced to do it and it wasn't voluntary -EV activity, plus they wouldn't come off as nits.

A few questions for dealers:

-I think right now, in todays economy, that there would be a line of people who would love to have your job for minimum wage or close too it. Do you agree?

-It's obvious most of you would tip well for food service. However, I would be interested in hearing your tipping methods/theory on -ev pit games. After all, they have the same job, but seem make less. There also seems to be a different standard when were talking about a -ev game. I've never been reminded to tip a roulette dealer, but it happens daily in the poker room.

Do you people really want a min wage dealer ? you get what you pay for 5 hands a half hour including many mistakes. See here is the thing YOU dont get to dictate what we make. The only way you would is if everybody was like you and didnt tip, people who tip dictate what we make and as I said most are generous. Why would you try to get them not to tip, your freeloading and they are paying for you. Change the model the rake increases by 2$ by4$ or by6$ depending on who you believe. Sorry dont buy it YOU ARE CHEAP but dont want to look cheap in front of others.

Make the same money? Yes. Have the job? No. They have had trouble filling dealing classes around here. Most of the people I took table games and poker classes with are not working in a casino. From my blackjack class, 5 out of the 13 got a job. From my poker class (around 12 people), one is dealing poker (me). So even the people who thought they may like the job, either weren't capable (and failed the class), or realized making (insert amount you like to think dealers make) wasn't worth the headaches this job can give.

If I'm winning, I tip as I get paid. If not, I still throw them a few dollars (I normally don't play table games for more than $100) when they break me. Either way, I give something.

I don't know the exact etiquette for this but I generally tip a couple dollars.

I've been wondering this too. Do a lot of people tip the cashiers at CT? I started playing cash for the first time in Vegas and it seemed like the standard thing to do so I've been doing it at CT but haven't noticed anyone else do it. Fwiw the way I tip is just give them all my leftover ones if I get them. If i don't get any ones, i don't tip.

I always tip a dollar.....they are providing a service as well

There's a perfectly good reason not to tip, namely that you would rather have the money yourself. An individual's decision to tip or not to will almost never change any individual dealer's behavior, and will almost certainly not change the casino's business model, so all that is really at stake is keeping the dollar or whatever versus giving it away as custom often dictates.. Desire to keep the money may or may not be enough to overcome the social pressure, but pretending it doesn't exist is silly. As with so much of your argument, your insistence on hyperbole diminishes its force.


Whether to pay minimum wage and promote tipping, or to pay more and not do so, absolutely is a business model.

The implicit assumption that people who don't tip do so because they're worried that they "can't make it at poker" otherwise is ludicrously dumb. Usually, it's because they'd rather keep the money themselves than give it away. That should not be terribly difficult to follow.

btw, to those insisting that "we live in a tipping culture, so this is never going to change" are wrong. Ours is not such a tipping-based culture that we routinely tip everyone who serves us individually; there are many exceptions. Even in the food service industry, which is the most tipping-intensive in the US, there are places where tips are not routinely given and wages are higher than minimum. (I know this in part because i worked at one.) To argue that this is set in stone is grossly unrealistic.


You're nuts for saying that it's literally only one person in 100 million who would tip less than $2 or wouldn't tip at all, which is what your insistence that 99.999999% is literally correct means.


In other words, your argument for the $2 rake increase, or $1.50 or whatever, relies on tax avoidance to be correct. As dealers are supposed to be reporting 100% of their tip income, and paying both income and FICA taxes on it, then giving them an additional dollar in wages (actually it's about 93 cents, with an additional ~seven cents going to the employer's portion of FICA) to make up for each dollar in tips would be enough to put them in at least as good a position as they should be in in a tipped environment. You can assume some organizational inefficiency, I suppose, but that's a very minor effect when we;re talking about passing through money to someone who is already on the payroll.

I said it. I tip a moderate amount of the time because I don't like getting hassled and hated, but definitely less than average. And I don't do it because I expect a new business model to come into use, or because I am concerned about who deserves what in an abstract sense. (I do discuss the business model and make arguments about who deserves what, but not to justify or explain my own behavior.) I do it because I would prefer that I have the money than that other people have it.

Moreover, I don't think other people are actively hiding it either. Those who are arguing that tipping dealers is wrong in some abstract sense aren't covering for the fact that they'd rather have the money themselves, which is implicitly clear — most of them, anyway, seem to be making a different, more interesting point, as it's apparent that the primary reason someone doesn't tip is that he wants to keep the money. Very few of the non-tippers seem to be arguing that it's Wrong, in some capital-letter sense, to tip.

Do you always tip a dollar to everyone who provides a service?

You probably tip your cab driver, who provides (you) a service. You probably do not tip your bus driver, subway operator, or flight attendant, each of whom provides (you) a similar service. There are differences between the situations, which probably account for your tipping one profession and not the others, but do you see from these examples that your "reasoning" as expressed itt is poor?

Tipping is standard an expected, but there aren't a lot of compelling intellectual arguments for why we should be doing it in the first place, or why one service job is somehow tip-worthy and some jobs aren't.

I'd love to see it change, and have even tried to change the way in which I tip, but it's like pushing water uphill.

Dealers may deserve more pay than the Sandwich Artist who's about to make my lunch, but I'm not sure why either of them do or don't deserve $1 per pot/sandwich.

Any reasonable discussion or logical argument about who deserves to be tipped and who doesn't will eventually devolve into a sea of hyperbole, as you obviously hate the baby Jesus for even suggesting (even by omission) that dealers should or could earn a tip-free wage like others in a variety of service industries.

There is only one way to pay dealers - it's by tipping. It's the only model that works. After all, haven't you read all these posts?

Any evidence to the contrary will be struck from the record.

Foxtrot, I dont agree with you and I hope your never at my table but at least your honest about why you dont tip. The people who dont tip are a very small % very small in my room. Im happy with them, The thing that burns me is when the non tippers tell those who tip or tip to much how they should tip. I have never said anything to I customer who did not tip me, that would be un professional and I always say thanks for 1 dollar. Those who feel I should be paid like a sub human or treated like crap I would prefer to meet in person.

We don't tip the bus driver because he/she is more than adequately compensated. Check out what a MUNI driver gets in wages/benefits. Most transit operators belong to a union, are well compensated. Flight attendants don't pay for flights, also belong to a union.

The cab driver?? Depends on tips, no union, lousy wages and working conditions.

I tip the girl at Togo's when she makes a sandwich.

I don't have to tip them, but knowing they make lousy wages and depend on tips to supplement their income, I do it. That dollar or two won't determine if I can make my mortgage payment.

For those that say..."look at all the money I save if I don't tip dealers"......count all of the money you tip food servers. Do you stiff every waiter/waitress because you would save that money too??

Before you restart the "mgmt should pay them more" debate, that has been beaten to death. Higher wages, higher rake.

You can try to rationalize non-tipping all you want. Its cheap, its selfish, its thinking about just yourself.

Its too bad you can't see past the tip of your nose. Its all about you, and your ongoing quest to be a millionaire.....1 dollar at a time.

Since you are on a personal crusade to keep every last dollar that you have, I'm sure you don't tip ANYBODY. And that is your choice. It also leads to a very self centered, shallow life.

I hope your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and nobody stops to help you. Why would they?? There is a cost to stopping and helping you. I'm sure after being stuck for a few hours, you would wonder why won't anybody stop and help?? Its because they want to keep every last dollar they own. It costs money to turn off the engine, and restart it...takes more gas instead of just cruising by. I'm sure you would understand.

This attitude of yours, the self centered me me me, not caring about anybody but yourself, is one reason this country is where its at today. We have a housing market collapse because brokers gave out crappy loans to anybody, reaped the commissions, and could care less that these people are now underwater. Hey, they got there money, good luck with the house. They didn't care about anything but getting a commission.

So good luck climbing towards that mil, thankfully most people don't think like this. The cheapskates that don't tip at all, yes you're cheap, are outnumbered by those that do. Nobody is telling you to tip 5 bucks a hand, but not tossing a buck is selfish and cheap.