As I understand it, his position isn't that dealers shouldn't be paid a fair wage.

I think we can all agree that dealers should be paid a fair wage -- although some might disagree on what that wage should be.

It's just a question of why, culturally, some jobs are tip jobs and why some aren't.

To the informed, there is a tacit agreement to tip dealers. We know that's how they get their pay. I think I speak for a good portion of people when I say that we'd be happier to shoulder this burden elsewhere, be it in reduced comps or increased rake -- and then we could tip when we saw good service, not as a wink-and-nod deal where we're paying salaries disguised as tips.

I'm happy to tip.

I hate pretending to tip while merely paying salary.

It's the pretending that's crap.

I'm trying to stay neutral in this whole thing, but I don't agree with this at all.

So the side against tipping is just being greedy/cheep and only wants keep their dollar, but the dealers are perfectly fine being offended and expecting that dollar for themselves?

Why do the dealers want tips again? I didn't think it was for any greater good either. I would assume its because they just "want it for themselves". Is there another reason I'm missing?

Dealers: Thanks for the tip, its how I make a living.
Pros: I'm not tipping, this is how I make a living.

Yeah, I missed that quote...

It's absurd to suggest that because I dislike the customer-pays-salary-through-tips model (as opposed to tipping to reward exceptional service), that I'm somehow a cheapskate.

It's rude, frankly.

Yeah, for sure.... but that leads to tip inflation where the big tippers implicitly set a culture where everyone else is competing with them. (It's a form of conspicuous consumption.) So pretty soon there's a tip for every pot, dealing is well enough compensated that the house lobbies for a carve-out exception to the minimum wage law, and we're back at the status quo.

I'm delighted for big tippers to show off doing it as long as there's no implicit expectation for me to do the same. I tip my $1 a hand, and the time or two i've explicitly discussed it away from the tables with dealers they've said they're perfectly respectful of that.

Here, the dealers have to pay like $5 per 30 minutes so they can deal and just keep the tips

May i ask where?

Many Austrian Cardrooms like CCC

This is yet another model that when discussed in alternative model threads -- the dealers have said how impossible it'd be...

...despite knowing it's used successfully elsewhere.

[Not to mention it's the way that strippers and barbers often work.]

I'm not a dealer but I'll common sense answer anyway.

This is obvious to anyone with a brain, you are correct, but it's worthless. The same could be said of virtually any job that doesn't deal with heart transplants or astronauting to new planets. Obviously people with no jobs who make no money would accept reasonably simple work for low salaries, no kidding.

I think that particular model is used in Austria at casinos that are not affiliated with Casino Austria because that's the only way the casinos can have card games according to the law. The dealers "rent" the tables from the casino and provide the game so that the casino itself isn't providing the game. I am not 100% sure about this, but I am pretty sure that's what one of the dealers told me when I was there last year.

That doesn't mean that it couldn't be used at casinos in the US; I'm just saying that I think other places in Europe use a living wage + no/reduced tips + higher rake model as opposed to the Austrian model.

You completely ignored answering the question posed. Please stop fixating on the "99.999999%" figure, it's obvious what I meant by this. We all know that the vast majority of people don't hang dealers out to dry by tossing tiny amounts of $$$ when they win a $2000 pot in a small to medium stakes NL cash game.

Foxtrot, kudos. Seriously. At least you have the guts to state that monetary reasons and not some fake disgust with the business model that causes you to tip less than "standard". I asked multiple times for this response, you provided it. Perfectly reasonable. You have the right to operate that way and you answered honestly, deserves credit.

What percentage of people dealing in a casino are making their living while they're at the poker table?
What percentage of people playing in a casino are making their living while they're at the poker table?

I'm simply calling people out for what could be construed as fake answers. Several people quoted my response and agreed with me. The entire long-diatribe-about-disliking-the-business-model by people who feel morally against it comes off as very fake in some cases. Clearly not everyone falls into the same category, but it's obvious some people simply don't like giving away money and should admit it.

Likely true.

I just like to dispel the myth that the way we do it now is the only way it can be done.

Dealers work currently (and successfully) under a variety of models, including, but not limited to:

• Hourly/Salary only
• Hourly & Tips
• Sub-Minimum Wage Hourly & Tips
• Hourly & Pooled Tips (which is basically hourly with minor variability in larger tip pools)
• Sub-Minimum Wage Hourly & Pooled Tips (see above)
• Tips Only
• Tips Only + Pay to Deal

That you quoted me in the lead-in to a a post that says these things: ... shows either that you have not read my posts itt, or that you have a serious reading comprehension problem.

I tried to get you to admit you were exaggerating. You claimed you weren't. Now you admit you were. I contend that if you simply made your point as strongly as the evidence warrants, but no stronger, your argument would have more force. It's not a big deal — really just different approaches to rhetoric.

In any case, I grant that almost everyone will tip on that $2000 pot; I deny that the enormous majority will tip more than $2. But I also admit I haven't played a whole lot of $2000 pots. When I used to play 40/80 limit at commerce it happened occasionally and iirc the standard tip was still a dollar, but that was a while ago; maybe the culture has changed.


You may take this as a flippant question, but it's not:

Why should whether someone is playing poker for a living affect his willingness to tip (or, on the flip side, to stiff)? The effect of having X fewer dollars at the end of the evening is the same.


Again, I don't think there are as many fake answers itt as you seem to think, though some do read that way. Maybe I'm being too charitable (in before accusation of irony), but I just think it's so facially obvious that the reason most people who undertip, undertip, is wanting to keep the money that it doesn't occur to me that people's statements about the bigger picture are attempts at rationalization or justification. But maybe they are. Given how vigorous and sometimes nasty the reactions, at the table and here on the forum, to undertippers are, I guess some desire to couch it in other-than-cheapness terms is natural. (See donkitall's response to me, quoted above, for an example of what people who advocate something other than automatic tipping get treated to, and I'm probably the most flexible and non-dogmatic of the undertippers itt.)

Uh, yeah, it is the enormous majority. I'm sorry, but 7 or 8 winrate obsessed nitty people on 2p2 do not represent the majority of poker players. For every perosn in this thread hating on tips and claiming that it's $1 and that's it regardless of the pot being huge, there are a ton of people who play casually who tip very well. You people can incomprehensibly fixate on the 99.99999% figure all you want in an attempt to make yourselves feel like there are a lot of people like the 2p2 anti-tippers out there, but it's utter nonsense. If it isn't my hyperbolic 99.99999% figure that people are obsessed with, then it's some figure in the mid 90's, easily. There really, really aren't anywhere near as many people who stiff dealers or tip $1 regardless as you think.

Ask Syncmaster, was his point. The effect isn't the same though. The dealer depends on the money to make a living. The recreational player is often playing with money they don't care about, they don't depend on cashing out $263 instead of $250.

I think virtually every tipping-model diatribe here is fake and some form of cover for people who don't like throwing the dealer a dollar. I also think that most of these people would never express these feeling IRL to anyone's face for fear of being mocked for being cheap. They probably shrink like violets at the table anytime they get snickered at at the table for not tipping, you can take it to the bank that no one would ever counter with any of the I'm-morally-against-the-current-tipping-model IRL

This may be influenced by region or by the stakes played. I've only played low stakes Limit and No Limit and most of that on the East Coast. In the 1-2 NL I've played, in every $500+ pot I've seen the dealer was tipped $2-5. I believe that it's actually more common on pots that size for the dealer to get $5, but I cannot say so with certainty. Hell, I know I see redbird tips at least once or twice an hour with pots in the $150-200 range.

Good to know I'm not out of my mind, thank you

I would imagine (again without a lot of data) that a larger-than-x tip (where X is $2 here, for sake of argument) for a $2000 pot is much more common when that pot is unusual for the stakes played than when it it is the norm. As I mentioned earlier, there was quite recently a thread, maybe here or maybe in NVG, where people were discussing how the high-stakes players in games at the Rio routinely do not tip at all, which I guess is a different thing but is at least somewhat related.

Sorry, didn't mean to attribute something to the wrong person.

I do understand that many people think that a dollar during a recreational activity is different from a dollar while one is earning one's living. Once we've corrected for income effects (in other words, if we are talking about people who have the same amount of money over all), I don't believe that myself nor do I think any rational person does, but I readily concede that most people are not rational.

If a poker player is playing for recreation, this is effectively a leisure activity, and tipping (to the extent he does tip) is part of the cost of that activity. Assuming the dealer is not living hand to mouth and engages in leisure activities himself (which will usually be true), it doesn't matter that he is, at the time the tip happens, earning his living, nor whether the player does or is just playing for fun. We are trading a dollar that the player can spend either at the table or on some other non-necessity, versus a dollar the dealer can spend on some non-necessity.

Note, by the way, that the non-necessary activity in either or both cases may be charitable giving. I resent quite a bit being told (not by you) that I am a cheap bastard who cares only about himself when I do give to charity (and also tip obviously underpaid people pretty well, in some circumstances). Given a choice between whether an average dealer should have the money (an amount that is for the most part fixed) that I'm willing to give away or whether it should go to saving rain forests or feeding starving people, I'm not ashamed at all to say that I think stiffing the dealer is acceptable. I'm not saying it's acceptable nor claiming that's what I'm thinking when I make the decision, but I'm saying that automatically assuming that I'm a selfish bastard just because I don't automatically toss a chip to the dealer even when he's acting like he doesn't want to be there, as he lazily pushes me 20 bucks, is not fair at all.

You can argue about who needs the dollar more, but that's not clear. Dealers make decent money, but do not get rich. Some poker players are better off than all dealers, and a few are so well off that the value of a marginal dollar to them is almost nil. But I suspect that a fair few players make less than the dealers they're expected to tip, and in those cases the moral argument has some substantial problems. Again, that's not a great reason not to tip, but it's a defense to the argument that failure to do so is evidence of a moral failing.

A $2000 pot in a 1/2 game generally garners more than a $2 tip, certainly.
A $2000 pot in a 100/200 game doesn't seem to generate a dime.

Played a tournament this weekend at Aria. Lucky enough to chop it 3 ways. One player started pressuring/yelling at me and the other player that we better tip well. Floor man very quickly put a stop to that, which I greatly appreciated and probably caused me to tip more in the end.

I played live lhe hu for the first time recently and asked around about tipping... they suggested just tipping each dealer at the end of their 30 minutes at the table. How much to tip?

For sure i'd make it proportional to the number of hands per down, unless it's too arduous to count, then just estimate. (The per hand self-rewarding nature of the conventional per-pot system has been unappreciated on this thread.)

Since a typical dealer gets out around 15 full-ring hands per down, i'd start at $8 for a "typical" HU dealer and go from there. But i'm guessing we're talking fairly high stakes, so i'd probably bump it up a bit more to $10-15 for standard service and $20 for excellent dealing.

Thank you! This would be a big argument for not tipping a lot, in addition to the "keeping score" argument above. The corollary is, if i found out a dealer was in acute financial need -- say, about to get foreclosed on or something -- i would strongly consider helping him out away from the tables.

I realized, a big reason why i tip something but not a lot is because it's symbolic of my gratitude (i'm trying to be a grateful person, so i'd be grateful to all but the worst dealers). So the $1 a pot is recognition that i'm appreciative they're there and understand they need tips for compensation, but anything above that is for an exceptional job and/or a pot so sizable that i really feel like it was unexpected fortune to win it.

It's interesting to me that some ITT imply i have a moral obligation to tip > $1 on a $300 pot, as though (in NL) me risking $150 of my money at 1.1:1 instead of $20 somehow entitles the dealer to expect more. Obviously if i lose a $300 pot the dealer isn't going to tip me (and i'm not going to stiff her next hand, even though i might be stuck). I'd probably tip a bit more for a big $2/5 pot, because it feels like higher stakes implies a little more interest in getting hands out, but it's really strange that betting my own money means more for the dealer, isn't it?

Regular "home game" I attend the dealer will pull $450-$600 a night. Game time used to be at 7PM, but as seats are filled, more are showing up earlier to get a seat. Now it begins around 5:30PM-6:00PM. Normally ends at 2AM. 1-2 tables will run sometimes 3.

Last week 3 $25 greens were tossed to the dealer for a $500 pot.

If we play shorthanded 4-5 players, the "dealers" won't deal because if a seat opens at the main table, the next in line must-move, and he is afraid the game will break. So we deal our own. Imagine my surprise when I first dealt and was "tipped" $2!

Yes, even when we player-deal, the others will tip the dealer. I figured it'd even out as we all dealt, but just started tipping so I wouldn't look like a scrooge. btw, no rake is taken so I figure I break even on tips/rake anyhow...