Let me start my post off by saying that I'm a pro and a very generous tipper, perhaps too generous. One of my good friends was telling me how he started to stiff dealers in Vegas and was going to do so in all games. A lot of the things he said were very true and made me ask myself a lot of questions.

Dealing cards is not the same as serving someone a drink or waiting on someone and taking their food order. A dealer cannot change the cards you are being dealt, they can't control whether or not you win a coin flip, they can't help you do anything. If they do, they get canned. Are they "providing a service?" yes. Can they treat people differently based on their tip size? Absolutely not.

Should dealers be rewarded or punished based on their performance? I think so. That should have nothing to do with how hot they are dealing you, though. A dealer's performance is unrelated to how well you, personally, are doing. It should be based on how effective they are dealing cards. Are they fast? Do you get a good number of hands per hour? Are they making mistakes, such as flipping over cards, miss counting bets, not knowing or following the rules? If you were to tip a dealer based on how much you were winning on their down, it would be comparable to tipping a food server because the food is good. A food server could simply take forever to take your order, forget your drinks, never give you refills, ignore you, etc. That is the same thing as a dealer doing his job of dealing cards and you're red hot or playing well or both and tipping him/her a bunch based off your winnings. The point is, someone else is doing the job when you're winning or whether you are eating good food.

Heres my inside take on the situation. I have a dealing job I'm new so I still make a few mistakes here and there. I might flip a card pitching or miscount a bet. I don't do it often in fact I've done the numbers I flip about 1 out of every 1000 cards I throw out. I constantly work on my craft being a former poker player. I always take responsibility whether or not the mistake is my fault. Example being I pitch the card to the 2 seat and the 1 seat goes to grab his card prematurely and flips it on the way. I will say I'm sorry my fault.

That being said I am not the worst dealer at my casino. I have some players that never tip, I have some players I feel tip too much. I have some players that tip regularly.

I think a good dealer should get tipped better. If I do a good job one down and mess up another down I don't mind getting less for that down. It's something I should expect in the business I'm in.

Now the debate on how much to tip and can it be based on pot size and how good the dealer is, why can't it be both? If you steal the blinds I don't expect a tip. If you win a medium size pot all dealers can get a dollar but the difference comes when you win a big pot. All dealers deal all size pots, so in the big pots where you have a good dealer tip him more, tip the poorer dealer less. This is where you as a player have the control. The small and medium sized pots all dealers can get the dollar.

You bring up a good point. By the same logic players should stop blaming the dealers as well for their run of bad cards. To me the amount of berating that I've seen dealers take for some person getting a bad run of cards is quite sad. I've also seen players grumble about card shufflers. The worse IMO is when a player asks for a new set just because they aren't getting anything. Yea, let's stop the game for 5 minutes or more while a new set is brought out, cards verified in both decks, mess shuffled, then stuck in the shuffle machine.

So while I agree that dealers don't control what cards they give out, they do control the table (or should), etc. and it is that for which I tip. I just happen to tip when I win a hand Although tipping as they are leaving the table does make more sense.

Yeah, people berate dealers way too much when it is their own fault. I use those excuses you listed like changing seats because I'm cold or their seat was hot to look like a fish or basically, not a pro, lol.

Nevada's minimum wage is $8.25(no health insurance)/$7.25(health insurance) which is $1 above the federal minimum wage or required employer health insurance which is only in a handful of states.

Nevada's tipped minimum wage is $8.25 which is the highest in the nation versus the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13. This also means that Nevada's tipped minimum wage is higher than the federal standard minimum wage. In fact, Nevada's tipped minimum wage is higher than the top 5 of all states/cities' standard minimum wage.

If that wasn't all:

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-6...l#NRS608Sec160
The tokes a dealer receives is in addition to the highest tipped minimum wage in the nation whereas the tips can't be applied to subsidize the wage unlike most states:

Example:

Just about every state works in the way described in the paragraph with poor Amy.

There is a major difference in tipping a waitress who is running around getting orders barked at her from her bosses while simultaneously taking food orders with a smile on her face for a federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 versus a suckhole dealer who sits on his butt all day without a boss breathing down his neck at $8.25 + tokes.

Oh and the sense of entitlement in this thread by dealers is LOLable.

Very few dealers are doing any such thing anywhere in this thread. Please cite examples if you're going to make this statement. Frankly, the more LOLable thing is how much time people in this thread apparently spend paying attention to dealer protocol as opposed to actually, you know, playing the game.

They are already as "good" as they're going to get and spending energies finding ways to skimp on a few bucks here and there by not tipping is the only way they can increase their bottom line =P

It's just sampling bias. The 90% of players that don't make a big deal about tipping don't post in the thread.

I don't know about that. If the casino is on an Indian Reserve in the middle of nowhere that means you need to own a safe reliable vehicle. That means you need a fairly decent wage for the job to be worth your while. Or you will need a ton of hours and that leads to burn out. Also in expensive areas of the country 12 an hour is peanuts too. It's one thing to deal in Vegas where you can take a cheap city bus to work and another thing to deal in Los Angeles or San Francisco and make a wage like that.

Um, actually, yes they can.

As long as the minimum required service is provided, anything above and beyond that is completely up to the individual employee's discretion. It's one of those facts of life that that everyone, everywhere intuitively understands -- except, apparently, for a small but vocal minority of ultra-nitty poker players with a deep-seated sense of entitlement.


q/q

Q for dealers who have to claim their tips(or I guess even those who don't): How much do you tip the cage when you toke/cash out?

I have to claim all of my tips. A supervisor verifies the total, and I get them on my paycheck, less taxes. The house also keeps a percentage of my tips which goes to supervisors, brushes, and chip runners.

I give the cage $3-5 every night. I also give the chip runners $3-5 every night. Sometimes I'm more generous than that ($6 or $7) with the chip runners if I've had a really good night. This is an addition to the fact that I'm already directly subsidizing their check with the percentage taken out of my tips each night.

I would estimate that 90% or more of the dealers where I work tip the chip runners, and that my $3-5 is fairly typical. I know of only one dealer in my room who does not tip out as a rule.

Yes, all players at the table paying rake are entitled to adequate service. Anything above the rake is voluntary and at the player's discretion.

The definition of minimum required service seems to be the issue.

How the players define it.
How the dealer defines it.
How the management defines it.

Some dealers seem to omit "civility" and small things like "pitching the cards so a player doesn't have to reach for them" from that "minimum required service".

People seem to just like to find things to complain about...

shut up, run the game better, move the action along.

People have different standards with regards to tipping. You are in the service industry, so simply raise to the level of standard the worst tippers at the table want. The good tippers will be thrilled at how well your dealing, and the bad tippers may throw you a bone if they hit a one outter in a 1000bb pot. At the end of the day, its still great money, it aint that hard to do, and people, in general, arent that bad at tipping.

Plus, do the little things that players like within reason. If they like the cards on the left of their stack, put them there. If you see them running across the room to get their seat deal them in. The little poop goes a long way IMO.

If you do all that and you still get crappy tips for a few downs? Well maybe youre not as good as you think, or its variance. Either way, IT'S STILL GOOD MONEY FOR WHAT YOURE ACTUALLY DOING, EMT's and PARAMEDICS WITH TENURE MAKE LESS THAN YOU DO WALKING IN THE DOOR.

Sorry for the harshness, it drives me crazy when my coworkers complain ad nauseum about their tips and simply refuse to get better themselves.

1 to 4 dollars I round it to five

Providing outstanding customer service is part of my job. We're trained on it during new employee orientation (well, a video anyhow), it shows up as a category on my annual review, and it was on the job description when I applied at the casino.

Plus, it's downright stupid to flagrantly disrespect a player at the table because I don't like him or because he doesn't tip. All of the other players at the table can see my behavior, and at best, they'll figure that I'm only nice to them because they tip me, and at worst, they'll think that I'm just a jerk in general.

But if you think I treat every player exactly the same, you're crazy. And you've obviously never worked in customer service before.

Apparently you didn't read my post where I said I am a generous tipper. I'll conceed that a dealer could deal my cards far away from my reach or something, but that is just slowing down the game! In the end anything they do to one player is affecting their bottom line in some way.

Don't try to tell me I'm some ultra nit when you have no idea on my background and obviously don't read previous posts. I have worked in the food business before and I have family members and close friends who still are. There is absolutely a huge difference between them and dealers.

The problem with a containment thread is it's impossible to find anything more specific on searches. I want to know more about tournament tipping, because I'm concerned I might be under tipping, but I don't even know where to begin looking. :-/

People keep mentioning cards being dealt "at a far reach" or "away from my hands" or "far away" etc. Is this something people really worry about? I haven't put 5 seconds of thought into this in my entire life at the table.

You might be over tipping [in before dealer heat], actually. Most tournaments take a vig specifically for dealer and floor tokes, in addition to the house vig, so tokes are already paid out from your buyin (regardless of your finish).

Of course, dealers want you to tip an additional 5% (more on smaller cashes) on any cash you make on top of the 3% you already toked by buying into the tourney, but lots of people want to make more at their jobs for doing the same work, so it's to be expected, I guess.

Before just assuming you're overtipping like this guy is doing because of his view-bias on tipping in general, ask the venue what they take out, if anything, for the dealers. Then compare that to what you find in this thread, if you can find what you're looking for. I agree on the relative difficulty to find information in any containment thread that generally has a few days of the same conversation in waves.

(I'm not a dealer)

Yes, of course I was implying that you should ask how they distribute the vig they charge and not just assume. What's my "view-bias on tipping in general"?

I re-read your post that I was replying to and I see how I took my view of your views and misapplied them. I'm sorry for reading into what wasn't there.

Yes, I know all of this. None of it says what kind of percentage actually should be tipped though and whether that percentage should change based on the time the tourney takes, etc.