Yeah. Higher stakes players tip way less on average than lower stakes players. In fact, whereas in lower limits there is collective peer pressure (either overt or subtle) to tip after winning a pot, at high limits it is the opposite.

The sweet spot for a dealer is 3-6 to 8-16 LHE, and equivalent sized NLHE.

This is kinda shocking. At a 1/2 table I feel like $1/hand is a decent average, right? Do 25/50+ players seriously tip less?

+1. Dealers probably get more from a $100 pot in 3/6 or 4/8 than a $200-$300 pot in NLHE.

Seriously less.

8/16 with $2 chips is the nuts as far as tipping goes for a dealer

$1/hand at NL pace is enough to make a dealer change jobs. Cut that in half for 5/10 and above. Nobody with any skill voluntarily deals those games unless there are much better tables in the lineup to make up for it.

q/q

I usually tip an amount that males the dealer happy. Winning players always tip well especially if they are regulars at the card room.

There are plenty of winning players that just toss a dollar per pot no matter what. I'm assuming your point was "Only losing players would find a way to save $1 per hand" or whatever.

Wat is a standard tip for a SnG cash? Say something about a 10 percent fee or a lil higher.

So you PFR, gets HU to the flop, you cbet and take it down and you tip $1 every time? Seems excessive. I'm a life nit though, I never tip $5. $2 max, even if I drag a massive pot at 5/10. I'll still get the same service if I tip or not. I will say I tip more at the casino I play regularly compared to when I'm in Vegas. When I'm in Vegas, what difference does it make? I won't ever see the dealer again and won't expect any preferential treatment.

Man, I feel cheap now. If I won a $5K BBJ, I would have tipped like $20, and I consider myself a "generous" tipper. I guess I was wrong.

3% is usually a good amount.

The way I would start:

1. What a dealer normally makes dealing a cash game for an hour in that casino ($45-$30). Pay attention next time you play cash games. Say $40.

2. Divide by 2 to get per half hour. $20/half

3. Multiply by the number of half hours the SnG took. Hour and a half = 3 halves = 3*$20 = $60.

4. Multiply by your portion of the prize. Even 2-way chop. 0.5*$60 = $30

Then adjust from there.

But that should give you a concrete starting point.

While I agree you shouldn't expect (nor receive) any preferential treatment from a dealer you don't know, I also don't think dealers should ever show preferential treatment to regulars. I'm not sure what you mean by "preferential" treatment. They smile at you more? Talk to you more? Make rulings in your favor?

Anyway, your comment about not wanting to tip a dealer that you "won't ever see again" tells me more about your character than you would think. Do you stiff the waitress who gives you excellent service, but it doesn't matter because you're just passing through town and won't ever see her again? Whether the dealer/waitress knows you or not shouldn't make a difference. They are both working a job where tips will make or break them. You're one of those people they call "Tourists"...while rolling their eyes.

I used to tip every hand, until I realized how much that actually adds up to at the end of the year. Now I will only tip dealers that are actually good at dealing, or the ones that are ok at dealing and are super friendly. As far as the ones that get tipped, I still never tip pre-flop, and hardly ever tip when I just cbet and take it down, unless I've won a few pots in a row or something. Then on normal sized pots I will tip $1, large pots $2, and massive all ins pots I'll tip $3.

Also, if a dealer is every out of line rude to a player, or makes mistake after mistake, or is just really slow all the time, I just put them on my DNT list.

This is good but in the SNG's he's talking about there's already a $5 dealer add-on * 10 players. They take under 2 hours so just the add-on money alone is a decent hourly rate. I'd probably give $10-$15 if I won a SNG and probably $10 on a chop.

You sound like one of the typical people in this thread looking for any reason to justify not tipping, via seeking out the tiniest dealer infraction to punish.

As far as the end of the year, it adds up to way less than you think.

Then why worry about whether or not he tips, if it doesn't add up to much?

IMO: Yes.

Yes, you are. I tip $20 on a $200 high hand.

And, no, I'm not suggesting that someone should tip a flat 10% on any payout/bonus regardless of amount. I'm definitely not tipping $3k if I hit a $30k BBJ. Even on your $5k example, I'm probably tipping "only" $200-$300. Not saying what you should do - there is no right or wrong amount - but $20 definitely would not be in the "generous" range.

I read this on my phone and had to respond. I'm surprised because your input is always well thought out - I think this is an exception. And there's been lots and lots of discussion about this very topic obviously ...

Usually people with your view don't understand the cost of poker. Say you tip $1/pot. You win an average of 3.5 pots per hour and you play 30 hours a week. That's $105 / week or $5460 / year. I don't see how that's tiny.

The vast majority of players are losing players OR they can not beat the drop/rake + tips. Myself, I'm break even to marginal winner. $5460 / year sounds like a lot to a guy like me.

Usually, it's casual players who think you should tip a lot. Not regulars. Over my entire poker career I've played 2100 hours and I'm up less than $2000 over that time. The amount I've paid in drop/rake + tips is over $25,000 ... there you go ... that's the cost of poker. Not tipping at all would raise my over all result by about $7000, a 350% increase!

How is my logic wrong? People "in the know" don't tip not because they're cheap, they don't tip because poker is expensive. If the HOUSE wasn't so greedy, I'd tip more and more frequently. Blame the lack of tips on the HOUSE not the PLAYER.

That's just my opinion though - take it or leave it - I'm open to other views and I easily accept proof when I'm wrong ... numbers don't lie.

You're asking me if I'm worried about whether or not he tips? I'm not, I don't care, he's a random guy I've never met. Tipping happens to be the point of this thread, so we're commenting about tipping. If I wanted to comment about the Toronto Blue Jays, there's a thread for that too.

I understand the cost of poker about as well as anyone in this forum.

I would doubt even 1% of live poker players play cash games 30+ hours weekly.

Someone might win 3.5 pots hourly, but not all of that sample will be pots they'd be tipping on to begin with. You're going to have some of them be tiny preflop-raise-and-take-it pots, and some other ones would be small postflop pots that you wouldn't be tipping on at all.

You also have no way of knowing whether or not your "saved" tips will be there at the end of the session. If you save $X in your first couple of hours by not tipping, that doesn't mean you're going to cash out $X more than you would have had you tipped.

Fantastic. Apply your method then - don't tip at all. Get everyone else to not tip at all, either. Riches for everyone, right?

No.

One of two things would happen if everyone suddenly stopped tipping. One - the casino starts paying an hourly wage to dealers to compensate them for what they're not making in tips. The casino is not going to eat this cost, and the money isn't going to fall from a tree. It's going to mean a big rake increase, which means you lose back the money anyway.

Two - games become self-dealt. A self-dealt casino game where the deck was passed would be the equivalent of watching someone blind and illiterate play Scrabble in a darkened room with the tiles turned upside down. Would you prefer 12 hands an hour and cards flipped every three minutes over tipping?

That's an aspect of the discussion that many (most? all?) of the non-tippers always fail to take into consideration when they do their $1 x (pots/hr won) x (hrs/week) x (weeks/yr) = annual cost of tipping calculations. If they've played for 8hrs and tipped/would've tipped $28 during the session, but get felted at the end of the day, tipping/not tipping hasn't saved them or cost them a dime extra.

Also not tipping waitresses would reduce my cost of going to restaurants, which can be very expensive, by 20%. Doing this would mean I could justify eating out a lot more often, but I know that the food is priced assuming I am going to pay about a 20% tip. If that 20% tip (assuming good service) means my meal will be too expensive, I don't have to patronize that restaurant.

You know what the rake is before you walk in the door. You know that rake is priced where is it because you are expected to tip on top of that. If, on top of the rake, tipping the dealers $1 on most pots you win (and see a flop), maybe $2-$3 on the big ones, means that poker is too expensive for you, you don't have to patronize that HOUSE.

What happens if George doesn't tip for five hands and then doubles and then redoubles up?

He has $20 more than if he had tipped. Not just $5. It balances out.

Bottom line: If $1 isn't in the dealer's pocket, it is on the table, in a player's stack. It doesn't magically disappear.

I admit that my argument is born from limit hold'em as opposed to NL. I think it applies to NL as well - when you double up and you didn't tip aggressively those extra dollars in your stack also double - so I think it's moot or close to it. I'm not sure if 3.5 tip-able pots per hour occur in NL - I don't know how to quantify nor do I think it's worth it to figure out - surely blind steals and tiny pots don't count. However, I do think about it when I get felted - I think to myself I wish I had tipped the floor a redbird a half hour ago.

The casinos are already dropping / raking the max they think they can. If they weren't, they'd drop / rake more. That's simple greed / economics is it not? At what level of drop / rake do players just stop playing? I guess gamblers don't stop ... people who are appalled by the greed of the casino stop.

No, I won't stop tipping. It is the way it is. Any-which-way the numbers don't lie. My assumptions may be in error though ... oh well, give me better assumptions and I'll use them.

Anything you do with repetition adds up over time. That everyday Starbucks coffee seems cheap each day. Add it up over time and its cost is hefty. We've all looked at the difference between eating lunch out everyday and bringing lunch to work. The difference is significant. Why would that not apply to playing poker?