As I said, I think no one would balk at $30/hr for dealers, and that would cost only an additional $3 per hour for each player and make the casino more money.

So, any dealer have a problem making $30 an hour with no tips? Any player have a problem paying an additional $3 an hour without having to tip?

Do higher wages necessitate higher rake? Or just lower company profits? (This is more of a general economic question than specifically for casino employees/dealers)

It seems like everyone is under the impression that the amount of money taken in by the casinos now is at a perfect equilibrium and that if tipping goes away and salaries are raised, that loss of revenue to the casino has to be made up in other places in order to maintain whatever revenues were coming in under the tipping system.

Maybe whatever the companies are making is too much. Just like how tipping is a ****ty cultural practice, so is execs and corporations ****ing over the poor people, in this case both casino employees and customers. Just because the "market supports it" doesn't make it right, except in the same way that "might makes right."

I have my "favorite" dealers in my room that I tip the bejesus out of, like 4 or 5 guys. If I'm way up in the game and in a jovial (drunken) mood I will give them $10 for decent pots and even more for bigger pots. Recently I had these two young doofuses make a stink like there was something unethical going on.

At some point does it become unethical? I guess I can maybe see where they were coming from. I was getting smashed with the deck and was on a first name basis with 3 dealers in a row. I was also in seat 9 so I was dropping the chips directly into the guys tip box. Thoughts?

Just had a thought: One key thing about tipping is that it effectively shifts the burden of punishing bad dealers from the house to the players.

That could be good or it could be bad.

Really depends on the game to be honest. I mean if the game is smaller where there is not a lot of money on the table, I can see where people would get upset with the tips. If it was a bigger game then it would seem odd. There becomes a point where people can complain and the floor might agree you are tipping too much. Have never seen it but have heard about it. I mean I have seen people tip way more than what I deem normal but never said anything. ($25 tip out of a $200 pot.)

The year is 2013 folks. $12-15 an hour wont even pay the bills for most folk. Sad as it sounds, it's true.

If you want true professionals, don't even begin to think $12-15hr will retain them. Sadly, there are plenty of dealers out there (hell, floor staff & management too for that matter) that have little idea how to truly be a professional dealer. Protecting the integrity of the game is paramount. If you had nothing but weak lops dealing, you'd never be able to beat the game because you'd be getting robbed blind.

Never lose sight of the fact that poker had tons & tons of crooks in the games for many years. It's the true professionals in the business of poker that have made the game straight and kept it straight for the vast majority since the mid 80's. That isn't really that long ago either.

I'll say it again:

I do have to take issue with dealers protecting the integrity of the games. You're going to have to come up with a better reason why $12-$15 is not suitable for pitching cards.

There are some crazy folk who think they're being cold-decked when someone exorbitantly tips a dealer, but for most people the issue is that they're effectively paying juice.

Tell that to the government. They have the minimum wage at $7.25. The problem with the current system is there is no true accountability. You get a dealer who is average or below average still seem to get tipped very well. The advantage of a fast dealer is they get more hands out, thus more tips. However, the below average dealer is still making more than they should.

Are you saying that you do not want or need the dealer to protect the integrity of the game?

No, of course not.

Must be missing something, because I cannot understand how you think this would be less than tipping is. $30 off of the table an hour to the dealer is $30 regardless of whether it is tipped or raked. You get 30 hands an hour, meaning it's an average of another $1 a hand off the table, same as tipping.

Dealer speed doesn't have 1/10th the amount to do with how many hands per hour are dealt as people think it does. The players have 95% of the control over how quickly the table moves. The difference between a fast pitch and a slow pitch is nanoseconds. The difference between speedy players and excessive tankers can easily be several minutes lost per hour.

So I shouldnt have said anything about the deck short a card last week? (which means there was a holdout missed)

And I should just leave the marked Aces in the deck in the $800-$1600 last week also?

Edit: should I have not had a camera put on two foreign friends in a game that appeared to be in possible collusion? A subtle type you're probably to poker stupid and uneducated to understand? *meaning you have zero experience with the topic of game integrity to be able to even notice anything but the most blatant.

So your money being unprotected is worth $12-$15 an hr. Would you pay anything more at all to have a game with zero cheats? Just wondering.

Perhaps he is saying that you are an exception, not the rule, even for "well paid" dealers.

No, not really.

There are a couple of god-awful dealers at one of my regular rooms. They take their sweet ass time scrambling the deck after every hand before it goes in the shuffler, dicking with their rack/tokes coloring things up, and generally slowing down everything between hands. Some of them get 10 hands in a down. The fast dealers are noticeably better, 17-18 hands per down. This is at the same table with the same players, over several shifts on the same night. (Yes, I counted.)

It's not just about the actual pitch, it's about all of the other things the dealer does at the table.

Regardless, it's quite obvious he still thinks dealing should be done by illegal immigrants grateful for any work at all rather than have and pay for qualified personnel. *Don't take offense to immigrants phrase as it's only meant to be sarcastic and show how little he values dealers, which is pretty obvious.

Yes, really. I find it very, very difficult to believe that the above situation exists over a large sample. You do not lose 7-8 hands, which is FIFTEEN MINUTES worth of hands, by pulling in chips too slowly or organizing the rack foolishly. You'd literally have to be taking 30 seconds each and every time for actions that normally take 3 seconds. There's no way this would be able to stand. You're likely giving cherry-picked examples to make your point - no regular dealer would remain in a room if they were dealing 10 hands/half in a small stakes NL room.

Come out to Detroit and play. Unionized dealers that split their tokes between all dealers in the casino (pit, poker, etc). There are some that are consistently awful, but there's no direct financial feedback for their actions.

I *think* that the official room procedure is that they scramble the deck after each hand, cut it, and give it one riffle before it goes into the machine. (I presume to check for boxed cards, but the only answer I've ever gotten for why they do this is "procedure".) A good dealer just kind of scoops the deck and muck pile from left to right with one hand, gathers it up, rips it and drops it in a 3-4 seconds, the bad dealers give it a three-count mini-wash (or more), then take their time squaring the deck, riffle, tap tap, drop in machine. Maybe not 30 seconds, but easily 15. Then there are additional seconds here and there all over the course of a hand.

The worst ones get just about 10/down, the merely 'bad' ones may get 12, and the good ones are above 16. I'd complain more often to the floor guys, but even as it is they don't have enough dealers on staff to open more tables and clear the waiting list

Of any place I've ever played, Detroit is the worst in terms of staff competency. Bad dealers are a rare occurrence in Vegas or AC (although I've heard horror stories about the cash games at the Rio during the series), but here they're pretty common in the casinos. The sad thing is that the guys that work in the charity rooms have to hand shuffle, but because they're keeping their own tips the game still moves faster than at the casino with the shuffle machines.

Never been to Detroit so will take your word for it. Based on your 2nd paragraph, it seems room procedure is more a problem than anything else. In this area, I cannot remember ever seeing any dealer average 10h/30min over a legitimate sample size.

This isn't true. I'm a dealer and a player and there are plenty of opportunities for a dealer to speed up a game other than having a fast pitch. There are times I really have to force myself not to be a backseat driver when a dealer is exceptionally slow.

The procedure is stupid, no question. It really amazes me that they do it at all. The room doesn't let you buy chips at the table, and doesn't have runners, so you have to get all of your chips from the cage (in the room). They claim this policy is to speed up the game, but any mention of changing the dealing procedure or otherwise speeding up the dealing process to the floormen seems to fall on deaf ears.

The good dealers work fast enough that it's not an issue. They get in just as many hands as the top 1/3 of the dealers I've seen in Vegas/AC.

I agree that pitch speed isn't very important, but otherwise I don't agree with this post at all. There are many ways that bad dealers slow the games down profoundly - generally slow procedures, being disengaged, constantly chattering while "talking with their hands", not following the action, general stupidity or lethargy, constant mistakes, etc. There's a huge gulf between the best and the worst, and the bottom 15% are bad, bad, bad. Just like any other job.

By the way, there are certainly dealers who reliably put out 10 or fewer hands per down, and they're not just in Detroit. They're scattered around everywhere, and that includes Vegas (gasp! ). In fact, there's a woman at one of my favorite Vegas rooms who has probably never even hit 10, and this is a top-notch room.

I think that you 2+2 dealers are probably among the better dealers in general; you'd be shocked at how badly some of these other guys are performing.

I guess where we differ is I don't think dealers avg $1 per hand.



I've been playing poker a very long time. I'm not "to [sic] poker stupid and uneducated" to not pick up on subtle collusion. That's part of the job.

I've never seen a dealer take it upon himself to take a marked deck out of play unless the marking was a tear or obvious crimp. Perhaps that's a luxury the Bellagio extends to its 8/16 players, but I've never seen it done in the black and green games; it's always the player informing the dealer first and then the dealer calling for a setup.




This is completely false. I'm the guy who said you guys should get $30/hr and that's that (no tips). I'm also the guy who tips exemplary dealers if they never had a chance to push me a pot during their down.

How much do you think you should get for dealing? I've asked this many times before, and no one seems to be willing to put a number on it. Evidently you feel strongly it's not $15/hr, so how much?

If from the beginning of poker until now they made $15/hour with or without tips then dealers would be happy to make $15/hour.

After getting spoiled with over tipping for decades and in the good times making $35-$40/hour including their non dealing shift time, then when things slow down and they are making $25/hour overall they are pissed with attitudes(not all dealers of course).