Bad math? Because I rounded 3.7 up to 4?
And what is with "somebody" crap? You specifically stated that a winning player tips out that amount. So we are talking about one single winning player and what he theoretically tips out per year. It does not add up. Are you suggesting that he never has times when he is card dead? You can run bad for days, weeks even. It happens to everybody, pros included. Consistantly winning 4 hands an hour is highly unlikely. And to do it for a whole year is damn near immpossible.

Ok.
Lets say the Pro plays "full time". 40 hrs a week. 2000 hrs a year.
Now 3 hands an hour gets up to $6000.
Satisfied?

Or are you going to argue that he tips out "a lot less"?

(and if you play Limit Holdem in California, you get 40+ hands per hour on a 9 player table, so 4 hands an hour is not "impossible").

And card dead streaks are balanced out by hot streaks.

The basic question still is: If 10 players sit at a table for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with the same dealer, and the dealer makes $60K in tips, isn't that $6K per player?

Or is it the infamous "a lot less"?

Face it, if a full time (40hrs/wk) player did not tip, that would come out to about $5K-$6K a year.

Again, if you think that is chump change, send me a check for that amount.

But most players consider it an expense of the game. Like gas to drive to the club. The rake. Maybe valet parking.

Well, this isn't Europe, pal. We tip for service in the US.

Unless you play/deal in a church, as a dealer, if you mess up, at least 6 people will let you know about it immediately. So the "what am I doing wrong" is usually answered pretty quickly.

Defending non-tippers is silly. If a dollar is too much for you to spare, you're either broke, cheap, or poor. If your win rate isn't high enough to tip $1, you probably just suck as a player but haven't realized it yet. If tipping a dealer is something that disgusts you, find a home game where you pass the cards around the table.

And the point is? Ah, I know, you have no tolerance for other cultures.

No it is not. What if he was offended by something you said? What if you made an big error the first time you ever dealt to him and he is now holding a grudge? (Maybe it was another dealer's error and he has stopped tipping all dealers until he recoups what he thinks he is owed? Very bad attitude on his part but it happens. One situation was even discussed on this site.) Unless he speaks up, you may never know his reasons and whether they have to with you or him. There are a lot of things you can do wrong and never know. Some people take offense at some very little things (you wore white after Labor Day, you sneezed in their direction without covering your mouth, you sneered at them when they genuinely forgot to tip you for a pot, etc.) and will hold that grudge until the day they die. (My mother's aunt was such a person.)

You know nothing about me so your attitude here proves my point in there may be something wrong with you. Defending non-tippers is not silly. Tipping is a personal decision. It is their right to not tip for any reason and for you to not understand that and put them down on a chat board means you most certainly have an attitude not worth tipping. For the record, I am mainly a home game player. When I play in a casino (about 6-8 times a year), I tip extremely well when I win a pot ($1-5 at 1-2 nl depending on the size of the pot. Just an addendum, $1-5 may be slightly misleading as I have only tipped over $3 once and that was $5 for a three-way all-in pot for over $900. It was by far the biggest one I have won by at least $300. It's usually $1 over pots under $100. $2-3 for bigger pots.). If I see a good dealer and didn't win a pot during his down, I'll throw him a dollar or two before he pulls out.

Granted, you know your customers better than I do. You may be right (especially in regards to your regular customers) and the non-tippers are "broke, cheap, or poor". But your posts lead me to think that you believe this of all non-tippers regardless of the actual facts.

Well I'll turn it around. If your not getting tipped as a dealer, you probably suck as a dealer and haven't realized it yet.

This has nothing to do with what he said and is nothing but an obvious attempt to deflect the fact that he mocked people for feeling they don't win enough to occasionally tip $1.

...Really? Anyway..



Could be, who knows.

It is absolutely their right not to tip. It's also my right to strongly dislike anyone who chooses to exercise that right. I think I've made it clear that I'm not one to pretend to take the high road. I have this job because I like it and it pays fairly well (thanks 100% to generous majority of players). Those who make my job less enjoyable and less profitable are people I have no problem having an attitude towards.


Well, I'm sure they all have some story. The very select few of non-tippers, who play at the casino I work for, would mostly fall under the category of cheap. As for other places, I can only assume. You'd have to ask the dealers who work there.

Yeah, the idea that somebody wins every hand is crap...

Oh, wait, somebody does win every hand.

Face facts.

Dealers get their pay from players.

Players pay this cost.

I have no objection to dealers being paid what they're worth, but please, please don't pretend that we, the players, aren't the ones shouldering those costs.

That's it.

Just understand that you, the poker player, take money out of your pocket and use it to pay dealers. Losing players express this, generally, as reduced time at the table, or as increased dollars put onto the table. Winning players generally express this as a decrease in dollars won.

Most other models would have roughly the same result (as dealers need paid somehow).

...but please stop pretending that the money doesn't come from the players, and that full-time players don't each pay roughly 10-12% of a full-time dealer's salary in tips.

Lol, you guys are missing something . . Recreational player tip WAY more than regs (per pot obv) you can't just conclude that directly x% comes from a reg.

Okay guys, I deal for a living. My family and I rely 100% on tips from players. I always 100% of the time without question say thank you for every tip. If a dealer doesn't say thank you, stiff em. I do my best to deal the fastest game possible with the fewest amount of mistakes possible. I rarely talk other than to speak about the action. If someone I know is at the table I will make some small talk with them but never to the point of it being a hinderance to my game. Honestly the way I view tipping dealers is simple, if the dealer sucks don't tip them. You are just reinforcing bad habits.

But we can conclude that the dealer's total tipped income comes 100% from the players as a whole.

If your argument is that good players are cheaper than tourists, I'm perfectly willing to entertain it. It might be true. It's not my experience, in that I mostly see the same sad faces every time I'm at the casino - and that my games are almost entirely regulars, but I know my market is probably different than yours.

The amount of money tipped by a full-time player is significant enough to impact his yearly bottom-line in a meaningful way.

If some other method of dealer compensation were used (increased rake or time charges), that too would impact his bottom line.

Dealers should earn whatever the market will pay them. If good dealers can be had for minimum wage, then that's what they should get paid. If good dealers cost $40/hr, then that's what they should get paid. That's how the free market works.

The only arguments I'm (currently) trying to make are exactly what you see above in red. If you feel that a full-time player's yearly cumulative tips are insignificant, and that they're only tipping $3 an hour over 1500 hours a year, then please send me an insignificant check for $4,500.

The normal tip in the game I play is $2 per pot and more and more regs are going to $3. Some tip a lot more. I was unsuccessful in coming up with an average pot amount but it's a LHE FR game that plays pretty high when the game is good.


I would like to tip $1 per pot but tip $2 because it's the current norm. sigh.

I hope the dealer sends you guys Christmas cards every year.

This thread seems to be a lot of flaming and fighting.

I'm going to a casino for the first time today.

I'll be playing 1/2, assuming the dealer is competent, around what pot size should I start tipping $1?

The accepted convention for 1/2 and similar buy-in games is:

• Roughly $1 per pot when doing more than stealing the blinds or winning with a flop + c-bet.
• The occasional $5 chip when winning a large pot, all-in, etc.
• Anywhere from 1-10% of jackpot type payouts (royals, bad beats, high hand)

Others may do differently, but this is the analog to tipping the bellhop $1 per bag with a $2 minimum, or tipping 15% pre-tax of your dinner bill for basic service.

Except for the incentive of not getting fired which works just fine across most other industries. I've seen $10/hr supermarket cashiers with more hustle and personality than some dealers, and it's not like unemployment is at an all time low right now.

Sorry if it's been answered, but this question is mostly for Angus, but I guess for anyone else who doesn't toke dealers....do you tip the cocktail waitress for a drink? If yes, what is the difference between a cocktail waitress and a dealer?

I personally think cocktail waitresses have worse attitudes than dealers, and they make over $12hr in Vegas being union ( not including tips obv )....

I just never get how people will always stiff dealers, yet run across the poker room to find the cocktail waitress to give her $1 if they missed her.

Because most poker players, and dealers, are guys and most cocktail servers are females in revealing outfits.

Find where I say I don't tip.

Find where I tell others not to tip.

You can find where I call others out for their misstatements, unsubstantiated claims, insulting behavior, etc.

But, please quote a post where I say I do not tip or think others should not tip.

I've never really understood that reasoning either.

While I understand the concept of the sort of immediate feedback that being a tipped employee can give, plenty of us manage to be productive professional employees without the need for a daily affirmation in the form of counting down our tokes.

True, but your salary isn't based on a sub minimum wage.

But someone argued that paying dealers a fixed higher rate meant they have no incentive to do their job to their upmost ability.....

In two of the largest poker markets, California and Nevada, dealers get minimum wage. In California, that is $8 hr.

no doubt I agree 100% agree with the exception that "real" regs, ie the ones that need poker income, tend to tip less than half of the average recreational player. I don't blame them for it either. The guys constantly at your cardroom to burn time / have fun / who knows can and often do tip well. Either way it is certainly a significant amount but dealers need to be paid whatever they feel is necessary by the market in some way or another.

It seems to me that a lot of people in this thread simply do not understand how the service industry works -- not simply HOW the compensation model is structured, but WHY it is structured that way.

Look, service jobs are just that: SERVICE jobs.

The compensation model is designed to allow those with a strong service orientation to be well compensated and have strong incentive to excel. This benefits customers, employers and the employees themselves. It is a win-win-win situation. That's why the tipping system is ubiquitous throughout the service sector. Other models are easily available: but NOBODY USES THEM, because the current model has produced the best results for this particular employment sector. Rational businesses, rational employees and rational customers have self-selected this compensation model -- across the entire service sector -- because it meets people's needs better than any other.

I don't see the tipping system as problematic in itself.

But in its application to the poker world, it is running into problems these days.

The real problem, as I see it, is simply that there are too many people trying to "play for a living" at the tables. By definition, these people are unemployed, and MUST take large sums of money off the table each day to support their lifestyle. They view the staff not as service-providers, but as competitors for the limited dollars that actual *employed* customers are bringing in the door each day. It is no longer a symbiotic relationship (which is where the tipping model performs best), but a competitive one. As recreational dollars dry up, this situation will only escalate.

The net result of this, inevitably, is that any open-access room with a high population of unemployed "professionals" will inevitably experience a continuous decline in service -- and this is specifically BECAUSE the system works! There is no free lunch, guys! The more unemployed "pros" that a room tolerates, the worse its employees will be paid, and the more the service will degrade. If you want to throw a tantrum and demand even more pay cuts and threaten the staff with firings and replacement and whatever, well, go right ahead. The service will get even worse.

You get what you pay for.

Let's look at it another way:

In *what other industry* do employees take a pay cut for handling bigger monetary transactions? In *what other industry* does compensation INVERSELY CORRELATE to the level of responsibility? This is where the influx of unemployed "professionals" breaks the system, because it CREATES this inverse correlation in the poker world. The more big games you deal, the more "professionals" you serve, the worse your compensation becomes. And it's not just a LITTLE difference, it's HUGE.

This is why professional players are always complaining about the low quality of their staff. This is why break-in's are dealing the big games at the WSOP, while the best dealers in the country are staying home.

Pay should correlate to responsibility.

In the poker world, it is up to the players to make this happen, because tips = pay.

But instead, most "serious" players are now doing the **exact opposite** and then complaining about the results. Apparently, they can figure out pot odds to three decimal places, but can't understand why pay cuts = worse service.

I don't expect the situation to improve.


q/q