It isn't my room and frankly don't care enough to make the effort.

This year was no different. Before the tourney started there is 8 at my table and 10 at another. Floor comes up and says "anyone want to move?" I suggest that maybe they draw to see who moves. Blank stare. Other than that no big issues.

I took 4th for $360 and tipped $30 to a dealer I really liked. Her and I had a good conversation throughout the tourney.

-HF

And i agree, i am not an advocate of paying dealers a fixed higher rate. ( with no tokes and higher rake)

And so that leaves 33 that likely dont (as i am aware there are 35 states that have casinos in some form either tribal or commercial).

Regardless, I was just pointing out why position such as those refrenced by Palimax dont "need" daily affirmation in the form of tokes because they are likely (fairly) paid very well to start.

Is it your belief that most service employees are tipped, or that tips make up anything but a tiny, tiny fraction of most service employee's pay?

What does the average Sandwich Artist make in tips per day? How about McDonald's cashiers? Wal*Mart greeters? What percentage of this country's 2.9 million registered nurses depend on tips? How about three quarter of a million nursing home assistants? What do they get in tips?

Sure, there's 4.5 million people working in full service restaurants and 1.5 million people working in hotels, and a some of those people depend on tips (not so much the dishwashers and other behind-the-scenes staff), but they don't hold a candle to the 5 million people in healthcare (few of whom - as a percentage - are doctors), 4 million in non-full-service restaurants (e.g. fast food), 2.5 million people in grocery stores, 2.2 million on physician's offices, 1.8 million in banks, or 3 million people in assorted retail -- most of whom either don't get tips or only get the token tip now and again.

You say that tipping is the best model -- but it's not based on anything.

Would nurses give better performance if someone gave them a dollar every time they helped remove a catheter?

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that dealers don't need their tips to earn a fair wage.

I'm only suggesting that the vast majority of the service sector is able to provide incentive to their employees without an immediate carrot/stick tip model - since the overwhelming majority of service positions either do not receive tips or do not receive tips in any meaningful way.

Apparently you have some serious confusion about the term "service industry employee". Nurses, doctors, etc, are *medical professionals* -- not to be confused with bartenders, waiters, cab drivers and casino dealers.

But by the same token, if casino dealers were paid on the same scale as doctors and nurses, I guarantee your quality of service would improve radically.

Meanwhile, back here in reality: apples and oranges.


q/q

I'm pretty confident I know what nurses do, and I'm damned sure they're service industry professionals, unless they're manufacturing some sort of durable good that I'm unfamiliar with.

[...this post written from the basement of a hospital...]

Registered nurses make (median) $31.99/hour, 66.5k/year before tax, and almost exactly 50k after tax.

What can a good dealer clear after taxes?

I look forward to my radical increase in quality of service.

I was playing at a poker room in south Fla. last week and playing at the same table were 2 dealers from another poker room ... they were both talking about a fellow dealer that had recently been reprimanded at their room for being "TOO FAST".
They both said she was an excellent dealer, but the poker room wanted less hands per hour.

I love fast efficient dealers... so I just don't understand this at all.

Sometimes a fast dealer can be a bit too pushy, especially for a chatty table.

Its best to put the really fast dealers at the LIMIT holdem tables, or NL tables where people arent drinking/talking a lot.

Ive never believed otherwise.

That very well is true, the definition of "service sector" can also include mid to high level professional positions that are compensated well beyond sub or sub minimum wage. I hadn't recognized the sidetrack and point you were making, I was focused on poker dealing where that type of base/keep what you earn is in fact more often the norm.

You probably don't know the whole story. She/he may be moving to fast and thereby making mistakes. Or was so fast it made the old Fla folks uncomfortable and they complained.

I guess this is where I differ in opinion from the mainstream. I believe it would be possible to simply pay poker dealers a fair wage, and then have them go through the same sort of merit and reward processes that other service (and non-service) professionals go through.

You're on Bravo or some other tracking system, and your supervisor knows how many hands per down you get in, he knows what the feedback from customers is, he knows if you show up on time or always beg people to cover your shift, he himself has seen you deal, etc. and then he simply pays you what you're worth -- you know, like everyone else on this planet who doesn't get tipped as the primary portion of their paycheck.

I don't begrudge dealers for wanting to get tipped. I just don't believe that it's the only model that works, or that it somehow must be the best way because that's what we do now.

It all reminds me of the Monkey/Ladder/Banana story. It's, "Hey, this is what we do!" so it's got to be right.

---

I fully understand the tacit agreement to pay your salary, and as member of polite society, I keep up my end of the bargain. I'm not an extravagant tipper, and I'm not a deadbeat. Truth be told, all the Phoenix dealers (except those new to CAZ, where I don't get to very often any more) have probably dealt to me and I've probably tipped you in an unremarkable fashion. I'm just another face in the crowd throwing a buck here, two bucks there, and a red-bird when more than a couple barrels of them change hands.

I just don't like this discussion hinging on obvious falsehoods, like it's the only way to do it, or that the rake would have to be vastly higher then the current rake+tip, or that no tips = bad dealers, or the amount of tips paid is somehow insignificant.

This thread won't change the world. Sure, there's the chance that somebody, somewhere, reads this and then opens their room with different policies, but the city of Las Vegas isn't going to move away from the tipping culture as a result of this.

Until then, keep tipping a buck or two here and then and figure out for yourselves what you want to do when you win a jackpot or cash in a tournament.

The dealers who like to post that we're wrong for having thoughts about anything other than the status quo are doing themselves a disservice. They're only further disenfranchising people who care enough about the subject to engage in lively debate on it.

I feel that way about Pai Gow (tiles) dealers. Every rotation has one 20-something dealer that has her tiles sorted and is stacking or paying hands before I can even figure out what she has.

*flop* *clank* *clank*

Slow down a tiny bit, will 'ya?

I got the whole win rate deal. But he assumed that people that don't tip are broke, cheap, etc. However, it could be they don't like the dealer. I have seen that happen before. A player has a bad history with a dealer and refuses to tip that particular dealer.

It's absolutely your right. As long as you don't start acting unprofessionally at the table, you can think whatever you want about your customers. But you revealed upthread that you do act unprofessionally, so i consider you a disgrace to all the hundreds of professional dealers.

I'd be surprised if there isn't a resounding consensus supporting kaput_25's view. Last night i played in a $1-2 where at least once i saw a bad player tip $5 on a $30 pot.

Agree 100% with the rest of the post.

See, that social pressure is what i have a problem with. I'd be torn between my innate desire to maintain harmony and my principle that this kind of socially-mandated tip inflation isn't acceptable (as well as wanting to preserve my winrate). In the end i hope i'd tip $1 and expect a professional response.

In that a plurality of all players do this, or a plurality of 2+2 posters who tip? Jumping the scale from $1 to $5 seems awfully excessive, at least at $1-2. Anyone who cares about beating $1-2 and tips $5 on a $300 pot (i.e., a $175 win) is pretty silly imo.

OTOH i usually do tip for a cbet, which by definition only happens in a raised pot. I might not tip for a flop lead that takes down a $15 pot.

====
Aside: limit games are much better for dealers, and probably the house. Multiway pots are bigger. Virtually every limit game at low stakes has pots that grow big enough to tip. Too bad NL killed everything else.

+1 . $5 is nuts for someone who cares about his/her bottom line. If you are a recreational player and/or really wealthy and want to show some special appreciation to the dealer, by all means, CARRY ON.

Any more or less silly or detrimental to the bottom line of a 1/2 grinder than tipping $1 a hand?

For what it's worth, I said is that the normal convention - the sort of thing you'd explain to people who wondered how much to tip skycaps and maids - is that you basically tip $1/hand for anything more than blind steals and c-bet wins, and that occasionally $5 would be appropriate on large pots or all-in sort of pots -- not every time, and not every time it hit $300.

---

Unrelated, last night I played a fairly active game in a new city (1-3 PL Big O/8 - with all players voluntarily straddling $6 UTG) and the convention seemed much higher - shipping back about $1 for each $200 shipped up to about $5/hand, with the average at $2/3 - with both the high and the low tipping.

Obviously my sample size is low, and new players to the game could choose to do what they wanted, but only rarely did I see a single $1 chip go toward the dealer.

It's true, I'm sure i don't know the whole story.... but when they started talking about it, I thought the same thing you did and asked if she was making mistakes, they both said "No..." one said " she is an excellent dealer" (as I quoted in my post) and the other agreed. I don't know if she was making the old timers feel uncomfortable (since I just became eligable for AARP, I'm not sure if I use the term old timers correctly). but the gist of what the two dealers were saying was that the house in question likes a certain number of hands per hour, and they don't like it when dealers are too slow, or TOO FAST.

back to tipping.

I usually try to tip about up to 3%,

but sometimes it seems like on the small - med pots, that's hard to do. (i.e. you rake in a $25 pot in 1/2, ( maybe $12 to $15 profit,), I would feel wrong not tipping, but even a $1 tip is a lot on $12 profit

So... a friend that I occasionally play 1/3 PLO with, showed me that he keeps track of his winnings per dealer, ( adds up his stack when they start, and again when they leave) and just gives them an ~3% tip when they're shift at our table is over. He always tips something, win or lose, but if's he's losing he tells them why he's tipping so small.

I like that idea.

any thoughts?

I can "act" any way I please, as long as I don't compromise the integrity of the game or violate any of our policies.

I'm not going to go out of my way for some cheap ass who refuses to tip. I love watching a non-tipper struggle to reach halfway across the table to pull in their pot. I love it even more when someone else busts them. The worse beat, the better. I remember a particlar non-tipper go through 3 $300 buy-ins at a 1/2 game in 30 min. I hope the little punk couldn't afford to pay his rent. He did nothing to help me pay mine, so I wish nothing but bad things for him financially.

Some dealers here may pretend to brush it off, but you guys don't hear what is said in the break room. I'm the disgrace? I'm one of the few that is being 100% honest on this matter.

Some of the "professional" dealers in this thread are doing a fantastic job of reminding people why they deserve our gratitude.

It's nice to know that at least some of the time, as a paying customer, how I'm perceived by the people whom I pay for for nothing except their service.

I'm hoping we can bait dhal into telling us where he deals so we can all go stiff him. We can also slow the game to a crawl by waiting for our pots to be pushed before we release our cards and calling the floor every time he pulls one of his little stunts. The house will be delighted to have a dealer getting out 3 hands a down.

Yeah, I'm going to go with "Man of great convictions, except when the rubber hits the road."