Taxes are not owed on any poker tournament winnings that are less than a NET of $5000. If you enter a $1500 event and win $6499, there is no obligation to report the winnings since it is less than a $5000 NET win.

as per the IRS website: Instructions to the casinos when filling out the W2G.

http://www.irs.gov/instructions/iw2g/ar02.html#d0e604


A good accountant can tell you if you tip if the tip deductible. Ask for a receipt.

In fact, get a receipt for all your tournament entries because losses can be used to offset winnings up to the amount of your winnings.

It makes a good argument for chopping to keep yourself below that $5000 NET win threshold.

Come on dealer guy as a dealer u can't make that statement....when I dealt the stiffs used to steam me......and trust me if u show me 5 people 1 out of the 5 is a stiffer I'd pick him out..

And on a side note any dealer that ever complains about getting a red bird should be fired on the spot....I hear and see dealers cry when the get 5 on a 2k plus pot

I consider myself prob in the top 2% of dealers out there $1 or 2 a hand I'm the happiest guy in the world

a little off subject , but.
I deal very few jackpots, years ago i dealt one with a twist...
The guy that won the bid end was very generous with his tip and asked me if i would type him out a receipt acknowledging that i had received "X" amount from him as a gratuity from his portion of the win.
We claim every penny we earn , is didn't see any harm in it, so i did.

it went something like this:

This is to acknowledge that on (date) , I_________ received an amount of $XXX.xx dollars as a gratuity from the winnings of a bad beat jackpot won and claimed by ___________ in the poker room at ________ .

signed and dated

Not sure if it was worth the paper it was written on to the IRS but who knows, never heard of a player asking for a jackpot toke receipt prior to or since then.

I don't. All players are paying my employer to play which entitles them to good and fair service.

Do you really think that when a "stiff" reads a post like yours that he's going to think, "omg, I better tip or I'm gonna get screwed!!"

No. He's going to read it and say, "well, if that's the prevailing attitude amongst dealers, then I'm A-OK with not tipping them"

I am not counting the player that plays once in a blue moon and don't tip I don't consider them stiffs....if anything there the ones that once they find out what tipping is tend to throw a "oh I forgot u a few times" and give u
A redbird...players that don't play I don't consider them stiffs at all

The standard stiff is the guy who rolls in with the backpack(anytime u see a player with a backpack it's $1 at the most) or u see him there 7 days a week and never tip......they are very rare...

And once again there are players out there that will only tip $1 no matter how small or big.....they are not stiffs

Nothing is better then when u see the great tipping reg who comes over the top to snap the out of town trash for all the money that's when u hit the home run

You are doing this by sight. Are you using weight, height, color of hair, eyes, or skin, age, shoe size, clothes color or style or something else? Or you rather not say?

By there posture at the table.....very easy to point it out...but I will say between 5 years ago and now it almost seems like it's proper etiquette to tip the dealers for newbies...

Off topic but it just amazes me how people that play maybe a few times a year come in and can have the balls to just push all in for 450 with air....I really respect that

I know some of my last several posts have been a little harsh but I'm just calling it like i see it.......

I like how you picked the 60k per year number out of thin air. Do the skills of a dealer really command that high of a wage to a casino? Pick a realistic number at least for your example.

After reading a lot of this thread, it makes me want to tip less rather than continue my current tipping habits.

Bleh, that answer is stale.

That's like not telling someone new to restaurants that 20% of the pre-tax total is a good tip for good service, or that the convention is to give $2 to the skycap for each bag.

10% of WSOP entry fees are withheld for overhead. I don't know what percentage of that 10% goes to the dealers.

I tipped a mere 2% of my net win this year, and did the math earlier in this thread that if others did the same, the dealers would have had quite a fine tip.

Ironic, isn't it?

I've spent a lot of years providing the best service I can provide, all the time, to every player, no matter how generous or stingy they've been with the tips. I've treated everyone *far* better than 95% of the staff I've worked with (in fact, a lot of the dealers I've worked with have expressed frustration that I went so far out of my way to serve the *really* bad tippers as well as I did, because most of them don't want their business either. For a long time, I simply believed that consistently good service would ultimately earn both their business and their appreciation in the end -- which, as everyone here knows, is absolutely no longer my position).

Reading the tipping approaches promoted on 2+2 is -- specifically -- what has convinced me to alter my service approach, because there are just so damned many low-level grinders here looking to take advantage. It's not that they don't get it. It's that they DO get it, and they're angling for a permanent freeroll.

So, at least with me now, I'm approaching it the same way the grinders here do: +EV vs -EV.

Here's how it works, for anyone who is not clear at this point:

The establishment pays me to provide a specific level of *basic* service, which I will always provide with a smile and professionalism. Usually that amounts to about 13-15 hands per down, on a long-term average, give or take. Anything beyond that is an extra, and it will be reserved for my better customers, not for the ones who demand 25 hands per down and then look for an excuse to throw cards, behave like children, and drive down everyone's pay.

For the record, for a long time I was one of the holdouts in this industry. I was one of the "good guys". My posts on this thread are to let you guys know that I formally have given up on that approach. You guys win. There is no point in providing good service to people who will not appreciate it and who are only looking for a free ride. Better to reduce their hourly to the minimum and hope they will find someone else's games to camp out in.


q/q

Holy hell, this thread makes me never want to play poker again. Dealer Guy is the only one who redeemsthe profession. The rest of you dealers should find another line of work, you all sound really miserable.

***breaking news***

this just in, people hate their jobs and wish they made more money....

Instead of all that, why don't you talk to your manager? Tell him/her that your tips aren't satisfying your desired wage (provide support for your claims for both) and ask for a raise? Then you will see your true economic value to the industry.

It's simple supply and demand. You offer a service. If you are a ****ty dealer, there are plenty of those; so your supply is large and demand is inversely smaller. Hence, the price for your service will be smaller. If you're a stellar dealer (ie who deals 50+ hands/hour, lets say), there are few of those; so your supply is small, and there is great demand for your service. You can command a higher price for your service because of this.

However, ceilings of demand exist in the economy. For instance, say GE came out with a robot that could basically be your slave and do everything you could imagine for you (including go to work for you, play poker for you, make wise investments for you, etc). The only problem is this robot costs US$20 billion to produce, and that's before profit margins. Now, there aren't a whole lot of people who could afford to pay $20 billion for a robot, nor are there likely many financial institutions willing to provide loans for the purchase of such a robot. Therefore, because of the cost, consumers decide they would simply be better off without that robot. This is an extreme example, but the basic ideas illustrated are seen all the time in business. For instance, you've probably heard of concept cars. Many of these cars never come into production. Why? Because they aren't economically feasible. Likewise, with a dealer who provides impeccable service, dealing a hypothetical 90 hands/hour yet commanding a wage say 5x that of your typical dealer, that dealer is likely to see a price ceiling reflecting the demand for his service.

So, if you're dealing your best, but you've hit a price ceiling reflecting the demand for your service, and that price doesn't satisfy your desired wage you can talk to your market (the players - which I'm taking a wild guess that isn't allowed by your management), which is probably futile as they've likely hit their demand ceiling, or you can talk to your management to ask for a higher wage. As the market is no longer willing to give you any more money, the only place left to find it is in your manager's margins.

So, you talk to your manager and he/she agrees and gives you a raise. You're happy, everyone's happy. Great. But let's say you talk to your manager and he/she agrees, but says they're going to have to up the rake in order to be able to do that. Fine. Now the players will have to pay for the dealers' services in a more egalitarian fashion. With these increased costs to the players, they may decide it's fair and continue playing. Or they may decide "this is bull****" and move on to the nearest card room offering the same service for a lower price. If the latter is the case, your management is to blame. They are either not operating efficiently (including retaining too much profit for themselves instead of sharing with employees), or they are targeting a market that doesn't exist (or is too small) in their area.

Really all you can do is take what you get from the players. If that's not enough, ask your manager for more. If your manager says "no more" you decide whether you would be better off elsewhere. If you decide to stay, you accept your wage. If you can't accept your wage, it's time to leave. If you're in America it's a (sort of) free country. You're free to move along. If more dealers quit, and no one is willing to replace them, then your card room will likely go out of business soon. And that is how a free-market economy works.

Happy 4th of July!

That is true.

Likewise, once the minimum level of service required is met, anything more than that is at *my* discretion. I've done my job, from my employer's perspective.

95% of my customers get that "extra" level, btw (because I don't work in bad rooms, and my customers have always generally been good to me -- the ones I'm talking about in this thread are *far* in the minority, but they are significant to this discussion).

The 5% who do truly kill the game and mistreat the staff, they now get the minimums on my tables and their hourly suffers significantly because of it. I intend that, and I don't apologize for it one iota. Fair is fair.

I'll try adding another thought here (although the mods removed it the last time I tried to make this point, and I don't know if they're willing to reconsider or not -- but imho this concept *needs* to be incorporated into this "bad attitude" nonsense that is going around this thread, and with due respect to the mods it DOES belong in this discussion):

Here's what I want to point out:

* poker rooms work really badly without quality staff.
* poker rooms work really well without professional nits and grinders.

Do the posters to this thread truly understand this?

Gaming businesses do not exist to provide welfare checks for unemployed grinders who take money out the door, hurt the games, and bust out the recreational gamblers who are the core customers for the establishment.

This is the real economic equation, which most posters here are completely missing.

Recreational gamblers are the bread-and-butter of most rooms. THEY HAVE JOBS.

Professional grinders, especially at lower limits, are tolerated as a necessary evil (at best) but are *absolutely never* considered a core group for purposes of the casino's long-term business plan. They contribute very little compared to the damage they do to the games and to the staff.


q/q

Also, just for the record: I love my job, been doing it for a long time, and I intend to keep doing it for a long time to come. Get used to me

q/q

So professional gamblers pay less rake than recreational gamblers?

Actually, yes.

Directly: through much more frequent rake reduction / freeroll requests.

Also indirectly: because they bust players out of marginal games, which reduces the rake paid by recreational gamblers (who might otherwise have simply pushed chips back and forth for hours, which is much more to the house's benefit, rather than having a pro come in and take all their money off the table and out the door).


q/q

Q/q:

It appears you are approaching this more from a "fairness" pov as rather than an economic pov. And your "fairness" argument is punitive, illogical, and hypocritical.

By refusing to do anything "extra" for the minority who doesn't tip, you consequently do nothing "extra" for the majority that does. Therefore, the majority is essentially tipping for nothing, or less than what is typically expected anyway. Basically you're screwing the tippers. How is that fair? But really, shame on the tippers if they continue to tip you for "baseline" service, and more power to you.

Easy solution to your economic problem concerning your consumers: Start charging cover / selling tickets instead of charging rake. Now their style doesn't really concern your poker room, other than good players busting bad players. It would be ideal for poker rooms if everyone broke even. However, this is unrealistic and unpreventable. If your good regs are really in the vast minority, I wouldn't think you'd have much to worry about. If you do have a large proportion of good regs, well they're a large portion of your income and you probably don't want to piss them off. Good regs will go after soft games. If there are too many good regs in one place, others will leave. Supply and demand applies to good regs in the room as well. The free market will eventually reach equilibrium and your poker room will be just like all the other poker rooms out there. That's the nature of the business, barring rare anomalies.

Focus your frustration on your management, not the players imo.

Q: Why are these requests granted?

A: Your management wants them there.

Also, your reg is more likely to re-invest his winnings into the poker economy. Your lucky rec gambler? Forget about seeing that money again, unless you have a sweet bar and restaurant.

Someone else (can't remember who and not interested enough to go back that many pages in this thread) came up with the 60k figure. Not me.

But still, good of you to jump in the middle of a coversation AND get the facts wrong. Two strikes in such a short post. Good job.

Lastly, if you're upset enough over stiffs not getting the same treatment as regular tippers to start stiffing dealers, yourself, then you have issues.

How bout people that deal that I see stiff at the other casinos....true story...if I was a player in a game with a dealer and I saw the dealer tipping $1 and zero that's what he would be getting from now on....what a joke that is

Two strikes? You went with the 60k figure, which in my opinion is entirely unrealistic. I missed the other post, I had read most of the initial pages of the thread before then came back and started from the most recent. All I got wrong was that the 60k wasn't out of thin air. You still used it in your example, and for that reason your whole post is still really unrealistic.

I'm not upset over the regular treatment. It was actually largely dealer attitudes in this thread that turns me off on tipping. A lot of you are hurting your cause... I find a lot of what is posted in this thread fairly disgusting.

General tipping question here. Whats worse, tipping small or not tipping at all? I tip all the time, but usually a dollar or at most two. Judging from the posts here I think people will hate me less if I just stop tipping altogether.

Where exactly did you get the idea that not tipping at all would "hate you less"?
Tipping a buck or two consistently is not going to cause any dealer worth their salt to think badly of you in any instance.

They get paid a wage just like everybody else. If they're not making enough money then they can either get a new job or go back to school.

It shouldn't be our job to pay their wages, that's what rake is for.

I don't tip dealers for the same reason that nobody tips bus drivers or shop assistants.

This is from a UK standpoint - we're not ******ed and don't use tips as an excuse to pay less than minimum wage.