Yeah I sort of get your point but as always with 2+2 everything needs to said in the extreme. "Patently absurd" and "primary care vs. auto mechanic", c'mon dude. I'm sorry but you don't have such a specialized skill set that is so different from the poker room manager or frankly anyone who works at the casino to make that analogy. You are all in the service industry and can handle the request.

When I worked as a prosecutor and someone came in and asked about a case I was not involved in and what time it started/what room it was in I didn't view the request as "patently absurd" and beneath me simply because it was best handled by the court clerk. I understood that I was effectively on a team with everyone in the criminal justice system and looked to help the person out. That's basic customer service.

What if someone had asked you what time a case started while you were in the middle of giving your summary to the jury in another case?

Come on, dude. Just get up and change the tv.

This excerpt is why your analogy fails. Asking a dealer to change the channel on a TV isn't asking them to do something "best handled" by someone else. It's asking them to do something they can't do, hence asking a doctor performing the duties of a DMV customer service person in my analogy.

If the dealer had a remote next to him and were permitted to take his/her eyes off his/her bank in order to change the channel, that'd be a different story.

I don't know what the normal procedure is in most rooms, but in the two local rooms I've played a great deal at, the process for getting a channel changed on the TV was for a player to ask the dealer, the dealer would hit the button to call for a brush or a floor, who came to the table where they took the request from the player. Then the brush or floor would find the remote and change the channel. No one really expected a player to get up from the table to go ask a floor.

So I don't really see this line of argument of "don't ask the dealer to change a channel because it's not their job". It's not their job to bring players drinks either, but players ask dealers to push the waitress button. We never tell them to get off their ass and go to the bar yourself.

"Can you have someone change the channel on the TV to the game?"

The issue is the bold part. It's normally left out as well as the Player just doesn't seem to understand that there's a process and it takes more than a magic wand (or more than 10 seconds) to preform.

The 'exaggerated' comments are to enhance the illogical expectations that anyone in today's world runs into in any profession. People just don't think twice about what, and more importantly who, they are asking for assistance about.

The fact that you can point them in the right direction is irrelevant when they are taken aback at your 'inability' to take care of it yourself 'right now'. GL

Yeah these responses are misinterpreting what I asked and the assumptions a lot of you are making are a little less than charitable. I didn't ask the dealer herself to physically change the TV station (and FYI you need a remote so I couldn't do it myself). The dealer is in a better position to know the logistics of who/when to ask. I was simply using the dealer as the intermediary.

Just like if I have a problem with my food being undercooked, I use the waitress as an intermediary to address. I don't expect her to go back and get on the grill.

Bingo. A guy who gets it.

I literally think this once an hour as I walk around the room and pick up after all these lazy ****s that think playing poker is as excuse to not clean up after yourself.

The fact that this is a room with a Bravo or similar where the dealer pushes a button to call the floor is relevant here. I don't understand why the dealer wouldn't just push the button for a silent floor call and let you handle it with the floor without slowing the game down. I would just politely ask, "Don't you have a button to call the floor?" not add it to my list of grievances (granted you only mentioned it for background but you seemed to have felt some lingering animosity).

Hope you saw my comments upthread about appearing sour and vindictive. Introspection will do more for your happiness than saving the $2 AND getting to color up your next 50 racks of red at the table, combined.

This whole TV change debate is getting a little silly IMO. I'm sure OP didn't literally want the dealer to change the channel herself. I'm sure both sides could have handled it differently. OP could have just walked up to the floor for the request. Dealer could have called the floor or pushed the button. Much ado about nothing.

(An aside...I tell all my dealers to never bother with the button; just call out loud for me. If you really need me I'll hear your verbal call long before I see the icon come up on a screen I might not even have on top of my monitor.)

Dealing with TV channels in the poker room are a pain in the ass TBH. We have great TVs in our room, but just 5 that are prime for watching. So many players only worry about what they want to watch. It bothers me to no end when a player needs a game on THAT screen when it's already on a screen that he has to move his head about 10% to see. I joke that one day we'll have an IPad at every seat so you can watch whatever you want. You should have seen it when our DirecTV feed lost ESPN, ESPN2, TNT, Golf Channel and our local NBC Sports channel for about 10 days.

I think we've confirmed two things:
1) OP is mildly annoying and tips poorly
2) Dealer is mildly unpleasant and may be ramping it up due to #1

You can try to repair the relationship which might not work, you can complain to management which also probably won't work, you can find a new place to play, or you can just deal with the slights and focus on your game.

This was actually my other question, Reducto, so appreciate the natural transition.

I'm (almost) exclusively a cash game player and have the following rough formula for how I tip:

Pot <$10 = No tip (basically if I win pre-flop w/o a 3-bet)

Pot between $10 and $200 = $1 tip

Pot between $200 and $500 = $2 tip

Pot >$500 = $5 tip

I'm less interested in the subjective "You tip too little" or "You tip too much" and more interested in where folks think I fall in the range of most players. Let's do a 1-10 scale with 1 being a guy who doesn't tip and a 10 being a guy who tosses the dealer $15 when he wins a $50 pot. I don't pay all that much attention to what others are tipping and obviously only have experience playing in certain parts of the country.

Hell, I'd call that an eight personally.

And the tv thing is not just poker rooms. I go out drink alot, definitely way too much, but I always want something on reasonable. It is always a pain to get any tv changed to anything I've found.

Well, you defined the endpoints for the population so obviously you fall somewhere in the middle. I'd guess you're around the median of the distribution, so call that a 5.

I find it simpler to base it on the action:

• zero if there's no flop (or stud 4th street or draw)
• generally $1 if there is. This includes chopped pots.
• probably $2 if I feel like I won a "big pot" (whatever that means to me at the time, see below).

Philosophically I don't think anyone should really feel stiffed if they're getting $1 per hand because $30-40 per hour is a pretty decent wage. (I know, discounted for dead spreads/early outs/etc.) I'm not tipping $5 (1%) of a $500 pot. I'm somewhat on the cheap side, probably around 25th percentile for semi-serious players.

Basically my feelings on "big pot" are extremely subjective and contextual but don't scale linearly with the stakes. Te biggest I play is usually $20/40 limit or rarely shortstacking $5-5 PLO. I.e. tip $2 at about $300 (7 big bets) in $20/40, which is a medium sized pot for the stakes. If I played more $40/80 or $5-10 NL I'd probably tip $2 most pots with a flop and maybe $3 at like $600 or 700 (7 to 9 big bets). I love my dealer friends but don't see much reason to go above that until I hit nosebleed stakes. But I'm told at nosebleeds they're as cheap as I am.

My relationship with the dealer and how much I'm winning count toward my big pot subjectivity but the first $1 is pretty much always a given if there's a flop. I can count on one hand the dealers so bad that I stiffed, and that was in pooled-tokes rooms.

In split pot games (or even single pot games) always at least $1 on halves but not for quarters.

Also the Seattle area is headed for $15 minimum wage so it seems a little weird to keep tipping the same amount but so far no one seems to change their habits including me. So I guess it's a good place to deal now?

Your tipping methodology is perfectly fine.

Appreciate the thoughts.

Lol people in this thread still have a tip scale in their mind according to pot size?? How about tip bigger if the dealer is cool/good, less or none if they suck/rude. Also, the time a hand takes means way more than pot size if you're going to have a sliding scale.

I guess I'm lol but its easier for me to use pot size since when in a hand I have difficulty judging how much time has passed.

Pot size is usually a pretty good indicator of both A) how much time the hand took, and B) how much effort was required to deal the hand and manage the bets/pot.

Racks and food/drink containers don't go on the floor? What is this, COMMUNIST CHINA?

It's no wonder more and more casinos are either getting rid of poker rooms altogether or experimenting with the switch to electronic tables. Poker makes the casino the least money of all of the games, I believe casinos only keep it around for the degens who punt money off in the pits/slots, but are there in the first place because they believe they have an edge in poker. If every player was a backpack-wearing, waterbottle-carrying, TV channel-complaining douchebag that grinds 8 hours a day and uses the comps to go get a free sandwich afterwards (and probably not tipping the deli person), casinos would have literally no reason to keep poker around.

Poker players really are a special breed. They are so entitled and whiny, and think they deserve to be catered to. People in the pits, who make the house way more money, don't get to sit on their phones, watch TV, eat at the table, etc. And then you all argue like a bunch of high school kids about why or why not you should toss the dealer a buck after winning a hand. FFS, the dealer is just there trying to make a living, it's not their fault tipping culture exists and the casino doesn't pay them right.

People who take jobs with the expectation that tips will be a non-negligible portion of their compensation are indeed responsible for perpetuating tipping culture.

Interesting. I've never thought about it that way before. I think of myself as a customer who, based on the daily spam I get to my email inbox from the casino, is valued. I've never thought to compare myself to other customers who may be more valuable and thus not expect good service.

I think the relevant comparison is poker rooms at different casinos, since if one casino's poker room is not fulfilling my needs, I' will choose another casino poker room vs. choosing to go to the pits.

Poker rooms may not be the most profitable in and of themselves, but casino owners are no dummies, and obviously many see the benefits of having them or the space would be allocated differently. As such they need to be competitive with customer service to poker players or else lose them to other rooms.

Maybe you have an unreasonable expectation of what good service is. Penny slots players shouldn't expect the same level of service as people playing the biggest slots in the room. Poker players, even if they are playing huge pots worth several thousands of dollars, are closer to penny slots players rather than $25 slots players in value to the casino. And when I say closer, I mean, possibly worth less.

Also, players at higher stakes sometimes think they deserve a higher tier of service than players playing the smallest game in the room. If enough of them blow sufficient money in the rest of casino, then maybe the poker-only players are being subsidized by the casino whales, but the small game makes more money for the poker room directly than the bigger game.

If poker rooms were filled with players who only played poker and did no other gambling, the rake would probably have to go up.