If I can make another small point .. and I'm not really sure what side this advantages ..

You should really consider the 'value' of a tipped system from the employer side. An employer 'may' be able to take care of a Dealer's base wage within their system. But as noted above, they can provide 'more' of an opportunity for the better Dealers to make hay via the work schedule.

An employer can justify paying certain employees more wages based on their results (or whatever) without changing their whole business model. But force them to make 'across the board' changes and it makes it unavoidable to not address the model in a similar fashion.

Lots of analysis is done on a percentage basis. If your base wage is X and you're business model is set up that you're looking for 3.5X in sales/revenue/rake of that wage then you undoubtedly need to increase 'rake' in order to maintain that business model.

If you can maintain your average base wage with the good and bad, then you don't need to change your revenue structure .. unless you get greedy, so to speak. GL

Is that what happened? You told him that his perception is off. That is your claim to back up if you want to, but he does not owe you research.

I do think tips prevent dealers from enforcing rules sometimes.

Played in Montreal where it was 15$ max per hand. Dunno how the low stakes games still run but they provide good experience and excellent dealers. I think I tipped on top of that.

Fair enough. I'll amend my comment by removing the part about his perception being off and instead just request that he substantiate his assertions about fast food restaurants and big-box retailers. Now that is his claim to back up if he wishes to.

I think it's fair to say that if you are a regular at an establishment that you can make some 'decent' assessments of employee turn-over.

As more and more 'older' workers seem to be working the food industry it may not be as prevalent as before, but when I worked in the food industry there was always 'April and August agony'. Those are the months when employees turn over the most due to college/school schedules.

In 1998 when I had 82 employee positions, I cut around 340 W2s that year and only about 25-30 of those employees worked all 12 months.

While I'm certainly one to love facts/trivia I don't see as much of a 'need to prove' a generalized statement. Perhaps he should've just indicated that McDonalds 'probably' has a higher turnover rate than most other companies based on his experience via the drive through.

Shoot, a card room may have tremendous Dealer turnover and I may never know about it since all the Dealers start on over-nights when I don't play/work. GL

I Google'd "McDonald's Turnover Rate" and the leading result says 150%. Here's an article about why the turnover rate at fast food restaurants is so high. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/29/fast...very-year.html





Adding the bit about going to Europe was foolish on my part because it sounds extravagant. So I'll back up my argument a bit and then try to flesh out what I really mean. Here's the basis of what I believe.

1. Being a poker dealer should count as a valid career option. Not a "job" but a "career".

2. There's been a real problem in this country with separating the upper class from the lower class, and eliminating most of the middle class. From the end of WW2 and all the way into the 1970's, it was perfectly reasonable to believe that you could have a blue collar job and raise a family, own a house, and send your kids to college. For that matter, you could do it with one breadwinner in the family while Mom would stay home and take care of the kids. Today this is simply not the case.

3. I realize that we're not going to fix the economic class system of the USA here in this thread, but since you're asking me what I think, what I think is that being a dealer does require a certain amount of training, and more importantly, a certain amount of on-the-job seasoning in order to achieve an acceptable level of competence. Dealing poker isn't as complex as being a doctor or an accountant, but it's a lot harder than working a cashier at McDonald's or Starbucks (I did work a cashier one summer when I was 17 years old). And I get to see entry level poker dealers who are terrible at their job when they start and many (but not all) of them develop into decent dealers within 6 months to a year. And then there are some dealers who don't have the skill set to ever reach an acceptable level of competence.

So, yeah, the basis of my whole argument is, let's make sure poker dealers are reaching a baseline of pay that allows them to raise a family, send their kids to college, and also spoil themselves with something nice from time to time. Just like it was possible for Ralph Cramden to do back in the 1950s, and he was driving a bus for a living.

Are poker dealers expendable? I don't think it's as black and white as you seem to suggest. I do know that right now there's plenty of dealer jobs available all over the country. A trained, experienced dealer could walk into my room today and get hired immediately. That wasn't the case 10 years ago. I do think that they're less expendable than you probably believe.

As for McDonald's, I don't have a problem with paying a 17-year-old kid minimum wage or close to it to work 10-20 hours a week and do the most basic of labor. But if McDonald's is going to be looking at hiring actual adults and putting them on the schedule for 40 hours/week, then I'd like to see them getting paid at least $20/hour.


There are at least a handful of people posting in this thread, and I promise I'm not always keeping track of who's who. We've got one guy who's enthusiastic about the notion of never tipping again once poker dealers get to $15/hr because that's approximately twice what minimum wage is. To which I replied that when poker dealers are all making $15/hr, they'll all quit within a month.

Now you've moved the goalpost to $30/hr.

Is $30/hr more or less than what I make now? I turned in my dealer shirt for a suit years ago and I don't get tipped at all. And I'm not going to tell you what my paycheck looks like. What I will tell you is that plenty of dealers currently make more than $30/hr, many make less than $30/hr, and if all dealers were to suddenly have the opportunity to start at $30/hr with the opportunity to get an annual increase to keep up with the cost of living, you could have a sustainable workforce of trained/experienced dealers in place.




Let's start with the last sentence first. $30/hr is not straight up crushing it for anyone trying to make a career out of what they do 40 hours/week. $30/hr is $60,000/year. Living in South Florida and supporting a family on 60K is a struggle. Sending kids to college without financial aid or student loans is just about impossible. In order to be "straight-up crushing it" in this market, you'd have to be making about 200K a year, minimum, and I know zero poker dealers who earn that. And 200K a year is probably a low estimate.

As for your simple solution, lots of things are simple when you're looking at it from the outside and have given little thought to what's going on from the inside.

The casino where I work has the following jobs (this is an incomplete list):

Poker Dealers
Poker Brushes
Casino Cage Cashiers
Retail Shop Cashiers
Security
Surveillance
Player's Club Reps
Servers
Cooks
Slot Technicians
Housekeepers
Bartenders
Casino Hosts
Hotel Desk Reps

I don't know how much all of these jobs pay, but just about all of them begin at somewhere between $5/hr and $10/hr plus tips or between $12/hr and $15/hr without tips. Now you're coming in with a "simple solution" (yes I intentionally used quotes) to get poker dealers up to $30/hr without tips. How is your idea going to fly when it gets to the finance department? How are you going to explain to the heads of department of food and beverage, cash ops, and housekeeping that poker dealers are now getting 600% raises but that the employees in their departments are going to be receiving the same wages as before?

I think "butter boy" just got struck by a fierce "bolt of lightning"!!!

Excellent summary and explanation bolt!

Thank you. It would be interesting to see what percentage of that number are teenagers because I'd imagine that taints the number significantly and they are not a valid demographic for these purposes.



So basically you're saying everyone should be paid a good wage regardless of education and training because "the man" is hoarding too much from his peasants?

Maybe so, but Vegas was built from one casino back in 1930 or so, and look at it today. Lots of money there - very profitable business model.

You have no issues with stepping on the neck of the bus owner to pay his employee a living wage, yet you think it's totally fine that the multi-billion dollar casinos pressure patrons to pay you your living wage.


Do tell. I can count up to single digits of exemplary dealers for technical mixed games for the entire West Coast region.



So you do think digging ditches should come with a 401k with matching, PTO, 2-week rolling vacation, so long as they are an adult?

From the article you cited, all those fast food gigs will be robots in the future. What then?



Some other poster said he'd stop tipping waitresses if they were making $15/hr because it's more than double the minimum wage. You said every dealer you know would quit, and I simply asked you which gigs would they go to if all service jobs did not allow tipping, so I didn't move any goalposts. I've always, for years, said at least $25/hr. This go round, I gave you a raise to $30/hr.


Now you're equivocating. How can we get to the bottom of things if you obfuscate?


Why not?


Lots of people with 4 and 6 year degrees earn less than $30/hr, so yes, no education and no special training and making $30/hr pitching cards is indeed crushing it.


None of that other **** matters. We're talking about getting pokers dealers to $30/hr without exorbitant rake increases and without costing the room more money in paid wages. This is simple to do.

People who dislike the tipping system almost certainly tip less than average, so they actually benefit from it compared to an across the board rake increase.

Yes, I think that pretty much everyone should be paid a good wage. Maybe I'm a socialist. I'm not okay with anyone working hard at their full-time job, whether it's digging a ditch, driving a bus, or pitching cards, and not being able to have a decent place to live and able to put food on the table for their family. If it's a teenager who lives at home and works part-time at a fast food joint, I'm okay with paying considerably lower wages. And if it's someone with no work ethic who thinks he should be paid just for showing up, I'm fine with firing the guy and him not having a job at all.




By definition, the word "exemplary" suggests that there shouldn't be a lot of dealers who can reach that level of proficiency.


Yeah, if the ditch-digging company is making a profit, then they should see to it that their employees are taken care of. When I read articles about WalMart employees who work full-time and also get food stamps it makes me angry. Especially when you consider that the #10, #11, and #12 richest Americans are all named Walton.

And when fast food gigs are replaced by robots, they'll get new jobs. Hardly anyone works as a lamp-lighter, a horse and buggy driver, or a milk-man these days. Nobody worked as a computer technician or as a call-center rep 100 years ago. I've got no problem with technological progress.



I don't know what gigs they'd all go to. Some of them would be Uber drivers. Some would sell insurance. Some of them would try to become professional poker players. People leave service jobs all the time and go into other fields.




How is my own paycheck going to get us to the bottom of things. I'm just one guy who hasn't pitched cards for a living in over two years. And even if I was still an active dealer, I'd still be one guy. And I'm not going to share my personal financial information with you because the thought of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.




Nobody with a 4 or 6 year degree with a decent work ethic, and employed in the field in which they went to school for should make less than $30/hr. I'm all for lifting everyone up to more meaningful wages. I'm not about reducing the wages of teachers, technicians, or social workers in order to get better pay for poker dealers.




I still scoff at the notion that this is "simple to do". Nonetheless, I personally don't care whether my wages are handed to me by patrons or if they're filtered through my employer. At the end of the day the patrons pay the casino's bills, including payroll. If the casino plans to increase rake, charge an entrance fee at the door, or pass a collection jar around the room in order to pay the dealers, it's all the same to me.

Maybe you are a socialist or more. Have you thought about how this particular model isn't feasible in a capitalist society?



And that's why they get $50/hr from me when they are in the box - win or lose. And isn't that what it's all about - being paid solely based on performance and not some arbitrary, nonsensical, grounded in superstition/karma bullshit of, "Hey, I won a pot, let me give my lucky dealer some cheese" and then not giving anything when you're getting your nuts kicked in. Makes no sense.



Not to get too outside of the scope here, but they're exploited and paid **** so you can save money on your items. Do you not patronize Walmart because you're against their business practices? How about Amazon? You can't have it both ways.

Ah, yes, the middle-age truckers with no education will become coders, right?


Yeah, and after finding out that they're getting their nuts kicked in driving for Uber, they'd be right back at the cardroom, happy to make $15/hr pitching cards.

Q: How does a professional poker dealer get a million dollars playing poker full-time?

A: Start with a bankroll of two million dollars



You're conflating one question I asked with another. If you're not going to disclose how much your dealers make per hour on average, then we can't establish what a sufficient base pay is.

As for your salary, not sure why that would leave a bad taste in your mouth.


Where does all this money come from to lift everyone up?



It is simple to do. You say dealers make $5/hr? Keep the time/rake the same and collect $3 from each player per hour. 9-handed = $32/hr, and all the stiffs have to pay their fair share, and dealers don't have to push another 1000bb pot and be steamed when he or she collected air and have their focus be on the tip instead of the next hand they're supposed to be dealing.

If you want to play whaddabout, we can do that, but this is a good starting point.


You see, you want everyone to be lifted up and paid a good wage, yet you don't care where it comes from, and you work for a billion dollar company.

Holy cow this thread is long. I don’t want to debate whether the tipping system is flawed or not - I think both sides have a point.

I have determined that I want to tip the dealer, and I want to do it $1 for pots greater than a certain size and increase the tip nonlinearly.


$1 for pots > $20 = 5% or less
$2 for pots > $50 = 4% or less
$3 for pots > $100 = 3% or less
$5 for pots > $200 = 2.5% or less
$10 for pots > $1000 = 1% or less

I have not gone through the entire thread, but does the above seem reasonable, or too low/high?

Tip whatever you feel the dealer is worth to you. I have dealers that I tip $25 at the end of their down even though they never pushed me a pot.

The difference between a $20 check and a $200 check at the same restaurant requires more work, so a percentage makes sense. Two short stacks going in on the flop or two large stacks going in on the flop are roughly the same effort for the dealer.

If a bigger pot makes you inclined to tip more, then do it; if a smaller pot makes you inclined to tip less, then do it, but my tip amounts are based only on dealer performance.

Yup, the other common tipping strategy is a fixed amount regardless of pot size. I was more wondering whether I’m too out of whack or not, and whether it would eat too much into my win rate

Sorry I’m trying to find the answer to this.. it’s a long thread.

How much do you think the average dealer makes in tips per hour (on average) ? 1-2 no Texas holdem.

$3.50

Before or after they blow a chunk of it at the tables after their shift?

You're never going to get an honest answer to that question. Dealers here are either very guarded with how much they make a year in tips or imply they're starving.

If you play 1/2 and are really interested, then keep track of what dealers are pocketing and after a lot of data points, you should be able to have a good idea.

Agree unlikely to get an answer. Partially because I suspect it really varies. By locale and by dealer.

Frankly I don’t worry about it. They don’t know what I make and I don’t know what they make. But as long as they are ok with their pay, it is not my concern. If they do have issues that they can’t work out, then if they choose to enlist my aid I will seek that info.

If you are interested because you want to become a dealer, talk to some dealers where you intend to start. Talk to the room mgr (during an interview). Or as mentioned keep track and count the tips you see. Keep in mind that the rate will likely vary game to game, table to table and day to day. So tracking a couple of hours on a single day may not get a good average. Also don’t forget dealers can spend much of their time not dealing cash games. They deal tournaments, brush, have dead spreads, close down tables, open tables, etc. Those are often untapped time or tipped at a lower rate.

I don't fully understand why other dealers are so offended when one of us says what they make but I respect their wishes.

There is a ton of variance. I'm making decent money right now but was making literally half as much at the job I took at another casino before my old one re-opened. Big, well known casino that is not easy to get a job in.

In my room there are slower dealers who EO a lot who probably make half what I do and fast, attractive women who make more than I do.

I’ve met dealers who swear it’s impossible to make more than 100 dollars regularly. I’ve met others who are disappointed making 200 dollars. I think ~20 an hour including breaks is about the average, with a lot of variance in between.

This thread has been a bit dormant lately, but yes, it's in here 'somewhere' .. pre CV.

I can tell you that in a typical casino setting a Dealer will make a wage that technically includes tips. Per an agreement with the Feds you are paid an 'inflated' wage that assumes you are going to make an average of 'x' tips 'per hour'. You are taxed on that assumption whether or not you actually do collect those tips.

My experience indicates that 'happy' Dealers make $8-12 per hour over that wage. But hold on, it's pretty rare for Dealers to work a full 40 hour week unless it's an above average sized room. There are also days when you go in and don't get any work if you draw the wrong card .. ie, they bring in 6 Dealers but send 2 home due to the room being slow at the time.

I can also tell you that almost every Dealer I've ever talked to would gladly take $1 per hand dealt over working through the stiffs v over-tippers .. at the 1/2 level. You also want to get proficient at the mixed games, especially PLO middle stakes since that is where I've seen the least amount of tipping variance of any game/stake I've played.

I play in Charity rooms where they only work for tips and seen anywhere from $8-$30 per down for the same amount of action. HUGE Dealer bias.

Be advised to take the advice seen here, but my Rule #1 is to go play and watch it for yourself. Both Dealers and Floors may 'accidentally' overestimate if they are short staffed. Also be aware (ask) about how the introductory period and shift assignments work. In a decent sized room you may start (be stuck on) shifts that have low traffic and a high chance of being sent home .. and then also be expected to show up for the tournaments when needed.

While it definitely risks your gaming license in most jurisdictions, LOTS of Dealers will work a home game 1-2 nights a week and make 50-100% of a week's casino pay in one night. But gaining those gigs also take time and patience to earn your way into them.

Definitely no firm answers here .. $25-30K, sure .. $50K, possible 'off paper' (32hr @ $30/hr). Remember you get to keep your 'extra' tips tax free, so each $1 is like $1.25 in your pocket.

Is there 'better' gigs out there, I think so, but as most questions in poker go .. "It depends." GL

Lots of things that don't match my experiences here...

The thing about reporting a set amount to the IRS is true for many rooms but not all. It's called tip compliance and you want to work somewhere that does it that way if you have a choice.

I live in an area with a heavy home (underground, really) game presence and the number of dealers working them and my room is fairly small. It certainly happens, but we're talking like 10% of the dealers. The money in those can be very good but so is the hassle and risk.

All dealers will tell players who ask they're happy with $1/hand, but money doesn't go as far as it used to. I need the average to be higher than that to feel like I want to keep this job.

PLO has by far the highest tip variance because hands take FOREVER and players often forget or only toss $1 after an 8 minute long hand. But once in a while someone will stack half the table in one hand and toss a couple of green chips.

Mid limit games are the most consistent. Hands are very fast and almost everyone tips a buck or two. Sometimes the big games tip a set amount per down during time collection which is good if it's a reasonable number. It isn't always.

You should learn to deal all games, but mostly because you'll have to know them to work in some rooms. Life sucks when you get tossed on a game you aren't comfortable dealing, especially at higher limits. Those players can be brutal.

The number of hours you get and whether you get sent home after an hour doesn't seem to depend on the size of the room. It's how the management feels about dealers. One big room I worked in I never got sent home early and often had to sign the EO if I only wanted 8 hours. The other big room was happy to over-schedule and toss us on dead spreads because they knew our hourly was costing them almost nothing. When they decide to close the dead spreads we get sent home. In my current smallish room I average around 45 hours.

I'm more likely to forget to tip at all in a long or big hand because I'm so focused on action. Though nowadays I'm more trained to putting a chip or two on my cards as I give them to the dealer.

I'd rather pay them $1 per hand, played as a $1-$1-$2 game- where the dealer pays the dealer tip every hand of $1. anything extra is appreciated, but that would be a really good deal for everybody.

I've been having a discussion with other poker friends who play in US card rooms/casinos about tipping dealers when winning promotional money.

One place was having a high hand promotion for $2000.00.

What do y'all think is a fair dealer tip for a card room that you frequent often, and the dealer's doing a good job?