No I wasn't referring to you. I didn't even notice your post about it til you brought it up but it seems like you have the right line of thinking. I am in the business so I see all kinds of people.

Just tonight a waitress who works her ass off 6 nights/week(UUUUGGHHH) got stiffed on a 90 dollar bill. Anyone who knows anything about serving food and drinks for living can relate to this situation. It was a rather slow night and she had people run up a 90 dollar tab and the tab was split and paid for by two people with two different credit cards. Well they both took both copies and the waitress got to wait on them and clean up after them for exactly 2.63/hour.

It could have been an honest mistake or an angleshoot nobody will ever know. The point being if anyone who doesn't tip their server in the good old USA thinks it is justified because of their convoluted beliefs that the person SERVING them could do something else instead of running around and getting them stuff and then cleaning up after them would regularly do it for a nominal wage then they need to get a clue about how things work.

Who wants to go to the Capital Grille and get served by someone making a little bit more than they could make at McDonalds? The experience would be a little different iyam. For the people who want service but don't want to pay for it it is comical hearing your responses. It doesn't phase me. 95 percent of the normal population make up for your cheap asses. Some of the best tips I ever got was from a table over hearing another table(unbeknownst to me until they told me) talking about how friggin ******ed and cheap they are.

Luckily for us in the business there is a very very very small percentage of people who are cheap asses that like to go out to dinner. Most people are great, appreciate good service and they don't mind paying for it.

For a long time I had the mundane task of tabulating the dealer tokes for the week for payroll (our dealers cash in their tokes and get their money on a paycheck, after taxes - not like the good old days when they would get tax free cash at the end of the night).

I got a spreadsheet from the Cage folks and had to transfer the data to another spreadsheet, then send it to payroll. This was an obvious time sink and it sucked, but it showed me that the good dealers DID actually make more than the lousy ones. It did not show me hands per hour, errors requiring floor calls per day, etc. But in general, the dealers who were known to be inferior made less.

Our house does not pool tips in the pit. However, we have recently had a few dealers get nabbed for blatantly stealing by simply dropping chips in their toke box (I won't go into details here). The "word on the street" is that the pit dealers will start pooling if another theft is discovered. This is just dealers screwing themselves in the long run. And the house is justified in pooling here to prevent theft. There's no incentive to steal if it's split among dozens of other dealers.


The worst poker experience I have ever had was at a Detroit poker room (where they pool tips) where the dealer was watching the WSOP re-run on the TV. We had to remind her that the action was done and we needed a flop/turn/river EVERY TIME. She paid no attention at all to the action until we prompted her to do something. It was torture. When my friend and I told the floor guy about it he was like "Ok...., thanks for coming in". I won't go back.

Did I say any different? But your absolute lack of numbers lead me to believe that the difference wasn't huge.



Yes, one of the reasons why the House pools pit tips is to prevent dealers from ripping the House off. It also prevents dealers from "helping" players win in hope of getting more tips.
But you did not answer my point. In the places where they pool pit tips, what is to keep the dealers from getting slow and surly? You know the answer. The House pays attention to the pit dealers and insists on a level of professionalism that they do not insist upon from poker dealers.


So, that proves pooling tips must lead to horrible experiences. Right. Nice example, lousy logic.

"Knowingly employ"? No, I don't employ the dealer. He is supplied by the House at the wonderful cost of $5 a hand. I have no say in his hiring. I have no say in his firing. My one option is to leave the table. That is not an "employee".

And the "service" is to the entire table. Not just the winner of the pot. To be consistent, shouldn't the entire table pay, not just the winner of the pot (perhaps the "tip from the button" method from another thread)?

Your "agreement" is voluntary. Last time I looked, the House does not promise the dealers "players will tip you at least $1 a hand." And there is no sign above the entrance saying "Tipping is mandatory".

Re-post of this question:

- If a tournament takes out a percentage (eg 3%) out of the prize pool for dealer appreciation and you place high in the money (1st or a chop mostly), do you still tip the dealers they way you might if the percentage was not taken out? If so, how much?

I wouldn't tip as much, but I would leave something. Perhaps "catch" (tip extra for a pot) the last couple of dealers during live play.

Several problems.
1) How much House vig? If it is a big number, even though the dealer's don't get any of it, it makes tipping harder.
2) What part of the 3% goes to the dealers? When it is "staff", you might be tipping the TD.
3) It would be nice if the TD could tell you what the 3% translates to per down. If it is $10, then I can see tipping more. If it is $30, I might pass. But a lot of TDs won't tell you.
4) Same with how far your tip goes. If you tip $100, what does that mean per dealer-down?

I wouldn't if it were more than 5%. But i don't enjoy feeling like i'm stiffing dealers, so I don't play many live tournaments.

3% sounds quite low -- I thought most "dealer appreciation add-ons" were quite a bit more. IME nowadays (based largely on Tunica in 2008-09) they rarely force you to pay the tip up-front, but they structure it so that it's pretty much mandatory (e.g., 50% more chips for 20% of a buy-in).

I read like I'm equivocating because I am — I'm trying not to let my own view on tipping affect greatly what I say, because I think that I can advance the discussion more by pointing out flaws in arguments than by making my own.

You want me not to equivocate, to state a clear position? Fine. The moral question is whether there is an implied contract that a player violates by tipping much less (including not at all) than the social norm. Because we're talking about something that in the grand scheme of things is insignificant (distribution of very small amounts of wealth), there's no basis for claiming it's horribly wrong either to tip or not to, unless the player has implicitly promised to do so by playing and is therefore breaking a promise by freeloading.

My view on that is that there sort of is such a promise, such an implied contract... but that that contract is often violated by the casino and the dealer, too. I have worked a service job myself (waiting tables, for years) and I know that it is possible to work speedily and smilingly at a crappy job even on one's bad days, and efficiently and rapidly even when one's boss let's one get away with a lot less. And many dealers don't. I am perfectly comfortable (morally — it's socially uncomfortable a lot of the time) stiffing dealers who are not doing their job well, and that applies pretty often — perhaps one down in two, in my experience. On the other hand, with those who do their jobs well, I follow the social custom and I think it would be (mildly) immoral not to do so, given that I know the compensation model when I sit down to play.

In tournament play the contract tends to be different, because the casino is explicitly claiming to be compensating the dealers adequately — but I know they're really not. And this is messy because the social norm isn't as clear, with for more people declining to tip after tournament wins than would do so at a cash table. I think this is a much harder question.

There. Is this discussion furthered more by my saying that, or by my trying to remind people to be civil? Probably no effect either way, I guess.

Your own argument is crappy, by the way. "When you knowingly employ people to perform labor for you..." — fine and dandy except that I, the customer, didn't employ anyone to perform labor for me or anyone else. I elected to consume a service that is offered me by a commercial entity that I happen to know undercompensates its employees and hopes that I will quasi-voluntarily supplement that compensation. It would be lovely if the situation were as simple as you think, but it just isn't.

I follow the same rule as I do at the poker table, when it's reasonably convenient and I'm not trying to impress anyone. When a serviceperson does his or her job well, I tip at or sometimes above the social norm. When that person does not perform well, which is not uncommon, I tip badly or not at all. The inattentive waitress, arrogant bartender, and surly cabdriver are violating the implied contract as far as I'm concerned, so I feel no requirement to pay them.

How do I decide? Roughly, I guess it's approximately that if as their supervisor I would be pleased with their service, than as a customer I'll tip for it.

There are some situations in which there is no single, well-established social norm — in other words, where tips vary widely. In those cases I wing it, generally tipping only for uncommonly good service. (Example: tipping your mail carrier at Christmas. Some people do, some don't. I don't, because my mail carrier has no reasonable basis to expect it and does nothing particularly special.)

There have been extensive discussions of this problem. One suggestion that's been proffered is to work out, using data you get by asking the tournament director, how much per down the dealers are making from the tournament, and if it's much lower than they'd expect in a cash game (and it almost always will be), to tip the percentage of the price pool that would put them in approximately the same position.

One practical problem with this is that sometimes the amount taken out of tournament winnings get split not just among dealers but also floor people and the like, people who don't have any reasonable expectation of gratuities in a a cash game.

I almost never leave a tournament tip if there is either a dealer AO or a % taken out for the dealers.

Tournament rake is already fairly high, and you can only get nickle and dimed for so much before its so high its not worth playing anymore.

I don't feel like im stiffing the dealers in this case -- if a portion of the part of the prize pool I just won is going to dealer gratuities, i feel like that is my tip.

For example, if I win 10K or whatever in a tourney that has 3% withheld for dealers, I have already tipped $300. Not tipping more on top of that is not stiffing, imo.

The same is true with dealer addons. If the casino raises $x in addons, and i take say second for 10% of the prize pool, i have basically tipped 10% of x sine that money would have gone into the prize pool had it not been reserved for dealers.

3% is used as an example probably because, before the WSOP rolled it into the rake, that was the number they withheld for the dealers.

As far as whether 3% is a lot, it depends on the size and buyin of the tournament. It would have been in the 2mil vicinity for the ME last year.

If youre playing smaller buyin tournaments, a big part of the problem is that the rake itself is usurious. I dont think its reasonable at all, for example, to expect someone to pay a 20% rake plus a 10% dealer addon, then expect them to cough up an additional tip at the end.

One thing that I wanted to chime in on, and this is not only seen in the occupation of poker dealers, but also, waiters/waitresses, bartenders and other people in the service business.

Did you ever notice when sitting at a poker table that the FEMALE dealers will usually make MORE than male dealers? I mean, just because the dealer is female, she might not even be that good of a dealer, but if she is a bit easy on the eyes, and can 'work' the players well, she will make WAY more tips than a GOOD male dealer. I have seen this happen quite often. You'll see players tip female dealers more on pots and even give them a few extra bucks at the end of their down, just because they may have LOOKED good. Yet, these same players will have 3 or 4 other male dealers come through, and barely tip them DURING their down, let alone at the end of their down. And they did just as good a job as the female dealer, perhaps a better job (and talked less, in trying to 'work' the male players at the table) but these guy dealers are getting screwed in my opinion.

It's even more disturbing to see the 'cheap' players as I like to call them, consistently stiff a dealer but when the cocktail waitress shows up with his drink, he will tip the waitress quite well. And, in places where they even charge you for drinks at the poker table, I've seen guys give the waitress $10 for a $6 drink, tell her to keep the change, yet, drag a $600 pot that had 6 players to the river, 2 side pots, the hand took well over 5 minutes and MAYBE tip $1 to the dealer. Tell me that's not messed up?

That's when I usually throw the dealer a dollar or two extra at the end of their down since I think they had way more work to do than that waitress who just delivered that guy his $6 drink and just got a $4 tip for simply handing it to him.

Same goes for bartenders and waiters - who do YOU think is making more money??? The men, or the WOMEN?

I should clarify. I wasn't expressing a value judgment, just saying that i expect tourneys $500 and less* to rarely take a dealer AO as low as 3%, if they take one at all.


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*In other words the kinds of tournaments i'll most plausibly play in the next 5 years. 3% of the WSOPME kitty is nice change, but i don't expect to play the WSOPME soon.

As an aside, by far the most competent dealer in the game i play regularly is a young, somewhat introverted woman whom i find fairly attractive. She runs the game well without being overbearing about it, stacks pots in Omaha 8, takes the rake properly, deals board cards before bringing in bets, and gets out a good number of hands per down even in O8. At Detroit Greektown, all of the above stand out.

I tip her consistently (pooled) and told her the other day that i named her on a customer service survey. I wonder if she thinks i'm just hitting on her.

If dealers ever make judgement calls in the box, they should be disciplined immediately, if not terminated... period. That's the floor manager's job.

FYP based on the impression i have of California poker based on Bart Hanson's podcasts.

Seriously, it's a good point, but dealers report the facts on which the floor bases her decision. Without any ill intent, biased perception can influence reporting of those facts.

All right, I'll try one.

Once a year I play in a weekly tourney at a really small room that isn't in my neck of the woods. The room is filled with the worst players imaginable (not hyperbole) and I've tended to run very well in this tourney (won it twice in like four tries - lol sample size). It is like $150 buy-in and typically gets 30-50 runners.

The dealers are mediocre but do a decent job at managing the game. It is painfully obvious to me, however, that the locals get clear preference from the dealers and the floor. The following situations have occurred in the past:

1. Payout schedules changed mid-tourney upon request
2. Players choosing seats / whether to move when recombining tables
3. A deal being made and enforced when not all players have agreed
4. Allowing "suspicious action" - e.g., throwing out a big chip and after more action declaring raise, going back on verbal action that was "misunderstood"

Basically it plays like a really poorly run homegame.

So let's say first prize is $2k for this tourney. Do you tip the dealers? Floor? How much?

- HF

Then why do you post ITT repeatedly?

I would not be tipping in this case because i would not be playing the game to begin with.

Why would you play a tournament you dont believe is run fairly/honestly ?

Even a poorly run homegame would be more honest than that.

So, you are asking how much you should bribe the staff to bend the rules next time in your favor? Hint: No matter how much you tip, someone else will have more of an "in" with those crooks.

Very poorly run room... don't play there and notify the governing gaming authority.

Meh...not really the answer I was looking for. Clearly it is a poorly run room. I have a once a year fishing trip near here and some friends and I enjoy the tourney. I wouldn't go out of my way to play here, so given that what do we do?

Then enjoy the tourney and tip what you deem acceptable.

I find discussion of nonstandard tipping situations (e.g., tournaments) to be interesting, but not discussion of why i'm cheap or not cheap to tip $1 for a $300 pot.

Mostly, though, i'm just compulsive about replying to 2+2 threads on my thread subscription list and need to find better ways to use my time.

How about tipping the floor staff? what about places like Borgata where it is not allowed?