I would think that in places where it's not allowed, the decision isn't a very hard one.

Okay, Bad Beat Jackpot hits for 80K. Hand Loser gets 40K hand winner gets 20K and each or the other 7 players get just under 3k. BB winner is a Doctor but not a regular. In fact he is in on vacation w/ wife and family. He fails to tip anything. (He had been an ass all night and he also was drinking. The 20K winner tipped 600 or 3% and each of the others (5 or 6 of whom were regulars tipped 275 or there abouts.
I know that the Winner was an ass**** but was the 20K winner too giving or too stingy. 600 seems like a lot of money. That player also hung around a while, (the Doc got the money and split) ordered a round for the table and tipped the waitress 30 bucks.

Everyone at the table seemed to tip on every hand at least a buck so the dealers had to be getting decent money and I saw a few guys on big pots throw the dealer five.

As a newbie I always get nervous about being too cheap or too generous. I want to get it right. With the understanding that A. I will probably never be at a BBJ winning table again, and B. That I know I can tip as much or as little as I want. I am looking for a range.

Thanks

imo there's no implied contract with respect to bad beat jackpots, because it's clear that no dealer is relying on the probability that one hits at his table as any significant element of his compensation and because they don't hit often enough for there to be a well-established social norm. I think any tip greater than zero is just someone being nice, rather than adhering to any applicable convention.

In other words: the winner wasn't an *******. The guy who paid $600 wasn't so much overtipping as giving a moderately large gift.

$600 seems like a lot i got like 12.5k in a bbj hit i tipped dealers like $200 thats a good gift imo it was like 4am didnt really put much thought into an exact number

i dont see where tipping the floor staff would ever make sense, even in a place where its allowed, dealers its like meh I guess they are performing a task continuously for us, a service, but the floor 90% of the time is just standing around or talking to the overflow of other floor people. Also you would tip all the floor? theres usually a few... I dunno... I just tip $1 a hand in cash and maybe I would 1% on a big tourney win but even 3rd or 2nd i wouldnt tip much and on a ft chop maybe id tip half a % or smthing

On a 50-25-25 split, with 9 players, a "table share" is 3.57%. Plus, everybody gets paperwork to report the win to the IRS. So, they get to pay about 1/3 of the win to Uncle Sam. So they might net about 2.5%

If you think a dealer is worth a table share, and factoring in the tax implications (right, sure, the dealer will declare it all), 3%-2% seems about right.

In your case, if everybody gave 2%, the dealer would have ended up with $1600.
The table shares collected $2860, of which, after taxes, they might realize $1900 or so.

Great! Thanks.

No...more that the dealers are better than the floors and it seems like they "go along" with the floor decisions. So it just seems wrong to stiff them. This tourney is literally the only game going (no cash games) for a 5-6 hour stretch. So I imagine they don't get anything other than their basic wage for the shift. Sometimes a cash game doesn't even start after the tourney (weird I know).

Last year I think the payout was $1980 and I took the $80 and gave it to the best dealer in the room. My hope was that they split it or whatnot and I didn't tip the floor a dime.

-HF

Yes. Female dealers generally make at least 20% more than men. This is common knowledge in the industry.


q/q

Just like anything else in life. Attractive women get extra benefits when in the company of men. Doesn't necessarily mean the male dealer is getting screwed, they can still make out well, it just means the good looking woman is receiving a bonus of sorts. Can be expected when 9/10 or 10/10 of the players at the table are generally men. I had a guy in my home game give my g/f who was dealing, who is pretty, personable, and has a good body but isn't Blake Lively, $5.50 on a halfway decent size pot @ $0.25-$0.50 right in front of me. I saw instances at a poker club where good dealers in a 1/2 game over a certain period of time made $200 etc, but on one night of the week when this marginal girl dealer with huge cans dealt, she'd make $250 or $275 over the same amount of time. Such is life.

It's a wonder any other industry survives without tips!

Totally depends on the amount and quality of cleavage displayed mixed with the ability to flirt . I know a beautiful big busted dealer who used to pull in a crazy amount of tips every night. She wore this incredible top that showed just the right amount of side and front titty. She was a great earner. No BS. 400 to 500 a shift while the other dealers took in around 150 in tips.

I've debated multiple times whether I should switch from the conventional "tip every hand I win" to instead tipping at the end of a down based on service. I've considered something like starting them off mentally at $3, deducting $1 for each mistake, and giving an extra $1 for anything especially good.

I like that this would make my tips better correlate with the quality of service received. That said, I see a few issues. First of all, I feel like I would constantly have to point out "I'll get you at the end of the down" to dealers...this will get annoying. This also makes accidental stiffs more of a concern. It's easy to remember to tip after a win, as chips are moving around anyway. It'd be easier to forget at the end of a down, and it's a bigger problem if I forget the one and only toke I was going to give the dealer that down than if I miss a buck once. Should I buck convention, or just stick with the usual route that slightly annoys me but works?

Your entire post makes it clear, by your own reasoning, that the better option for you is tipping after each hand won, and that there are many potential negatives associated with tipping at the end of the down. The choice seems obvious, but you close by stating that the "usual route" is "slightly annoying", without explaining what is annoying about it?

Deducting for mistakes seems pretty cheesy, seriously, not trying to start fights or be offensive but sitting there calculating a number of mistakes by dealers in order to penalize them tips seems like a strange way to experience poker.

From experience I know the answer is almost always the men, AINEC. Women do get extra tips by some for "being hot", as you pointed out, but their method relies heavily on socialization. Men typically have a no nonsense approach and get more tables/customers per night. A lot of small tips adds up to more than a few large ones. I imagine it works the same for dealers who issue more hands per hour.

The more expensive the restaurant/bar, the more the gap widens. When I worked fine dining the men would make $100-$250 a night. The women would earn a little more on the low end (slow nights), but never came close to the high end (busy nights).

I must have missed the part of your post where absolute numbers were required to reply to your post. Sorry about that. You are very defensive man, chill. In no way was I attacking you. But the reality is (or was when I was doing that) that the "good" dealers made more - a good amount more. Sorry I don't have the exact percentage handy. If it was less than 10% I'd be surprised.

<sigh> I was just making a point and relating a recent experience dude, jeeez. Get a vice and relax little.

No, it doesn't PROVE anything. It's just an example of my HORRIBLE experience with pooled-tipped dealers. Maybe you can share some examples of EXCELLENT experiences with pooled tip dealers?

Not sure how your American system works, but here in Macau we don't need to tip dealers, and we still recieve excellent service for 5% (5bb maximum)rake.

We don't "need" to tip dealers either. It's just the socially acceptable thing to do here.

So in a 1/2 NL game, they'll take $10 max rake? And a 2/5 NL game they'll take $25? Seriously?

I thought 5+2 was horrendous but damn, I guess we got it good. I had a few brews. Am I off here somewhere?

OK: all in favor of a "no tipping + 5bb rake" system?

Anyone?


q/q

I guess I didn't make myself very clear as to why I don't like the conventional system. I believe that people doing their job better should get paid more than those who are worse at their job...this is not exclusive to poker but that's beside the point. So I want to reward the better dealers and incentivize them all to do better. Aside from the fact that it's convention, it really doesn't make sense for the winner of a hand to be the one and only one to tip. Assuming they didn't cheat, they didn't do anything special to award me the pot instead of someone else. They didn't work any harder to ship the pot to me, so why should the winner take all responsibility? As for tipping more for larger pots, this reminds me of course of how waiters are generally tipped in proportion to the bill. However, I suspect there is a stronger correlation between bill and the amount of work the waiter does than there is with pot size and dealers (though obviously there is some relationship).

As for deducting for mistakes, I suppose that is predicated on the assumption that most dealers are reasonable. As such, it makes it easier to start from there and deduct when I see evidence otherwise instead of trying to start at 0 and reward adequacy.

I despise it when people tell me i'm overthinking things. I like to innovate new solutions, which makes me the black sheep sometimes. All that taken into account, i still think you really are complicating your life by losing sight of the big picture.

1. $1/hand automatically compensates efficient dealers for getting more hands out.

There are very few cases where a dealer is poor but fast. If they misapply rules, you call the floor, which slows them down. The exception would be if they're both fast and rude, but those dealers get stiffed more than most anyway. You don't have to be the cop making sure surly dealers are stiffed.

2. The pot winner tipping is arbitrary, but in return it's more efficient.

You could have every player tip $0.10 every hand regardless of outcome. Would that be better? Ooh, i just got an idea: why don't you keep track of hands per down (distracting you from following action / watching for tells) and then, if the dealer got out 18, you can keep some rolls of dimes on hand at the table and tip exactly $1.80 at end of down!

It's like the rake. If you play tight, you should be delighted that people playing to win small pots are subsidizing your TAG play oriented toward bigger pots. And it's just more efficient to let the pot winner pay for the table. They're happy they won. No one likes to tip (or pay time) when they're stuck.

==

Effectively you're saying, "Because i've driven myself batty with my own perfectionism, i've come up with a marginally better system. But because no one else sees it as better, it would create social friction. It also happens to cost me more if i play tight. What should i do?"

Your call, i guess. Depends on how much you value harmony versus a 99% solution.

So let me get this straight, its unfair for the winner to pay so all should pay with increased rake such as a 25 rake in 2-5 game in macao. Take tipping away and all dealers will make the same no matter if its 20.00 an hr at a sweatshop or 40 at a union casino and you seriouslly think this is a better and cheaper system!! People need to quit trying to justify being cheap, proclaim it to the world dont tip already, just stop giving me headaches with these convaluted reasons why your not cheap and " Its the principle" nonsense. Just dont tip and keep quite. Let others make up there own mind.

This. x10000000. Best sentence in the entire thread. Just once I'd like to see someone man enough to say, "I don't tip because I don't like giving the dealer extra money when I want it for myself instead". A couple of people have come pretty close, saying things like "it dents my stack and damages my bottom line so why should I if I don't want to", but most of the stuff is contrived self-serving utter nonsense. People go into pages and pages of "tipping model" breakdowns, run their own cherry-picked math fifty times, fire off boatloads of excuses about putting a ton of thought into how service people perform at their job, blah blah blah. Everyone knows it's just ridiculous and a way of covering up their simply not wanting to give the dealer money. Bottom line.

If you don't want to tip because making max money at the table is important to you, that's fine. It's your right. Simply say this and spare us all the deep thought. This is akin to the sunglasses-at-the-table threads where everyone in favor of them fires off 800 excuses about lighting, eye problems, comfort levels, massive physical tells, etc etc etc, when the real reason 99.7% of the time is that the person watched ESPN WSOP, saw a pro wearing glasses, thought it was cool, and started doing it. However, you will never hear anyone say this.

I think we have a winner for best post in this thread....

But that's just the point. I'm fine with giving the dealer money. I just don't like it coming out of my "scoring" for the game i'm playing.

Maybe i should just cut monthly checks for the good dealers where i play.