^^^^ you state that you would rather the $5000 go in your pocket. This is not realistic unles you win every session. Say you win a few pots and tip the dealer a total of $10 for about 3 hrs of play. Then you take a few horrible beats and lose your stack of about $700. It's not like you would of saved that money by not tipping. The only way you can pocket dealer tip money is if you actual place it in your pocket after a hand instead of giving it to the dealer.

To the people who say always tip $1 no matter the size of the pot (100,200,400 or even 1000) please stop hollywooding during that 200 dollar pot if you're only giving that dealer a buck! Majority of great dealers realize that lots of people consider poker a job to support themselves and theyre out there trying to give u as many hands possible so everyone profits from it (players by seeing more hands, dealers by dealing more hands!)
So throw an extra bone if you took 3 minutes to call that river bet or whatever the case might have bet (check raise all in,etc). That same dealer could have dealt couple more hands. And that folks, is my opinion.

Good poker players can end a session down without ending it felted.

i agree with this completely ESPECIALLY if youre the one doing the tanking

Fish fry said it best....if u are hollywooding and slowing the game an extra bone for the dealer is always a good thing....

Nothing worse then the scumbag who takes forever wins the monster pot then puts the $1 on top of the cards likes he's doing u a favor....he/she(and there are she's out there) go pound salt....

As a dealer there's nothing worse then the pre flop banger who makes it $17 pre flop every hand and never tips...aggressive stiffs are the worst!!!

I would've agreed with you before i started dealing. To learn to pitch correctly is difficult enough. Add in trying to run the game, it's not a skillset that MOST dealers have, let alone people.

Right. I basically tip on how long the pot takes. Which ends up coinciding fairly closely with the size of the pots.

Have you ever watched a good dealer versus bad dealer in and Omaha/8 game with multiple all-ins splitting pots between hi hand and low hands wherein there are "live" cards and counterfeited lows? Its not just about the math.
BTW a dealer who matches stacks is doing it wrong, that is bad form at best.
I think you over estimate, but anyway: Part( most) of your issue is your limited perspective. High(er) linit Mix and other similar games (multiple games) run every day, they are part of my shift multiple times ever single day so it is very relevant. Im not sure what market you are in , but as i expand upon below, you don't have the experience it seems.

Im going to make a guess then that you are at best 21 years and 4 ish months old. been playing since you could legally get into a casino?
Ive been dealing almost as long as you've been alive.

so you play holdem only?
Have you ever watched a proficient dealer dealing Stud, 8 or better stud , Omaha/8, 2-7 triple draw, badugi, ace to five?
Can you play a range of games.( again speaking to your "authority" on judging what makes a good dealer) I can deal every game at any limit, efficiency and with a full understanding of how they are supposed to be dealt.

You dont recognize it. its not that you dont see it, you cant, because as you state just above, you are an amateur, you haven't developed enough experience to understand the value of a good dealer.

Its not about being yelled at.
It about how i handle being yelled at and the effect i could have on the game ( and the players ability to earn if i acted accordingly) when a player is calling me a $%^&%$#$^ piece of &*%$, if i choose to.

a "hypothetical"...
I sit in a 75/150 mix game and player X ( a known contributor) is handing out chips like candy, but at the same time he is cursing at me blaming me for all his loss' and being generally malicious and abusive.
Ive got a thick skin, crap like that doesn't bother me, BUT i don't have to take it. And if im in a mood and or none of the other players are recognizing the fact that i am actually protecting their game by NOT saying anything, well: All i have to do is call the shift supervisor and tell them whats going on, out the door he goes, and so do his chips.
But i don't.
Get it yet?

Oh and BTW..."lol" at grouping yourself as a "reg" with 4 months of playing time.

Consider the casino makes 10X as much money at all the 1/2 tables and 2/5 tables compared to 1 Omaha hi/lo split table running, being slightly better at handling those tables is marginally advantageous at best. You clearly have never taken a business course. You keep saying no one notices the extra "value" you have givenyour years of experience. Well, maybe you should consider you're not adding as much to the game as you think, or else people would be noticing. That's the whole concept of value adding. If people think you added as much value as you think you do, they would tip you accordingly. Clearly, it's mainly in your head.

Oh and yeah I guess its impossible to be a regular at a casino, where you go 4+ times a week, and all the dealers know your name and say hi to you. Guess you don't consider this someone who "regularly" shows up, and is one of the bigger winners at 1/2.

You seem like one of the old dealers, who are actually slower than the some of the younger ones. who is very non-appreciative of tips, acts like they are given. Newsflash, just because you handed me a big pot means you deserve $10+. I could have just as easily lost that pot, and when I do, who tips me?

And whoever said you wouldn't keep tips that you gave when you lose.. that's just really stupid. One time, I was playing first part of the session I was on fire, but then I hit cooler after cooler and ended losing most of those winnings. I cash out with $179, down $21 for the day, but had ended up tipping $30 for the day. So yeah.. I'd like to have had that back.

agree with most of the post above but

If people think you added as much value as you think you do, they would tip you accordingly.

isnt neccesarily true
most people tip at the poker table out of custom/lucky dealer and tip awful dealers the same amount of money per pot as they tip the good ones

That's the thing... no one knows why we tip for the most part! When you first sit down it doesn't even occur to you to tip. Then after playing a little bit and noticing everyone else does it, you do it too! Then you start tipping even when you win the blinds so you're tipping $1 even when you win $3 total. You're not tipping for the good service (As tipping would imply, and why Ubintook is complaining, b/c we don't tip "enough" despite the value he adds), you're tipping becasue everyone else is!

10x as much in NL 1/2 or 2/5 than say a 4/8 omaha/8 game...not even close:
By that estimation and your numbers of 15-20 hands per down, most omaha games would see 1.5-2.0 hands per down. sound about right? Omaha games run better in my opinion than many low limit holdem games, i can get just about as many hands out in most O/8 games. why? Because i can control the game and action, i can manage the game to the players benefit( and mine, more hands more tokes, which i appreciate very much).

Do you tip accordingly chaser? you've said yourself, you don't tip, you said nothing about tipping relative to the skill of the dealer. You disprove your own statement. Ive never claimed you owe me $10 for a large pot, in fact ive never made a statment as to what players should toke.

Why would you think i am unappreciative of any toke? Where have i said such a thing. I guarantee you will get a sincere thank you for every chip that is tossed my way, and you see it in my response to the guy who claimed he was railroaded for "only" tipping $3 from the $400 pot...and the dealers response that it riles me to no end when dealers don't show appreciation. Its my opinion that dealers who don't say thank you ever time need to face disciplinary action.

Agreed, very very often that is true. Its the same principle at work as in rooms that pool tokes for dealers, the good dealers and the bad dealers make the same, so the good dealers ( not all me included) become complacent and the bad dealers stay bad, they have no motivation to improve, because they are going to make the same regardless.

I have never stated anyone doesn't tip enough. Period. Show me anywhere on the forum where i have stated that implicitly. In fact you might actually find a spot wherein i state you shouldnt tip for bad dealing.

It looks like you do admit though, that the "value added" by a good dealer isn't then necessarily always recognized...Hmmm.

i tip 1 dollar on pots when i win over 40ish of someone elses money, if its an unusual large pot for the game i will tip more. won a 1200 dollar pot in 1/2 and i tipped 10 bucks. allot of times its with how im felling or playing that day. if im having a bad session the tips are going to stay at 1 dollar for the pots i tip on. if im running good, i may increase it to 2 dollars and so on for larger pots.

What is this tipping your all talking about? I don't tip anyone anything. I figure their getting free lessons at the table by playing there so if they want tips all they need to do is watch me in action.

Yes, sometimes it does. I have pushed pots where the hand itself took 10 minutes or more to play due to players taking their time, thinking, etc.

It's not so much the dollar amount of the pot, but the work involved. And when I talk about service professionals, I mean anyone in a tipping type of job. Not just dealers.

Read the last six pages of this thread, and it all seems focused on cash games. What about tourneys ? Whats considered an average tip vs a good one (I guess in terms of the % of your win), and is a "cap" up to a certain $ amount considered being cheap ?

Go further back than that, tourneys have been mentioned many, many times in this thread.

Not only does someone playing 1/2 NL full time likely not tip this much, but there's no way to assume that you'd have had that much more at the end of the year if you hadn't tipped it. It is not as simple as, "I tipped $25 this session, I'd have cashed out $400 instead of $375 if I hadn't tipped".

Please, explain how much you think he would tip. Nice ballpark figure.

Where does the money go? Thin air? If, on average Player X tips $25 a session and then for the next 20 sessions does not tip, where does the $500 go?

The pro plays about 2000 hours a year and wins 2.5 pots an hour at $1 a pot that is $5,000 a year (the pro plays 2-5NL mostly)

Yes, for the most part if you tip 25 in a session and cash out 375, then you would have had 400 if you didnt tip. If you lose an allin and then go home, then yes, you still go home with 0, so it doesnt cost you 25, but the $25 tip goes to the dealer rather then the guy who busted you. Which is very unfair to the other player.

But if it is the other way around and you go allin and bust a guy, then you could win $50 more if you didnt tip as now the $25 you didnt tip gets doubled up with your allin win. So if you are a winning player, tipping probably costs you MORE than the 25 in the long run if that is what you tip per night, as you are more likely to bust someone than to have someone bust you.

One of my pet peeves is when I bust a guy who has toked away $20 over the previous hours then I am effectively shorted $20. So much for the sacred "table stakes" rule. sigh.

For starters, the entire premise is silly, since anyone with a functioning brain cell knows that there are very few people who play 1/2 NL or 2/5 NL full time. Basing an estimate off of 2000 hours is ridiculous, the number of players who put in this volume is infinitesimal.

Estimating based on a number of pots won per hour is also useless, because a standard 2p2 TAG is going to be winning a number of tiny to medium size pots preflop or on the flop with a C-bet where they wouldn't have tipped anyway. Ergo, those pots, they weren't saving anything if they embraced a complete method of non-tipping, because those would be zero-tipped pots anyway.

If someone was a solid player, AND put in a full year's worth of hours, AND played a style that allowed for the majority of his pots-won to be sizable pots, AND consistently had a good ratio of hands-won-to-hands-dealt, then yes, someone could tip a total of $5000+ in a year. This is obviously assuming a set of facts which apply to few players, as is noted above.

As far as the second part, players make decisions based on their stack size. No tipping, more would be in everyone's stack. Deeper effective stacks, looser play. Looser play, bigger pots, the average rake goes up. A good part of the money that doesn't get tipped vanishes anyway. If Dealer x deals the same game @ $30 hourly for 10 hours, that's $300 off the table. If the $300 were on the table, you can take it to the bank that game plays differently because of deeper stacks and that a lot of that $300 doesn't stay on the table as a result. Pretty simple.

In numerous tipping threads, this one and ones past, people have gone way above the $5000 number we're discussing now. The Palimax once fired off a figure of "$10000-$12000". The idea that someone playing 1/2 NL would have $12000 in hard cash in their pocket at the end of a calendar year by simply not tipping is the most utterly ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.

I play 40-50 per week usually 1/3 or 2/5 and there are 30/40 doing the same here in Tunica and I would guess I tip between $3500-4500 per year.

^^^^^ That's less than $5000 and clearly shows that the "$10000-$12000" estimate is utterly ridiculous.

I have never been to Tunica so I wouldn't have evidence of anything nor would I have the same knowledge as you do, but 30-40 people playing full time 1/3 NL at one casino seems awfully high.

That is not one casino but 5 casino poker rooms.