Two day, $1600 tourney. Most hold out 3% that is advertised as going to the "staff" or sometimes specifically "dealers". If it is $1500+$100 then they hold out $45 per entry. This is on top of the house vig.

In my room players are offered a $5 add-on which adds t2,000 in chips (to a starting stack of t10,000 or t12,000 for the higher buy-in tournaments on Saturday) so nearly everyone does the add on. That all goes to the dealers and the room is very transparent about this.

The tournament toke rate is determined by adding the money from add ons and additional tips players give and divide that by the number of downs dealt. In our room, the rate is calculated bi-weekly along pay periods; this means that every tournament for the entire pay period (14 in our room assuming they all run as scheduled and the odd Sit & Go) is added up and divided into all of the 1/2 hour pushes. Dealers then have the tokes added to their checks.

In our room, the bi-weekly tournament toke rate is almost always between $7 and $8.50 (disregarding series events where they tend to run higher; one we did last month had a $12.22 rate). That equates to around $14-17 an hour, plus the amount the casino pays us (in our room it's $5 or $5.20) which means tournament dealers make $19-22 an hour. This is about what we were told to anticipate when we got state approval for tournaments.

I wonder how this compares to places where there are no staff money that comes from add on's or a set percentage from the prize pool?

For the record, I don't complain about dealing tournaments even though I do make less dealing them. I enjoy playing them myself and tournaments help fill our room with cash players so I think it all evens out in the end since with less players, I would deal more dead spreads, or be cut earlier. I'd rather work.

there was no add-ons in this tournament.

How many players in that tourney?

When rooms take the 3% out does it all go to the dealers? Plus the add-on?

Depends. Sometimes it says "Staff". Which could include dealers, Floor, TD, chip runners, and cashier. If it says "for dealers", it should go all to the dealers.

Playing 2-5 at Venetian yesterday, lady wins a 1k pot tosses dealer $15...guy in 3 seat tells her not to tip so much the dealers make enough already. Dealer calls floor whispers something in his ear....floor asks the man to step away from the table to speak to him...

Guy comes back to table and informs us he was told if he speaks out against tipping again he will be asked to leave. I actually agreed with the floors stance on that.

I am not an exceptional toker, $1 a hand sometimes $2....but I do believe it's none of your business what others toke and it's quite rude to be speaking out against tipping at the table, hurting the dealers income.

I actually like the way the floor handled that, and I am not a huge fan of Venetians floors. Kudos to him

Money fish like that give the dealer is money that guy can't win. I'm surprised he spoke up because I can barely remember any amount any opponent of mine has ever tipped, but I don't really blame the guy for speaking up. I don't really blame the dealer either, floor probably should have stopped it there though. How are you going to police that? How do you define what he would have to say? Snore. Seems like a lot of trouble.

That woman tipping $15/1k pot (or whatever) is going to lose her money and quit playing much faster than if she tipped $1/pot and that's no good for everyone.

I like that a lot..Other than if the person was trying to funnel the money off the table to a friend/dealer. No one should say anything.

grrr this thread tilts me.

If I were a dealer and someone at the table is telling people to tip me less, and that's obv how I make my living...I am snap calling the floor also.

Agreed that when people tip like that it's less we can win, but it's extremely rude and classless to try and affect someones income directly to their face.

I can't wait till I'm old and don't care about the money, I'm gonna play and tip the profit off of every hand just to tilt people.

yeah, go ahead and complain when i win a $1,000 pot and tip the dealer $25. you think you had no chance to win that $25 back? how about when you piss me off so much i get up and leave the table with the $1,000?

keep your mouth shut about how much i tip. if i want to tip $500, i can tip $500. it's my money after i've won the pot.

Players who tip $25 on every big pot will go broke quickly.

Also at what point are you violating the table stakes rule?

If there is no house rule limiting how much you can take off your stack to use as tokes, or even when you can do it (like in the middle of a hand you are in), then I would imagine, never.

This reminds me of a dealer in Tunica that will tip up to 50% of the pot when he is winning while propping and his wife is in the box. To me this is wrong and just a way to take money off the table. But he is right when he says there is no limit on what a player can tip.

They get more than their normal minimum wage when dealing certain tables. Makes it a lot easier to just shut up and deal. Makes it easier to ignore the insults. Makes it easier to ignore physical assaults, though some dealers refuse to allow themselves to be dehumanized to that extent--the players figure out which dealers they can jack around and which won't put up with it pretty quickly--it's like a game to them.

If your facing a river bet for your remaining $25 (or any amount of chips) can you just ship that to the dealer and go to showdown?

In my room I cannot deal to my wife or anyone I live with. I like the rule. It's good for appearances if nothing else.

No.

Or, to put it another way, if I win the pot, the dealer better toss me the $25.

do you guys ever tip the floor/shift managers? is this ever expected? Can tipping the floor help to get you seated more quickly or moved to a more profitable table?

The consensus is whether floors should be/can be tipped for the things you mentioned is dependent on the level of corruption in your local room(s). Generally West Coast rooms tend to be more corrupt, so tipping floors to get an advantage is more common. At places like Borgata on the East Coast, tipping floors is against the law.

As someone who has worked as a poker brush, chip runner, and dealer... furthermore as a long time player... I can confidently state that tipping will nearly always get you more consideration in a poker room (or for that matter in a restaurant, or wherever tipping is common).

As a brush and chiprunner, I used to have a regular player who would buy in for $1000 and give me a $25 tip each time for running the chips to him from the cashier. When I saw him, I would always find him the next seat available, no matter how long the list was or who was waiting for a table transfer. Other chiprunners had their own "customers" and gave the same kind of VIP treatment to them.

As a pizza delivery driver I would always take orders to the best tippers first, ensuring that they got their food sooner and fresh out of the oven.

In my current role as a dealer, if a good tipper steps away from the table for a cigarette or a phone call, I'll keep an eye out for him and will make sure to deal him in if I see he's on his way back to the table. One regular player is a great tipper and he loves $25 chips, so when he wins a pot I'll automatically color up the pot for him before pushing him his stack. The extra time spent might cost me an extra hand in the box, but he's a good tipper and I'm always willing to do this for him.

As a player, I used to regularly give a $5 tip to the brush at a casino I played in. This was a room that didn't allow you to put your name on the waiting list by phone. But I would always call ahead anyway and find my name at the top of the list when I got there.

At another room I would frequently give a chip runner $5 for color-ups. One time they were running a big bonus promotion in the room and the waiting list was an hour or more wait. But I found my favorite chip runner, asked him to do what he could, and slipped him a $5 tip. I was sitting within 5 minutes.

Now maybe you can call this behavior immoral, unfair, or unethical. Or you could say that the service you receive for tipping doesn't justify the expense. I won't argue either of those points. But I can say for certain that people remember good tippers and they do what they can to provide extra service to those players.

I hate seeing people win several pots on a dealers down and not tip a single dollar. Then their favorite phrase is "I'll get ya next time"

When MF?

Ultimately, it depends on what the Casino Manager calls it. Because if I am first on the board or change list and you sneak someone in ahead of me, the three of us are going to have a little chat.

One of my favorite tipping stories (from another 2+2 thread several years ago) involves a young internet kid who was being a world-class jerk at a live table. After enduring his obnoxious behavior for a while, his opponent ends up heads-up against the kid with $500-and-change remaining. The kid has him covered and pushes all-in. The opponent thinks for a second, then calls over the cocktail waitress, tips her a $500 chip (leaving him with about twenty bucks), smiles, and says "I call".

I'm pretty sure there's a moral in there somewhere


q/q