The last couple of years since the casinos have added a 3-5% extra rake on entry fees, they have claimed it is money that goes to the dealers. For example, you play in a $300 tourney with a $40 registration fee. That is almost the standard today in this size event. So they are already cutting 13.6% off the top. On top of this they are now taking an additional 3-5% "for the dealers." So another $9-15 comes out of the remaining $300. The Bike recently took an extra 3% for the dealers plus $5 for bonus chips. That extra $5 went toward "administrative fees." The Commerce took an additional 5% or $15 out of every $300 entry fee.

Total rake is now between 16.6% and 18.6%. That's a lot in my book. Whether they are actually giving that extra rake to the dealers I don't know. A tourney dealer would have to answer that. IMO if you play at a game with that kind of rake, unless you are very lucky or a great player, you will eventually lose your bankroll. I don't think I'm either one.

It doesn't take a brilliant mathematician to figure out that if you play long enough in a game with that high a rake, eventually the casino will end up with all the money. So now everyone (except a rare few) will have to go back and reload.

Have you ever stopped and tried to figure out how much money Harrah's/Rio makes from all the entry fees at the WSOP each year? It's no surprise they keep adding more events. I'm pretty sure one of the main reasons they bought the Horseshoe was to own the rights to the WSOP. It is a huge money maker for them. Tens of millions every year. The WSOP name and "brand" is a very valuable commodity and they knew it, and have capitalized on it.

If anyone doesn't think the casinos and card rooms aren't making some good coin off the poker players, they are kidding themselves. If they weren't money makers, they wouldn't keep having them.

Dunno about Vegas or other locations, but in Brazil, the rake money does not go to the dealers pockets, lol!

I'm not a great player, and I often see myself either losing a bit or breaking even becouse of the rake, and I play 98% of my game online, where the rake seems to never exceed 10%. If i was paying 15-20% rake, I guess I would be on my way to busto. Obv this is given that I'm an sng and mtt player, so unless I hit it big in an mtt, I'm really either breaking even or losing money.

hustler in LA runs tournaments every day
100+25$ for rake
and they also "generously give" you extra chips for 10$ more.

you basically need to get the extra chips because casinos are scam artists, so thats 35% rake...not even worth it to play at all

Look at what a casino will drop with a cash game vs. tournament, and of course they are charging that high of a rake. It's not like a low stake tournament costs them less to run than a big one. The fees at the higher buy-ins are not as ridiculous. If you want low overhead, play online.

At my home casino, the monday tournament is $30 + $5. also they offer 500 extra chips for a $5 dealer tip. On top of that, 10% of the prize pool goes to charity. for a total rake of 43.3333% if you buy the extra chips.

It seems wildly unfair based on the real life implications, but the price of everything has and will go up over time, especially in economic recession where pretty much every industry suffers. Eventually, it'll get high enough that the casino's will stop running these tournaments because not enough people show up to pay the exorbitant rake that makes even the most solid players in the field losers in the event in the long run. (I hope as much as anyone that I'm wrong, and that casino's may readjust rake when people inevitably stop showing up in the same fashion that they do now, but it just seems highly unlikely to me at this point).

As an aside, while I'm sure some casinos do actually add vig to help out the dealers, it seems likely that many just say that and surely are just padding the casinos cut for playing, either by lying about the % that goes to the dealers, or just lying about it altogether. Sadly, this is life in the world today, and not just in poker or the gambling industry in America imo.

except in california they cant take anything out for the dealers and under nevada law they must state exactly what percent goes where (for example look into the CEO poker tour and what happened when people actually read what they were doing)

Overall I'd much rather they take care of the dealers up front and there was no need to tip for MTTs. Generally speaking the amount expected to tip is just a rediculous amount to ever just "give away"

When I first started playing and running tourneys years ago, there was no rake taken from the prize pool and no entry fee. The tourneys were gifts to cash players for their loyalty and to help bring them all in so we would have more cash games that day. With the explosion in popularity of the WSOP and WPT a whole new type of player has emerged that ONLY plays tourneys. As more people come in for tourneys and less sit down in cash games, running large tournaments becomes a quick way to lose lots of money.

If you wanna play tourneys, thats fine. Come on in and sign up. But don't think that casinos are interested in letting you play for free. As popularity of tournament play grows, so will the rake. (Most) Poker rooms are businesses, and need to turn a profit, and that margin is thin.

The poker room wich I used to work at is "hosting" one of the biggest mtts this year to date and will charge 15% fee.

It's a $50k GTD freezeout (USD is not our currency, but I'll do the math) and the buy-in is $500+75. Obv they expect more that 100 players, so that's at least $7500 in rake. It's likely that there will be 3 days of play (very good blind structure), and they are hosting it at a fancy hotel, not their regular place.

I know the ppl that are organizing this thing, and there is no way in hell that they would do it if it wasn't for a nice profit. I know for a fact that they will pay the dealers $25 per "work day".
I think the dealer's "shift" at the tables will be half an hour, so they work half an hour and then take half an hour off. I dunno how it's done in other places, but this poker room arranged things like this on their last "big mtt" and it's likely to do it again.

Let's say it just matches the GTD prize, so it will start off with 12 tables, 9-handed. Therefor, 24 dealers on day-1. I think day-1 will have something like 10-12 hours of play. Now, let's say day-2 stars with 9 tables, so, 18 dealers. I have no idea what they'll do with day-2, if will be played a given number of hours or down to X players left. Le'ts say day-3 starts with 6 tables, so, 12 dealers.
If u add that up, they'll pay a total of $1350 to dealers, leaving $6150 of rake behind.

Dunno the pricing for renting the "romm" in the hotel, but I doubt it's more than $1000 per day, so I'll just go with that. Then, $6150 - $3000 = $3150.
On day-1, all tables will start with new decks at prolly $10 each, so $120 worth of decks + 1 new deck for the final table.

Unless I'm missing something, that means $3020 going to the pockets of the poker room. Dunno about u, but i think that's a nice pay for 1 event.

And remember, as I said before, they have dealers at all tables just in this big fancy events. On all other, there's a dealer only on the final tables and they charge 15-20% rake. Obv the rake is smaller in absolute numbers, but I don't think they ever loose money hosting any of their regular tournaments, in fact, I do think they make good money.

If the thread keeps going, by the 31th I'll be able to post exact figures on this mtt. How many dealers, how much they paid the dealers and maybe an estimate on how much they paid the hotel.

I'll try to post the numbers on they regular events later on, cuz I don't remeber the buy-ins and rakes right now.


Cliff notes on the huge-ass post:
Local poker room I used to work for is hosting $50k GTD event on fancy hotel @ $500+75.
I know how they organize things, did some math and think they'll pocket about $3000 for the event if it just matches the GTD.
By the 31th I'll have much more precise numbers, and will post here if thred keeps going.


Feel free to correct calculations mistakes (or any other), I'm kinda hangover and don't wanna go thru huge-ass post and review it.

$25 a day? Where are you, Macau? You can't be in Europe, the US or Canada I wouldn't have said.

Everywhere else, most dealers will get much more than $25 a day.

I'm in Brazil, and yeah, it sucks. Some other poker rooms might pay a little more, but not much. The poker room running this tournament will either pay $25 or $30 tops for the dealers, I'll be able to confirm that later.

Here, dealers really rely on the tips to make some kind of money, but there's a lot of variance, lol. As I said, only "high profile" tournaments have dealers on all tables, the others have a dealer just for the final tables. At the local poker rooms, dealers deal mostly cash games, so they get the "official $25 payment" + tips.

I was nowhere near a reg working there, but some frieds of mine are, so I'm kinda updated on the info, and it hasn't chance much from the times I worked there. On a bad day with bad tippers, dealers usually walk away with $50-$60. On a good day, somewhere between $150-$200, but these $200 days are very rare.

So yes, actually dealers end up with more (sometimes much more) than $25 per day, but only because of the tipping. Our legislation is extremely shady about poker, so "Dealing" isn't really a profession, and obv, not regulated at all. Poker rooms just pay whatever they feel like and the money comes in from the tipping.

But, we were talking about tournament fees, right? Here in Brazil, they take way too much rake, given that most tournaments only have dealers on the final tables, and the dealers are underpayd, having to rely on tips.