Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker
- Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Tips
- Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Etiquette
- Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Tricks
- Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Rules
When deciding what to tip at a restaurant, tipping between 15 percent (for average service) and 20 percent (for very good service) is suggested, says Robin DiPietro, PhD, professor and program director at the University of South Carolina’s College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management. The problem is, there is not a set rule for poker tournament tipping, and everyone has their own ideas of what is fair. Some of the longest, most combative threads on poker forums like 2+2 involve the question of tipping after tournaments. When deciding what to tip at a restaurant, tipping between 15 percent (for average service) and 20 percent (for very good service) is suggested, says Robin DiPietro, PhD, professor and program director at the University of South Carolina’s College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management. Regardless of the level of service, gratuity at a. Tipping a taxi, town car or Uber driver is pretty standard in most parts of the world, although how much varies widely. If you charter a yacht, you are expected to tip the crew, something that can.
In my last two “Casino Poker for Beginners” articles, I introduced you to the poker room personnel you’re likely to meet. These people are paid to be there. Who pays them? You do, directly or indirectly. The “indirectly” part is what they get in paychecks, which ultimately come out of the rake — those chips that the dealer drops into a bin under the table after every hand.
Let’s talk about the “directly” part.
Tipping is always a controversial topic. If you want to start an argument on a poker-related online forum, just ask how much you should tip poker dealers. Or, better yet, express a definite opinion on the subject, and watch how everybody proceeds to disagree with you. Ask 10 poker players how dealers should be tipped, and you’ll get 11 different answers.
I won’t pretend to have the definitive answer. But I can give you some general principles that I think should govern your decision, plus my own specific formula.
Let’s start with the general. I will be so bold as to assert that if your recipe for tipping, whatever the specifics of it may be, fulfills these principles, you’re doing it right, and you may safely and confidently ignore any detractors who think you should do it their way instead:
- If everybody tipped the same way you do, the dealers, waitresses, and others who depend on tips for their livelihood would make an hourly rate with which they’re content.
- You either tip every person in the same position (e.g., every dealer) exactly the same, or the differences in your tipping are based on the person’s performance. You do not tip either more or less based on gender, appearance, or other characteristics over which the recipient has no control.
- You do not withhold tips to punish service people for things that are outside of their control.
- You are neither so stingy that you breed resentment from the people who are serving you, nor so generous that you seriously cut into your own profits.
- You feel good about what you’re doing. That is, you’re not feeling guilty for being a tightwad, and you’re not expending so much mental energy deciding how much to tip that it interferes with paying attention to and enjoying the poker game.
Now for the specifics — or at least the specifics that I settled on years ago, and that have stood me in good stead ever since.
Dealers
I tip cash-game dealers one $1 chip for every pot I win or chop. It’s the same if I just pick up the blinds, or I win my biggest pot of the night. I increase that to $2 or occasionally even $3 if the hand takes unusually long to play out.
Hands might take longer because of multiple side pots, or because of the need to count down large stacks of chips, or because the floor had to be called to settle some matter, or because players had difficult decisions, each requiring time to think. The extra money is to compensate the dealer for the fact that he or she will get out fewer hands than usual in this down (a “down” being the time dealing to one table, usually 30 minutes).
I will tip an extra $5 if I win a high-hand jackpot. I also like to give a little extra reward to dealers who are exceptionally good. Once in a while a dealer really impresses me with how he or she keeps the game running smoothly, rapidly, and enjoyably. For such outstanding performance, I give the dealer an extra $1 chip as he or she is leaving for the next table, along with the message, “I like how you run the game.”
Similarly, I like dealers who consistently enforce the rules. Some dealers are reluctant to correct players who are talking about the hand in progress, or speaking in a language other than English, and so forth. Sadly, players who get called out — even in the most respectful manner — for breaking rules get embarrassed and tip less, which makes dealers gun-shy about rule enforcement. So when a dealer professionally handles a difficult situation like that, I do the same kind of end-of-down extra, with an encouraging message such as, “Thanks for handling things so well.”
Just as an aside, one of the reasons I prefer the two seats next to the dealer is that I can deliver those tips and messages quietly and semi-privately. If I’m in another seat, I might wait until I can catch the dealer away from the table, rather than have all the other players watching and listening.
Maybe something like once a year, a dealer will do something so outrageously insulting or unprofessional that I will stiff him or her — no tips for the rest of the down or shift. It would take too long to explain the kinds of bizarre circumstances that have led me to that “nuclear” option, but they’re very, very rare.
Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Tips
Those are guidelines I follow when tipping dealers in cash games. Tipping of tournament dealers is a separate matter, which I’ll address when I do an article on all aspects of tournament play.
Cashiers
There are only three ways to leave a cash game: If I lose all of my chips, I have no reason to stop at the cashier, let alone leave a tip. If I leave with a profit, I routinely tip the cashier $1. If I’m cashing out but with a loss, I don’t tip.
I realize that this is not strictly logical; after all, the cashier is doing close to the same amount of work either way. I admit that it is mostly an emotional point for me, in that it’s easier to give away a tiny bit of my profit than it is to deepen my loss.
So I repeat: On each of the specifics of my methods, one could argue that there are different, and even better, ways of doing it.
Chip runners
It’s rare that I play in a casino that uses chip runners, so I haven’t developed the habit of tipping them. On the occasions that I’m in a place that uses chip runners, I usually only think about tipping them long after it’s too late. It’s possible that this neglect means that I’m a horrible person. I’d like to think that if my regular places of play used chip runners, I’d have this process worked out better.
Floor personnel
If the floor person does me some special service, such as counting out and bringing me a high-hand jackpot, I’ll tip a dollar. Otherwise, I have not found much call for tipping them. It would be unseemly, for example, to tip such a person for making a call in a table dispute that goes your way, just as a baseball player doesn’t tip the umpire for calling him safe at second base. Unlike the other people in this list, floor personnel are not being paid minimum wage, and are therefore much less dependent on tips to make a living.
Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Etiquette
Cocktail waitresses
I think $1 per drink (whether soft or hard) is both decent and standard.
I’ve asked a few dealer friends about my tipping protocol, and they have all endorsed it as one with which they have no argument, which pleases me.
One final thought: If there is a poker room where you think you will be spending a lot of hours over a long period of time — your “home room,” so to speak — err on the side of tipping more generously. You might be pleasantly surprised at all the ways the staff can make your time there both more pleasant and more profitable if they decide you’re a player who is worth extra effort to keep happy.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.
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“Right now, when it comes to tipping, it is a gray area with a capital G,” said World Series of Poker Media Director Nolan Dalla.
By definition, a tip is an optional payment given in addition to a required payment, usually to express appreciation for excellent service. It is also called gratuity, or, in poker terms, it is referred to as a toke. With the rise in popularity of big buy-in multitable tournaments, the landscape of the game has changed. Instead of a rotation of five or six dealers, events can require hundreds of them who rely on tips for most of their income.
In the past decade or so, it has become common practice that a certain percentage of the prize pool be withheld for dealers on top of the house cut. This has become a controversial topic among players and dealers alike. Tips have traditionally been considered an “optional payment,” so now that they are being automatically taken out of the prize pool, it has led to some confusion, disgruntled players, and stiffed dealers.
“In the old days, they didn’t take anything out for the dealers, but all of the players would usually tip 1 percent to 2 percent. I really don’t think they should take anything out,” said 1996 WSOP champion Huck Seed. “The house should get paid, and then people should tip what they want to tip. It shouldn’t be a mandatory tip.”
Seed says that he is an average tipper who always does so when he cashes in a tournament. The amount he gives depends on his experience and the amount of money he wins.
“We have had final tables where no one tipped,” said Dalla. “This is somewhat demoralizing. You have got to have some guarantees. You can’t have dealers essentially gambling on whether they will be compensated.”
Standard Practice?
Most players say that they tip anywhere from 1 percent to 4 percent of what they win, and usually more toward the bottom of this range if money has already been allocated for dealer tips. Information on what percentage of the prize pool is withheld for dealer tips can usually be found at the bottom of any tournament structure sheet in small print. Nearly all big buy-in events, including the recent Wynn Classic and most WSOPCircuit events, take out 3 percent for tournament staff.
At the WSOP, the percentage taken out varies with the buy-in amount of the event. Lower buy-ins, including the $500 buy-in events, have the most taken out at 3 percent. The $1,000-$2,000 buy-in events have 2.7 percent taken out, while the $2,500-$5,000 buy-in events have 2.4 percent taken out. All $10,000 buy-in events, including the main event, withhold 1.8 percent for tournament staff, and the $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. tournament withholds 1.2 percent.
Among the many players who agree with withholding money for dealers is 2006 WSOP champion Jamie Gold.
“I think that it is a good thing that they take out a certain percentage, because they (the dealers) deserve to be taken care of. I definitely think they should (take out the money), because there are some people who don’t tip,” said Gold.
Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Tricks
Gold is known as one of the most generous tippers in cash games, but he was railed for his main-event tip snub. He said that what people might not know is that he personally tipped the final table dealers. Gold gave a dealer money to evenly distribute between the five to 10 dealers who sat in the box while he won the biggest first-place prize in live tournament history.
“Back in the old days, it was always expected to toke,” said Dalla. “Now we are in a new age where some people say, ‘Well, they are already withholding this amount of money for the dealers, why should I be expected to tip more?’ Those are both legitimate, valid points of view. Ultimately, the industry standard should be a compromise between the two.”
A compromise is exactly what dealers are looking for. Winner of the WSOP dealer’s event Erick Narciso agrees that dealers are just looking for a gratuity that is fair. When he won nearly $105,000 for the event, Narciso tipped four percent on top of the 3 percent that was already taken out.
Proper Tipping Etiquette Poker Rules
“There is no reason to tip anything extravagant, but a tip is necessary, for sure,” said Narciso. “There are some people who don’t tip, and the dealers have to get paid, so I don’t mind up to three percent. I don’t think it should go any higher, though.”
Director of Poker Operations for Harrah’s Entertainment Jack Effel compares dealers to other workers who rely on tips to make a living.
“It’s like any other service industry. Yes, you can tip your waiter the regular 15 percent or pay the automatically added 18 percent gratuity for big parties, but if you get excellent service, you may want to leave something extra,” Effel said. “I think our dealers are worth every penny.”
Taking a percentage out of the tournament prize pool has become standard in the
Cantu responded to the issue in depth and said that he assumed the dealers and staff were already taken care of from a part of the prize pool.
Read Part II of this article and more from Cantu.
[Correction: The story has been updated to remove the inaccurate statement that San Jose, California, prohibits tournaments to withhold a percentage of the prize pool for dealer tips. The city does allow that practice, but it must be approved ahead of time. Coordinators for Bay 101 simply did not submit an application in time to withhold tips for the Shooting Star event.]