At my casino they do something very sneaky. At the $1/$1 NLHE games they rake $2.50 per pot, and stick a 50c orange chip back into every pot, which isn't in play unless you go all in, so you can always tell who is not tipping by how many orange chips they have in front of them. Personally I give the dealer the orange chip after every pot i win, whether it was a monster pot or a tiny one, that way it all evens out in the end.

I always tip if the dealer is doing a good job. If they're doing a terrible job, well, I'm not going to tip.

I played the mixed 75/150 game at Foxwoods awhile back and I was surprised to see how grumpy the majority of the players at the table were. They always snapped at the dealers over little things, and I NEVER saw one of them tip a dealer.

Granted, we're paying $20/hr time charge just to sit there and play, but I still felt the need to tip the dealers who did a good job. I mean, when you're dragging a pot with $1,000-$1,500+ in it, is it THAT hard to toss a dealer 5 bucks?

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the thing everyone is missing is most, MOST, places pool the tips. So by not tipping dealers you dislike or by overtipping the ones you like you aren't doing anything, they all get the same cut.

As I said earlier, tips should be by pot size not by how likeable the dealer is. If you're not tipping a certain dealer you aren't hurting him, he still gets the same as everyone else. You are hurting the good dealers.

As far as tipping in higher stakes games, it's pretty much nonexisitent, and at least 50% of the time the table is grumpy. Dealers know this going in which is why the pooling of the tips is the right method, since the better dealers work these games and get fewer tips for a few reasons:

good players realize how much you can lose in tips in the long-run. In my experience the most heavily tipped game(s) is the lowest limit games. Simply because, these players don't care.


you don't see many $1 chips on these tables to tip with (hence why there is a collection), and few working players are going to tip $25 or even $5. If you are going to tip in these games bring some silver dollars with you or a stack of $1 chips, poker isn't like tipping a waiter where the bigger the bill the more the tip.


My original post in the thread was aimed at the stakes the OP played, as you move up in stakes the tips should stay about the same since your win rate decreases and variance increases no sense adding to both by giving away $20 an hour in tips.

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That's something that really gets to me about tipping. I know the reasons why they do it and I definitely understand their point but to me tipping is a personal transaction I would make to reward good service. Every bar I have worked at I was always against pooling the tips, if there's someone doing a really shitty job they don't deserve to get the same as someone really putting the effort in.

Usually when I tip I tell them to keep it themselves but I'm not sure how much of an effect that has.

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