Some of you say that you want to get a breakdown of what Harrah\’s takes out of the pot and how much the dealers make. It\’s none of your business. Some of you have done some horrendous math which indicates that dealers for the main event only made $10.15 per hour, hogwash. Hey, I\’ve never used that word before. That was fun. How can you divide the total tip by 700 people working 11 days? I didn\’t notice 700 dealers at the final table.
Do you know how much the person at the Gap makes when you go in to buy your plaid shorts? Do you know how much the guy makes that is changing the oil in your Yugo? How much does the Slot Manager at Caesar\’s Palace make? Who cares about any of this, and who cares how much dealers make except for dealers and the people hiring them?
What should a dealer make? I say pay them whatever they need to be paid to attract reasonably talented people. The answer I\’m guessing is probably somewhere between $20 and $35 per hour. For a full time employee, that\’s an annual salary between $41,600 and $72,800.
Excepting errors, does the dealer have anything to do with me winning or losing a tournament? If you say yes, start collecting stamps not playing poker. Since the answer is no, why should I tip them? Do I want them to make a good wage? Of course I do. So here\’s the plan. In this plan I will use the WSOP as the example:
The WSOP establishes a ranking process whereby they use years of experience and floor-people rankings of dealers to establish an hourly rate for each dealer. The most experienced and best dealers make the $35/hour rate and the least experienced, lower ranked dealers make $20/hour and the others fall somewhere in between. Should WSOP tournament dealers make more than other dealers? Maybe they should and most likely yes. They are temporary employees (no health insurance and other customary benefits) that sometime incur travel expenses and often work extra long shifts.
Now that the WSOP has figured out how much each dealer makes, they can calculate approximately how much in total that will be for each tournament and divide it by the number of players in the tournament and prominently display it on your buy-in receipt. STOP! You are not interested in that anymore are you? You forgot, it\’s none of your business and why should it be? The WSOP will take 9% or 10% out and that\’s it. The dealers pay, their profit and other expenses are all part of that number. And if you don\’t like that number, bye bye. Go play the World Series of Poker somewhere else. As my good buddy Robert says, \”Vote with your feet\”. As for me, my feet will be at the Rio.
If you were a dealer, wouldn\’t you like to know how much you are going to make per hour before you accept a job and get surprised at the end with small paycheck? And if your role is revoked without due cause, wouldn\’t you like to the protected by the law? Of course you would.
I have played golf at non-tipping clubs before, and I really liked it. Everyone gets the same high quality service and the employees are paid an above average wage. Everyone\’s happy and no pressure with workers having their hand out all the time. And if the employees aren\’t good, no problem it\’s easy to find a replacement because they are paid an above average wage for the work they do.
WSOP, you have my approval to pay dealers, based upon the hours they work and the quality of their work an above average wage, and I don\’t mind if you charge just a little more so that this discussion can be over forever. However, we are now a non-tipping club. You will not ask me to tip and any employees accepting tips will be fired. Your employees will treat everyone as if they are a good customer that is contributing to their pay.
Why did we ever start tipping anyway? Just for the record, you can ask cash game dealers and I believe they will tell you that I\’m a consistent reasonably good tipper. Do I tip in tournaments? When I came in 3rd at the WPT in Reno, I won $256,000. I tipped $5,000. Several friends asked me what I tipped, and they all told me that I was an idiot and that the tip had already been taken out. Did I tip at the 2007 WSOP? Yes, but it was not at my discretion, it was already calculated for me.
Two final thoughts:
Did Jamie Gold and Yang stiff the dealers? If you call $150,000-$200,000 a stiff, I guess so. But, if you call that a stiff you\’re a nut-job.
Who pays the tip, each entrant or the winners? First answer this question. Does the WSOP have $925 or $9,800 tournaments? No! All of their tournaments are even numbers and would be even numbers no matter what tipping system is used. So, if I didn\’t cash in an event (loser) would it have saved me any money if they didn\’t take the tip out? No again, I would have paid the same amount. The main event is $10,000 no matter how you slice it. The tip comes out of what the winners receive, not what the losers pay.