HAHAHAHAHA!! I dealt the series too. This is all extremely amusing to me. I had a blast in Vegas on and off the table. I didn’t make the money I expected to, but it is what it is. Suck it up! Next time don’t be so butt hurt over having to deal cash and/or sattelites. Yeah, it is slave driving, but if you do it with a smile on your face and you can make players laugh… you’re golden

I do have a comment for who ever said you don’t tip due to dealer error…WE ARE HUMAN!! You must play online a lot. Its pretty hard to flip a card on a monitor. I bet you never played a hand wrong either…oh, that was probably our fault too. Oh, and if you bitch too much at my table, gauranteed I will probably flip your cards on purpose just to put you on tilt for the rest of the tables benefit in order to get you the F out of the game faster. It amuses me. (Dan, was that a run on sentence?)

Thank you, Dan for your tipping the dealer for the experience you have at the table win or lose. I believe that I am fairly entertaining when I deal.

I will leave the retard comment alone. I have way too much to say about that. I’m satisfied with considering the source…. that alone makes me giggle.

That being said, the reason I work in this industry is the money that the tips bring in make it a profitable profession. I don’t work for the hourly rate or the extra money the casino withholds to pay us. The money comes from the extra tips. The house money that is taken out isn’t meant to fully compensate dealers, it is meant to supplement the tokes. If not tipping extra became a trend then the house would in fact have to increase the withholdings to pay the dealers more. The initial house withholding is not, in and of itself, enough money to entice the good dealers to work the events. In order to get the good dealers they need to know that there are generous tippers out there that will increase their pay. However, I reiterate they should treat all the players equally, tip or not, and allow the average tips compensate them, handsomely I might add.

I don’t think Jerry Wang or anyone should be looked down upon for not tipping and I don’t think Chris Ferguson is all to blame, but I think he could of handled the situation a little differently. Maybe he should have said, “The house takes out x% to compensate dealers and floor staff, any tip beyond that is up to the individual. I personally don’t tip extra, however, some other players do. A typical tip is between %2 and %5 while some very genrous players will tip up to %10.” This is what I tell players when they ask me how much they should tip. It may have been better to give Jerry some more information about the range of the typical tip from winning players, rather than his own guidelines. If Chris’s practices became a trend the poker industry would certainly have to withhold more out of the prize pools to compensate dealers. Otherwise the good dealers would go elsewhere and we would be left with the junior varsity dealers handling important big games and events and I don’t think anyone wants that.

One final thing I want to mention was about a post earlier that talked about not tipping dealers cause they made mistakes that cost them money. I think that dealers should be compensated if they do a very good job regardless of the outcome of a hand. Mistakes are going to happen sometimes even with the best dealers and I’m sure there have been times when those mistakes benefitted you but you only remember the ones that cost you. The mistakes should be looked at as random. They may help you or hurt you and dealers should be compensated when they are doing their job well, not based on the outcome of hands.

Petar

But so long as we are arguing semantics, when did it become so acceptable to call things “retarded”? Also not a fan of this new knuckle-punching that has become the new high-five at the poker table, but that’s probably a topic for another post.

By the way, your son sounds funny, could you have him start posting and arguing here?

Look, I think we are all beating a dead horse here … it has nothing to do with cards. Good tipping in cash games happens for dealers who make the experience more pleasurable, regardless of whether you win or lose.

I have lost money because of all of those events.

I guess you would also want a tip from a “Bad Beat” jackpot even though the money has come from pots where tips would have been given if deserved.

I tip dealers with class. I assume I won’t be tipping you Mr. Phoenix.

Do you hear this? its me pooping over your cards.

When you got a cell phone and you had to pay all these extra taxes and payments?
When you bought a house, did you know about all those closing costs? and amenities you pay every month?
And when you play table games, you have to auto-pay commissions when you win?
Theres fees on everything guys.

I didn’t have to deal the tournaments, thank the poker gods, but damn my friends did, and I feel sorry for all the bitching they have to hear, and the abuse. It doesn’t hurt to throw an extra 1%.

Sorry Dan, I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, Im going back to bed, and see what happens.

In cash games, individual tipping is the way to go if the dealers are good. I don’t tip bad dealers that cost me money, although I did generously tip the dealer that turned the Qc, giving me a straight and an opponant a flush; before the last person acted and replaced it with the Qd, still giving me the straight but not the flush.

In cash play, individual tipping is the way to go.

In tournament play, set dealer income is the way to go.

Agreed?

I don’t believe a tournament dealer provides better service than another tournament dealer or that I would have the same dealer again. The tip that Harrahs took out of the enry fee should have suficed.

I lived in St. Louis when the casinos first opened there. The dealers kept their own tips at first. We had fast, well dealt games with very few dealer errors. Unfortunatley, the union insisted on splitting tips. All of the good dealers left for Tunica.

The new dealers sucked. They were slow, watched TV instead of following the game, and made many errors. One was so bad that wheen she sat down, we left the table. We had, “Five men walking,” which Linda Johnson wrote about. Fortunately she was replaced.

One dealer made a “Bad Beat,” mistake. I wasn’t in the game, but was at the next table.The dealer turned the river before the last player’s action, and which would have made a “Bad Beat.” I should have tipped that dealer since the “Bad Beat” continued.

I tipped well when it went to the dealer directly. I quit tipping when I knew some of my tip was going to dealers who cost me money, or to the Blackjack dealers.

Chris hold a gun to his head? Twist his arm?
No. Chris told him that his prize was $150K smaller because of the money Harrahs took out for tips and that he would leave $0 additional.
The choice was Yang’s. And in light of the information provided by Chris, he decided to leave $0.
But you wanted Yang to be left in the dark.

I don’t play my cards ‘in the dark’. I look at them. I gain as much information as I can, from as many sources as I can. Then I make the best informed decision I can.

I do the same with tipping. In a live game, I have a pretty good handle on the situation, and I tip on all but minuscule pots.

Tournaments are different. Especially when the House takes out ‘tip money’ up front. Without information, don’t expect players to do what you want them to do. They see “X% take out for staff” and they think the dealers are adequately compensated.

Keep us in the dark, but I don’t want to hear the word ‘stiff’ again.

By the way, thanks for pimping Pokerati at the tables … and thanks for not pimping on that day I let you know surreptitiously that I didn’t want the players to know I had a clue about poker. (I made $3,000 that session!)

Good luck on your new gig and life in Vegas. I will miss being able to hire you for charity events in Dallas. I’m sure it is only a matter of time before you, like Laurie, are dealing the biggest games around.

Great to hear a player that has a voice bring these points up. I have always believed that wages should be a matter between employer and employee, and not between employee and customer. I think your proposal makes a lot of sense, and would go a long way towards making this a non-issue as it should be.

Here’s a tip for all dealers that is worth much more than $200.00.

To be successful in any endeaver you MUST underpromise and overperform. Simply put, never put yourself in a postion where you either cannot exceed expectations or that you set your expections up for dissappointment.

Take two of the dealers who have posted here.

Laurie’s expectations were that she would make a specific amount, she did and is satisfied (although, obviousley offended that Ferguson might have cost her a couple of hundred dollars). Card S. Linger had expectations for the WSOP that included numbers that were too high, probably unrealistic, and is disappointed about his outcome.

Both made the same money per down. One is happy and the other is dissapointed.

It’s all about expectations and being realistic.

If he added extra to the tip so that each dealer got an extra $200, how many dealers would go up and say thanks for the extra tip Jerry?

Funny thing is that I could see more reason to tip the employee at the Gap than a dealer. The person at the Gap can do extra things for me to help me out. A dealer shouldn’t.

NOBODY IN THIS WSOP STIFFED ANYBODY. THEY JUST DIDN’T TIP EXTRA.

If the calculated tip isn’t enough, the players don’t know that and shouldn’t know that. When a restaraunt adds 18%, I assume that their waiter would be happy with that. It’s not my job to calculate the wages of the waiter and determine if they are making a market wage. If the waiter is not satisfied the owner needs to change the % or find other work. If it becomes too high the customers will vote with their, what? FEET.