I recently set off a minor controversy when I mentioned to @Pokerati that a Red Rock Casino poker dealer complained that new Heartland Poker champion Rob Perelman (@veerob) didn’t leave a dealer tip at the conclusion of the tournament.

First, I do not know Rob at all and was not making an accusation against him. I merely passed along the information because I knew @Pokerati had been covering the tournament. Second, as with any tournament cash of any size, Rob is free to spend or not spend his money any way he pleases. (He later tweeted that he tipped $2,000 on his $158,755 cash. The confusion being that he left the tip the next day after most of the dealers were gone and not directly after the tournament.)

Still, I believe the practice of tipping is an aspect of poker that merits discussion. Certainly, there is no standard for tipping in cash games or tournaments, and a lot is left to chance when the casino and other players alike rely on winners to pick up the check.

You may not agree with me to tip 10% of winnings of more than $10,000 in a poker tournament, but you can certainly agree that .00025% is extremely low!

Mike Caro makes a number of salient points when it comes to tipping in both cash games and tournaments in his article from 2006 here. How one player tips in poker is probably no different than how the same player tips at a restaurant or when getting a haircut.

Some players think that the part of a poker tournament buy-in withheld from the prize pool should cover everything. I have heard that of the house cut for the HPT main event (a $1000+100 tournament), $50 went to Red Rock Casino and $50 to the Heartland Poker Tour. I find it a little incredulous that a Las Vegas casino would split the house cut 50/50, but it’s possible.

When you think about the house cut, it is much like getting a meal in a restaurant. If you pay $50 for a nice meal it’s not because the food you ate cost $50. That $50 covers food costs, the server, the cook, the utilities and rent and leaves a profit for the restaurant owner. The server gets paid whether you leave a tip or not. The difference is that if you don’t leave a tip, that person is making $2.13 an hour. If you leave a tip of 15% to 20%, that same server can make a living wage.

Some players think that house cut is a huge profit center for the casinos. That house cut does afford some profit for the casinos, but that money has to pay a lot of people. At the WSOP, the house cut has to cover the labor costs for hundreds of dealers, floor people, servers and tournament staff.

At smaller casinos, where a tournament can literally use up every available table and dealer, this house cut is what the casino earns off its tables since there is no rake during a tournament. I manage a 40-person tournament in a four-table poker room. The tournament typically takes three hours. Until the tournament gets down to 30 people or less, every table is full and there is no place to host a cash game. The house cut makes up a percentage of what is lost in cash-game rake. This obviously doesn’t apply in a bigger casino that can afford to have a separate tournament room from its regular poker room.

As a poker dealer, I have been asked about tipping and how poker dealers are paid. Most poker dealers sign up for the Internal Revenue Service tip compliance program through their home casino or in any casino in which they are dealing a tournament. The formal part of tip compliance is: Under the Gaming Industry Tip Compliance Agreement Program (GITCA), a gaming industry employer and the Internal Revenue Service work together to reach a GITCA that establishes minimum tip rates for tipped employees in specified occupational categories, prescribes a threshold level of participation by the employer’s employees, and reduces compliance burdens for the employer and enforcement burdens for the Service.

Essentially, poker dealers (and other casino employees) are taxed a certain amount per hour for every hour they work. The rate of tip compliance is higher in bigger and busier poker rooms, less in smaller and less frequented rooms. What is consistent is if you are working eight straight hours at Aria on a Saturday night, you are taxed a certain amount per hour your rate of pay (i.e. minimum wage). If you are “dead spreading” at Excalibur at 8 AM on a Monday and don’t get a game for the first two hours, you are still taxed at your tip compliance rate.

The upside is that poker dealers in the tip compliance program keep all of their own tips. They are not reported to the IRS. They are not taxed. They are not shared. These tips are what make up the majority of a poker dealer’s wages. For a full-time Las Vegas poker dealer you can expect that your bi-weekly paycheck, after taxes and insurance, won’t buy you more than a bag or two of groceries. Your tips, however, can afford you a car and a home.

I know many a dealer who would rather be pitching cards in a four-table casino in the suburbs than in a high-stakes game on the Strip.

As I have been on the felt as both a tournament casher and a tournament dealer, I have seen both sides of this dance.

In a typical situation where the top 20 players of a tournament are getting paid, the tipping breakdown generally goes like this – 16 through 20 make a very small profit but they are willing to throw a few bucks of their profit to the dealers because they are happy to have survived the bubble. Finishers 15 through 5 are happy they cashed, but upset they didn’t cash big. They generally tip small or not at all because they have the mentality that tipping the dealers is the top finishers’ problem, not theirs. This is not true for all players, but I see it happen more often than not.

The top cashing players usually all tip based on what they think is fair – from 1 percent to 10 percent, but usually in the 3-5 percent range.

Here is where human nature really kicks in. If I buy in to a $120 tournament and win $3,000, I think I generous tip is in order. I would tip $300. However, most players I have run across do not think about the $2,880 profit they just made, but instead, think about the $300 they are about to give away. And that seems like a lot of money.

The same source of the @veerob tip told me that the second-place finisher was a local Red Rock 2-4 limit grinder who tipped $7,000 on his $79,059 cash. A 2-4 limit player is lucky to make enough just to stay ahead of the rake. Generally, that player would look at a $79,000 cash like hitting the bad beat and tip accordingly. Again, this tip is unconfirmed.

Every poker dealer has heard the tipping horror stories. My friend and fellow dealer @scarletlv told me of a player who tipped a half eaten candy bar. I have dealt in a casino where quarters are raked and players would tip 25 cents on a $45 pot. At a major downtown casino last summer, a player profited more than $2,000 in a tourney, but was so angry about the bad beat that knocked him out of the tournament that he slapped two quarters on the counter for the dealers and stormed out of the room. You may not agree with me to tip 10% of winnings of more than $10,000 in a poker tournament, but you can certainly agree that .00025% is extremely low!

I have dealt a number of poker tournaments in various casinos and have many friends who are dealers in Las Vegas and in other places. No matter the size of the tournament, the number of entrants or the location, the same number comes up time and time again with poker dealers — $10 per down. That is what most tournament downs (30 minute dealing sessions) average. That means that most poker dealers make $20 per hour for dealing a poker tournament (before taxes). That may seem like a lot of money, and certainly it is above the poverty line, but look at it this way:

And that’s for full-time dealers. With the supply of dealers being vastly higher than the current demand, most dealers are not full-time employees. They are extra board personnel and temp hires who take jobs where they can get them.

Locals and low-limit players are typically great tippers. They make sure they push you $1 or more after every single hand they win. Generally, bigger game players and tourists are terrible tippers. I know many a dealer who would rather be pitching cards in a four-table casino in the suburbs than in a high-stakes game on the Strip.

In the end, poker dealers are no different than servers, bartenders, valets and a whole litany of service industry jobs in Las Vegas. We do what we do because we like it and it affords us a living.

But the next time you hit that beautiful river card and take in a huge pot, take a beat and think about the hard-working person in the box making the game go smoothly.

Todd Anderson from Fargo, North Dakota, bought into his first WSOP Main Event a few days ago, and we were talking about the value of chips acquired early in this $10k, long blind-levels, triple-stacked tournament. Before long we began to conclude that a player would be fine making it to Day 2 without playing a single hand. We couldn’t agree, however, on where that chipstack would be at the end of Day 1.

So here is my attempt to calculate it … feel free to disagree and/or disparage:

First, we needed an accurate assessment of how many hands get dealt per hour, or per “down” — dealer parlance for a half-hour.

Matt Savage, Executive Tour Director of the WPT, estimated that a good dealer gets out 40-50 hands per hour, though acknowledges that antes do slow it down a bit.

Team Pokerati player/dealer/part-time Venetian floor guy Harris (@85Nutz) worked the WSOP box from 2007-2009 — and was good enough to be a featured-table dealer, as well as a top-contender for Dealer of the Year last year (which he did not win – I call shenanigans!). He guesstimates 15-20 hands per down, or 30-40 per hour. He too points out that antes do slow it all down a bit, but how many hands exactly that bit is, I’m not so sure.

OK, so with that, I am going to use 40 as the number. And instead of dropping it down to 37 or 38 when the antes kick in at Level 4, I’m going to leave it at 40 to compensate for the periods where tables are 9- or 8-handed, and therefor moving a bit faster.

So now, using that figure, all we have to do is look at the structure sheet

As we know, players start with 30,000 chips.

They played 4.5 levels today –for a total of nine hours of action.

Level One is 50/100. During those first two hours, an empty seat loses 150 per orbit … so facing 8 orbits (80 hands), they’d sacrifice 1,200 chips.

Level Two is 100/200 … so that would cost an additional 2,400 chips.

Level Three is 150/300 … so that’s 3,600 more.

Now Level Four is where the antes kick in for 150/300 + 25 … so that would be 450+250 per orbit … 700×8=5,600

And Day 1 finished an hour into Level Five, where blinds are 200/400 + 50 … so that’s 1,100 per round, but only four of them, not eight … 4,400 more chips lost to the pot.

To give a bit of a range, if you expect more from your dealers (and players), at 50 hands per hour would leave a non-playing player with 8,500 going into Day 2.

But at a rate of 30 hands per hour, you’d still have 17,100 remaining.

Hmm, considering the disparity based on the quality and skill of dealers, you can see why many players complain and why casinos presumably look forward to the day when they can replace these workers with fully programable androids.

My real guess, btw, for average hands per hour on Day 1 was 38 … with that number dropping by 1 each day moving forward. But I went with 40 to keep the math simple, and because 38 really is just a guess. Regardless, I think you can feel confident that if you play zero hands on Day 1 you should end up with more than 10k chips, and fewer than 13k, for sure.

To understand more about what that means … 1,125 players entered Day 1, with 819 remaining. So the average stack amongst Day 1A players is currently about 41,200. These numbers could change a bit as the other Days 1 flatten out any variance … but they should give you a ballpark picture behind the meaning of stacks at the end of Day 1.

My pal Todd, as president of the Heartland Poker Tour, thinks about these sorta blind structure things often. He survived his Day 1A, and will return for Day 2A with about 43k in chips … slightly above average.

Probably good that he decided to play at least a few hands.

UPDATE: Jack Effel thinks the number should be fewer hands, which would leave you with more chips if you played none.

@WSOPTD @Pokerati roughly how many hands per down does a good dealer get out per down? 15 .20?~>15 depending on game pace – antes dont slow too much

We wouldn’t be heading to the 2010 WSOP without patches, obv … isn’t that the whole point of the summer? (But we are running out ‘em guys, so do be judicious with the sticky side.) The Team Pokerati crew will include some familiar faces and some new ones, too — from across the spectrum of player types who make their way to the Rio each summer. Follow along, root ‘em on, and stay tuned leading up to WSOP Opening Day as we reveal the rest of our player line-up.

This year, leading off will be John Harris, aka @JohnHarristtu.

If Harris is a minor-league pro, then you might consider him a solid A-ball player. He’s done well at poker, but hasn’t yet made a big splash in the Hendon Mob database. (His profile here.) Harris comes from Dallas, where he took over as the tournament director for the 2007 Pokerati Invitational (and did an awesome job). He now lives in Las Vegas and is currently a dealer at Bellagio and the Venetian. He’s dealt the World Series for the past three years, became a TV-table dealer, and in 2009 was a finalist for WSOP Dealer of the Year. But this year Harris won’t be pitching cards at the Series … he’ll be working instead at the Venetian Deep Stacks and playing at the Rio on his days off.

His first event this year will be Event #1 — the $500 Casino Employees event. Beyond that, Harris will be looking to play all six of the $1,000 weekend events … believing that gives him the best prospects for ROI.

However, as an A-ball player, Harris is working with an A-ball bankroll. Thus, he’s currently locking down backers — friends and poker associates liking his chances of small-cashing repeatedly and/or going deep in at least one of those $1k events.

He’s seeking $6,500 in total, and still has shares available. So help Harris get in the game! He’s even got a nifty PowerPoint presentation laying out his tournament stats and the backing arrangement he’s offering.

Go Harris! And if you win a bracelet, we’ll definitely buy more patches.

This is her second time dealing the WSOP November Nine … it was her birthday … and I caught up with her (on a ledge actually) to find out what it’s been like to (repeatedly) deliver the bad news, perhaps to the detriment of dealer tips.

Bustout Queen

UPDATE: Buchman out at her hand now, too.

WHAT ARE the odds: She’s busted out via bad beat three Jews and a black guy. All the white/Euro hands held up. Just-sayin’ …

Most seem to believe that in WSOP-branded PLO, a true pot is a true pot, and therefore the answer is 30k. However, according to the decision handed down by TD Steve, it is still 35k, because you count the big blind as complete, lest you wanted to let someone limp for 5k. Most who disagree believd that sure, the minimum should be 10k, but the max would be only 30k. I tracked down the TD in question, and before I had the camera rolling, he acknowledged, “I was wrong.” But he may have just been joking, so I went Bill O’Reilly/local-news ambush journo and forced him to answer the tough question:

Blinds were 5k/10k … the big blind was all-in for his last 5k … meaning there was 5k in front of the small blind, 5k in front of the big blind … so the question is: How much can the first player to act bring it in for? Or perhaps more specifically, since we all probably know that the minimum to call is still 10k … How much would “pot” be in this situation?

photo: Flipchip / LasVegasVegas

That’s the word we’re hearing … Excalibur has apparently contacted their previously laid-off dealers and offered them their jobs back — with a return to live, non-electronic play on July 15. Not sure yet whether this a sign of a rebounding Vegas economy or players just not taking to the PokerTek PokerPro tables, despite their offering some of the lowest stakes in town and the ability to play Pot-Limit Omaha at the flip of a switch.

Thanks @Bundas1971 for the tip!

More details here.

The worst game for dealers is supposedly 7-card stud (no relation to previous post), where she is regularly making $2-$3 a down (a half-hour shift).

Her best down so far has been $57. “But that only happened once.”

The tables that provide the best, or at least most reliable tips: $2/$5 no-limit, and $5/$10 PLO. “But never the highest stakes [$25/$50] PLO. Those guys never tip.”

But in the end, John Harris lost three races in a row to finish in a Laodecian 25th place. OK, so maybe Laodecian isn’t the exact right word for expressing this WSOP dealer’s lukewarm feelings after cashing for $2,475, but hey, I’m just trying to use it in a (poker) sentence. Meanwhile, while Harris presumably replays all sorts of situations in his head trying to figure out where/how he coulda done better, we all know it was a great first WSOP go … and are pretty pleased to see the patch-wearing players we’re paying extra attention to start off in the black:

Buy-in: $500
Cash out: $2,475
Net: $1,975

His final hand: all-in with J-10 vs. 5-5; flop was A-10-5, K on the turn, 7 on the river.

http://twitter.com/johnharristtu

Should be interesting. John’s a good player who has taken his game quite seriously over the past year+ … and he’s been playing on a backer’s money in his efforts to build a bankroll (while making a living as a WSOP Circuit dealer). There’ve been lots of ups and downs along the way, a few needle-moving tournament cashes, and overall he has grown his wad … but that process has been a slow grind to say the least. A big score here would go a long way toward helping him to step up to a level where he could do some real damage (or get his ass handed to him and get sent back down to the minors).

Here’s to hoping he can go deep — or at least last until after the UEFA Champions League final so we can patch him up appropriately and get a picture for the Team Pokerati photo album!

BTW: Though this will become more relevant as more events move forward, you can click here to follow all the twitterings of all Pokerati peeps together.

I picked up my toke check from the final table on Thursday. I got a grand total of $9.37 for my 8 main event downs so an extra $1.17 a down.

WSOP dealer tipping is always a prickly issue, you know, give or take a few million.

Hmm, OK, so if I’m doing my math right … that comes to an extra $2.34/hr (pre-tax) for WSOP main event dealers. Not sure if that’s good/bad or fair/not — but theoretically an additional $800 from the November Nine for a week’s worth of main event dealing doesn’t sound too shabby. Obviously dealers weren’t thrilled that nearly half of the remaining $32 million in main event prize pool money still to be toked out — 1st and 2nd place — went to two Euros, who come from quite the different tipping cultures. (Seriously, when Danes have to give 60 percent to their gov, can you really blame them for stiffing the pizza guy?)

But hey, the penguins dealt the turns and rivers. So clearly, it’s all in their hands: WSOP dealers reap what they sew. No?

I’ve got homegirl Linda Tran, of course (who goes on in the third down) and Lou the old white guy.

He’s got Jena Phillips (2008 WSOP Dealer of the Year, who’s on now, in the first level), and Anthony Shawn the black guy.

All bets are off if the young white guy ends up pitching the winner/loser.

We’re thinking of additional side action based on whether or not the last hand is a bad beat, bad call, or a straight-up winner with cards falling the way they’re supposed to.

UPDATE: We’ve learned only three dealers are in play — Jenna, Linda, and Lou. Advantage Michalski.

ALSO UPDATE: Pauly and Otis have way more prop bets going on the types of hands that will win and lose the money, whether or not the opening hands of levels will be walks, etc. This prop bet is merely a little extra action for Dr. Baller — but hey, I don’t mind competing on a JV level in this world! (This world of final table heads-up action prop bets; not this world Earth.)

Dallas-to-Vegas transplant Linda Tran is one of five dealers dealing the final table. While there’s a wee-bit of hubbub from the usual featured-table dealers who weren’t invited to pitch … I know Linda is one of the best dealers I’ve ever sat/worked with, whether that was at charity tourneys in Dallas, or as a player in WSOP cash games in previous years. Kinda exciting to see her throwing Kems in such a big game — she’s earned it, imho.

She was at the Rio last night working with the TV table felt — something about the grain affecting the speed of the slide … and think about it, if she messes up here, sure, flipped cards and the like are part of the game, but still … can you imagine working on stage, in the spotlight, knowing if you make one of those mistakes that is inevitable … it potentially affects a player’s personal outcome by a million dollars or more? No pressure.

NOTE: She’s on the felt now, and kept Ivan Demidov alive by not cracking his pocket kings (despite flopping a nut-flush draw for his opponent, who I believe was Scott Montgomery). Meanwhile, in the crowd, Dennis Phillips’ fans have started chanting college-hoops style: “Let’s – Go – Den – Nis – [clap] – [clap] -[clap][clap][clap]!”

UPDATE: Whoa!!!! A one outer-on the river, compliments of Linda, to knock out Scott Montgomery in 5th place. $3,096,768. (Still pretty good money — more than Moneymaker won.)

CURRENT CHIP COUNTS

Ivan Demidov — 49,100,000
Peter Eastgate – 47,635,000
Ylon Schwartz — 22,175,000
Dennis Phillips – 17,325,000

Though Jonny did play in the big $2k event yesterday, he wasn’t exactly happy with the WinStar crew after playing in a $500 event — and he spells it out, plain as day, what beefs he has with their dealers. Though I suspect the WinStar may poo-poo his free-of-charge poker room consultation because who cares when you’re making so much damn money these days, I can attest that he definitely knows a thing or two about how good games are supposed to run, and just about any poker room management should wanna use his post as a litmus test for what their dealer crew should and shouldn’t do. Some highlights from his blog:

Jonny played in Winstar’s $500+50 today. 61 players. Same shitty Winstar structure. Dealers were fucking horrible, and between dealers fucking everything up, maddening noise from all directions, and idiot clowndick players, I was tilting beyond belief, even though I hadn’t hardly played a hand for a while at the time. Seriously – where do they get these retard dealers that they stick in the tournaments? It’s not like it’s a $60 nightly tournament – it was $550 – get some dealers that can run a table without making repeated stupid mistakes, and then giving me attitude when I correct them until they finally figured out that they had indeed made a mistake. Your job consists of the most basic of math, making a little change, and distribution of cards. How do you manage to fuck that up?

[...]

In one hand our dealer stopped-down the entire table (in the middle of a hand where there had already been an all-in and a call) to argue with the same dealers and a floorman over when her next break was. We each paid $550 to play this tournament, you ignorant CUNT. At least have the common courtesy to finish the hand you are on before going to war over your next break

[...]

… for the record, yes, Winstar has some excellent dealers. I just didn’t see a single fucking one of them today.

[...]

I REALLY don’t want to play the Main Event this week. Maybe I’ll be in a better mood on Sunday.

[...]

Anyway, FUCK Winstar, FUCK Winstar’s dealers (excluding the good ones), FUCK Winstar’s players, FUCK any and all Vinyl Goddamn Casinos, and FUCK and the entire Toothless Republic of Oklahoma. I think that covers most of it.

LOL! Anger is so damn funny.

Photo(s) by Danm

Now if I just had about 8 more LCD’s… this would make a hell of a multi-monitor wallpaper. Let us know if any of you guys want the 9.4mb Hi-Res version.