[Glenn]

I would tip 0. Look at it analytically. When you tip, you are trying to assure that the dealers make above W per hour. W is your assessment of a fair hourly wage, so in a ring game, you would tip (1/p) * W per hour on average, with p being the average number of players at the table. The fuzzy task is figuring out the number of man hours required to deal the main event.

On day 1, 2, and 3, they started with about 1900 and played down to about 620. This took 15.5 hours each day, including breaks. We'll count the breaks as time worked to err on the side of caution. A reasonable high guess is that an average of 140 tables were running for the 15.5 hours. 2,170 man hours/day * 3 days = 6,510 man hours for days 1-3.

Day 4 started with 1860 players and ended with 570. They played 14 hours with an estimated average of 150 9-handed tables. 2100 man hours.

Day 5 started with 570 and played down to 185. An average of 50 9-handed tables for 13.5 hours. 675 man hours.

Day 6 started with 185 players and ended with 58 in 13.5 hours of play. An average of 15 tables for 13.5 hours or 202.5 man hours.

It would be a waste of time analysing the rest of the tourney, since the numbers are so small. We will estimate that an additional 200 dealer hours were required.

We have arrived at a total of 9,687.5 dealer hours.

$1,123,800 was taken from the prize pool for tournament staff.

The dealers' hourly rate from the 2% of the prize pool that was withheld? $116.

I understand dealers don't get 100% of this money because the floormen, etc, get a cut. Even if they only get half of that, it's plenty. Just because you deal cards in a big event doesn't mean you aren't still dealing cards. It's like saying that bank tellers should get big bonuses when they do large transactions.