Your new WSOP champ is a chump.

[Rzitup]

Approximately 5 years ago (give or take depending on the tournament/city/casino) the practice of withholding any of a poker tournaments prize pool for staff tokes pretty much didn’t exist. A tournament would be listed something like $1,000 buy-in + $50 entry fee. The entire $1,000 would go into the prize pool and the $50 would go to the casino. The staff was completely dependant on the players to leave tips.
At some point it became very clear that allowing the players to define the staff’s wages was not going to work. There were many factors why players didn’t leave tips, ranging from players that were backed that couldn’t tip to players from foreign countries that didn’t know to tip to players that just didn’t want to tip. Remember something, every single player but one leaves a tournament on a bad hand, a bad beat or in someway not happy.
Within the last 5 years almost all tournaments have adopted the practice of withholding a toke for the tournament staff. At the same time it has also become common practice to list the buy-in for a tournament as the flat amount ($1,000) and deduct both the house fee and the toke pool from the total prize pool.
Therefore, a tournament that is listed as a $1,000 buy-in, would have predetermined percent withheld from the total. $1,000 buy-n x 100 players = $100,000 Prize Pool. 3% for the staff equals $3,000. 4% for the house = $4,000. Total Prize Pool distributed to the players = $93,000.

Starting with the WSOP in 2004 a predetermined % was withheld in the manner described above. The total % varied from 2% - 4% for the house and 2% - 4% for the staff. Minimum 4% total (Main Event) Maximum 8% total ($500 events).
It is clearly stated on all literature that these amounts are withheld, and the staff that is doing the payouts should be making it clear as well.
What this means is that each and every person that cashes in a WSOP event has tipped the % withheld for that tournament.
With 2% of the Main Event withheld for the staff, Joseph Hachem left a tip of
Approx. $150,000. If the WSOP did not withhold a toke for the staff, assuming the %s remained the same, Joseph would have received about $150,000 more than he did.
Each and every player that cashes takes a burden of the toke pool on them. In my case I cashed for $28,375. Had they not withheld anything I would have received approx. $1,400 more than I did.

To think that Joseph did not leave a large tip is ridiculous. A total of $1,123,800 was subtracted from the Main Event prize pool and given to the staff. That’s a pretty generous toke from the players.
With that said, some players do elect to leave an additional amount. That should be considered incredibly generous. When a player does not do something that is incredibly generous they should not be called “cheap”.