Small stakes, live tipping advice?

[leykis]

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You are neither my "employer" nor my "manager." You are a patron/customer of a casino which happens to employee me. I answer to casino management, not you. At my poker table, I run the game, not you. If I don't do my job well, you can stiff me or complain to my employer, and this is a lot different than being my employer or manager.


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The players pay the majority portion of your salary, and are in direct control over what you get paid. We do not pay the card room/casino, and then let them distribute the money as salary to the dealers. So given that you “answer to casino management”, how about we give one dollar out of every pot dealt to casino management and then they can distribute the money to the dealers as they see fit. Do you think they would be as generous. No, they would run some numbers. 1 table, 30 hands per hour is $30/hr. They already pay the dealers $4-6/hr so they would now decide whether the dealers should be paid $35/hr ($72800/year) or maybe they could find some good dealers who just might work for a little less than that. If so, they could keep the difference as additional profit or put the money back into the business.

But wait, the fun does not stop here. The casino management across the street runs the same numbers and realizes that they could only take 50 cents out of each pot and still pay the dealers $20/hr. But now, they could advertise the fact that they rake less than the other casino and attract more players to their room. If they are successful in this, each additional table will provide them with an additional $120/hr for the room. (That’s 30 hands per hour * $4 rake)

This is the type of logic that should be used by the players who currently pay the dealers salary, but its not. The average player thinks… “hey, I just won a $200 pot playing 4-8, if I give just $1 dollar out of the 200 chips I am now stacking I will look cheap” So he tips 4 dollars because after all what’s $4 out of this 200. Of course, he does not think, “well $4 dollars is 25% of my hourly rate if I am crushing the game, and so if I do this twice an hour I am throwing away half of my winrate so that I can provide the dealer with a salary that his “employer” would never dream of paying.” I would not say that this is out of stupidity as you suggested but rather social pressure and a temporary feeling of wealth (winning a big pot).

For this reason, this player is essentially being fleeced. I am not saying that it’s the dealer’s fault that this happens because it is not. It is they way the system is set up. That said, I don’t think you will see too many dealers complaining about it.

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Second, you really seem to have some personal issue with the amount dealers earn in tips, even if you're a little misinformed. Why exactly does it bother you so much? I don't know if you have issues with your own income or something, but you seem WAY too bothered by it.


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To me this is not a personal issue, it’s a moral one. The moral necessity for someone to earn what the keep is something I consider to be among the highest virtues of man. This forum is not really the appropriate venue to discuss morality, for a full explanation, please see any of the philosophical works of Ayn Rand.