[Lord_Strife]

I read about half of this thread and while I admit it is a very good one, I will probably finish reading it at a later time. One thing that I feel needs to be added is that they make more money than just the rake in the few card rooms that I have worked at. Most dealers are required to tip X% of their box to the floor staff to alleviate some of the expenses that you mention. Paying your dealers $3.15/hr doesn't cost very much and the more tables you have running, your avg cost per table SHOULD go up because less floor men are needed in my opinion. A 4 table night might require 1 or 2 suits to operate at full functionality but a 20 table night might only require 3 to operate at full value. So in this instance you have 20 dealers tipping 10% (what it is where I work) and pretty much paying the salaries of these 3 floor men.

Most of the para-mutual facilities in Florida have very successful poker rooms and they bring in players that wouldn't ordinarily bet on dogs/horses (even though the rake on those averages around 28%) and in Broward County they even have slot machines to take advantage of the poker players. So these para-mutuals have blossomed because of the poker boom, thats for sure.