My game is craps. I always tip the dealers. Social standards and good karma are a reason. Another reason is the dealers are more inclined to offer advice or give the the benifit of the doubt on questionable calls. Like if you call 6 right before the dice fly and the dealers don’t hear you they will take your word for it or maybe insist they did not hear your call as the dice land 7
I’ve only gambled in a casino a few times in my life, but when I went to Vegas and wanted to learn craps I went to a $5 table and the dealer standing next to me gave me a lot of advice on what the best odds were. I started with $40 and left with $150 half an hour later. I certainly through her a couple of chips as thanks.
Why? So they can act like the dickheads in every other industry? When I go out to eat or drink, I’d rather have someone acting overly polite than apathetic, short and bothered. I’ve found that the service industry in the US is a vastly more enjoyable experience. I can’t stand eathing at restaraunts in Europe.
My wife has even been “shoooshed” by a waiter. What the hell is that!?
And this is the problem with the system. If I’m not going to earn any more money than my comrades by putting forth any more effort, why would I waste my energy?
Not really. That’s how we do it. One dealer keeps the same tip box all day (carrying it from table to table). Cashes out at the end of the night and takes home the contents. When on break the tip boxes are kept in the pit under survailence and are picked up when your break is over.
Ha - I gave one player a full house when I was dealing and she married me - that is what I call a tip!
Its what people usually do when someone is talking to loudly and disturbing the other guests.
Probably not in this case. European service staff seem to universally have bad attitudes and worse manners. I’m sure there are exceptions. I’ve never seen any.
Yes, you should tip, but only when winning. And on some games like craps, I just place a small bet “for them” along with mine, say maybe a $5 chip.
Say you’re playing at a $25 blackjack table. A dealer who makes a mistake in your favor created a $50 swing. I have had several occasions where it has been an obvious quid-pro-quo. The dealer has made a couple mistakes in my favor. If I tip, they continue with the occasional mistake. If I don’t, they stop.
Minor corruption.
I tip when I shoot craps for karma and to not be the cheap-ass piker who doesn’t tip.
Best to stay home, then.
I can’t agree. If they are trying to help, and making the thing fun, then a tip is good even if you’re losing. It might not be as much - I’m sure they’ll understand, but something.
I worked in the casino industry for ten years up in Seattle. I worked three yrs. at an Indian casino and the tips were split amongst the dealer. You are always paid at or near minim wage and the tips averaged per person 17-20 per hr.
Tipping dealers is like tipping waitress’ only in the casino 10% is customary tip. Even though in the long run your wage is not really impacted that much one of the dealers’ pet peeves is a cheap motherfucker, especially if they win and don’t pay or turn 50 bucks into a grand and throw you 5-10 bucks. The other kind I came to loath was the ones that weren’t tipping and other people were and they would ask him why he wasn’t paying and the standard reply was, "I only tip when I’m winning and then I tip big…NOT. It was just a way imply that he was cool like the other people.
One thing that occasionally comes up is when you pay a person a huge jackpot win. I paid out $143,000 plus change. Technically, my tip would have been 14 grand. The problem with that is that the customer now feels like he’d buying a new car. The tip I got was 7,000, way good enough for me. It raised out toke rate about 3.50 for that pay period. If you win a huge one and are going to tip 10% make sure that you tip on the after tax amount. I do that with waiters. I won’t tip on tax.
After three years I went to work for what is called an enhanced poker room which are privately own casinos that allow up to 13 card games. No craps, roulette or slots. Here we kept our own and in the beginning before the market got flooded you could easily make 2-3 hundred a night plus salary. We had a little box we carry around like poker dealers.
Poker dealers are a whole different breed of cat. Casinos tolerate them and make the least amount of money. The casino only gets 3-3.50 rake from each game. They play against each other as opposed to against the house. Nobody likes them because in general they can be really tempermental, demanding asshole. But the dealers make bank. Depending on the casino and how many hands per hour they deal they can average 3-400 a day in tips. To become a poker dealer is hard because they won’t let you into the club unless you play poker yourself. Usually that’s the case.
:::SIGH::: Those were the days. It wasn’t unusual for a poker dealer I know to completely empty his bank account 2-3 days before rent was due. Because who cares? Business was so good he could guarantee he’d make his $600 in rent plus some in the next few days. $1,000 NIGHTS weren’t unusual in the pit. Dealers were making $100,000 a year back then.
Not even CLOSE to that anymore though (though a coworker of mine said he’d cashed out $200+ three nights this week). The market got saturated, the novelty wore off, and the big money lost their nest egg. It was fun while it lasted though. 
(Lest this sound like a dream job, also realize your dealing with drunk assholes standing on your feet 7 hours a day in a job that has no health insurance, no retirement, and no job security).
WHOAH…$3 rake EVERY SINGLE HAND. Add in the $2 player supported jackpot (of which the house can now take up to 30% as an “administrative fee” :rolleyes: ) and the house easily makes money. Best of all, they make money WITHOUT RISKING A DIME! Live poker is extremely lucrative for casinos. It’s the tournaments that suck.
(While the OP mentions blackjack, I thought I’d share some poker info anyway.)
Why do say this? The house takes 20% or 30% straight off the top of the entry fees, and the dealers are customarily tipped by the winning players. And, as with the cash games, the house risks nothing (not that their bankroll couldn’t handle the variance.) Poker ring games and tournaments alike are gold mines for casinos, which is why poker rooms continue appearing or expanding and why they offer tournaments virtually non-stop.
Regarding cash games: A poker dealer rakes $4 on each hand plus a possible $1 jackpot drop plus a $1 (minimum) dealer tip. In Vegas and Atlantic City the rake is usually “10% of the pot, up to $4”, and the pot is always either above $40 or the hand was quick. (It’s the hourly drop that matters, so fast hands just mean more hands.) In the Los Angeles rooms and on the Gulf Coast, the rake is a fixed $4 if you see the flop (in Texas hold’em) and sometimes less if not. Some places have started offering $3 rake, but it’s rare. Bigger games (and some smaller Gulf Coast games) just take a collection from every player every half hour.
Anyway, you’re looking at around $4+$1 in per hand per table, counting the always given tip. Depending on the poker variety, 30 hands per hour is not hard, so that’s at least $120/hr gross income to the house plus the $30-$40 in tips to the dealer, getting you to at least $160/hr per table. This is ignoring the the cut they take out of the jackpot drop, if there is one. Time collection games lead to similar revenue per hour.
So, casinos love poker.
If you win a typical number of hands, you’ll be paying $15-$20 per hour for the right to play at the table, so you need to win, on average, more money than that from the other players to make the endeavor profitable.
Poker tips:
Tips are always given at the poker table. If you win a pot, you toss a chip. It’s usually a $1 chip, but every now and then someone will be so happy that they’ll toss a $5 chip or two to the dealer. At the bigger games, you keep a stack of $1 chips so you can tip, even though the $1 chips may not actually be legal tender in that particular game.
Since tipping is expected and since everyone does it, the act of tipping doesn’t really gain you favor unless you go crazy with it. But if you don’t tip, I could see a dealer giving you less leeway on things like holding up action or checking your voicemail. However, in the countless hours I’ve spent at the tables, I’ve never once noticed a player who chose not to tip.
I sometimes (counter-intuitively) give an extra tip to annoying dealers to get them to behave. I can see that their job might get boring, but I really don’t want them babbling on about their latest gambling hijinks. (“Man, I had this bad beat last week… lemme tell you about it.”) This babbling usually costs me money, as it’s harder to manipulate the action when players aren’t paying any attention. So, I discretely (and usually politely) tell the dealer to shut the f@$* up, and then a few hands later give him a nod and a tip as a thank you.
Well thats a little unusual in my experience,I like good service myself and though I may have had bad service in Europe I cant honestly recall any.
If you get bad service in a British resteraunt as a result of apathy or rudeness by the staff then those staff will almost certainly be ex staff very shortly.
The customers know this as do the staff.
If you think that by paying the help a living wage that they are going to suddenly develop a “Dont give a crap attitude” towards their job then with the greatest possible respect IMO you are wrong.
As to the poster who recommends that by my wanting staff to be paid decently at the expense of me paying more that I should not visit the U.S. then I can only say that I suspect that your tourist boards might well disagree with them.
Restaurants and bars in touristy areas just tack on 15%-20% automatically to dispense with the philosophical differences.
And if buy-ins are considerable, which is easy in places like Las Vegas, this makes the house plenty of money. However most tourneyments in this area are <$50. $30 tourney nets the house $5 per player X 25 players = $125.
However the tourney is going to last about 2 hours and the casino is STILL on the hook for the three dealers, a floor manager, and a server for those 2 hours. So we’re talking $60 an hour in revenue minus $36 an hour in wages = $24 an hour profit, or about $50 a tournament.
All but the highest buy-in tournaments only exist to feed live games where, you are correct, casinos make a killing.
Tipping is a huge subject of controversy on the SDMB. Here, we have a GQ about “In Las Vegas casinos, when a lucky blackjack player gives the dealer a tip, does he or she keep it or does it go to the House?” which has been answered. Further questions about how much and how to tip a dealer in a casino would appear to be a useful offshoot.
But a argument about the need or morality of tipping in general does not seem to be suited for GQ.