Tipping in higher limit games
 

I searched for this buy didn't find it. In the middle to upper limit games, players have all $5 chips or higher ($25, $100, etc...). How do you tip the dealers? Do people tip the dealer $5 a pot in a $10/$20 LHE game? Or do people keep a stack of $1 chips for tips?

Thanks

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

Some people keep whites, some people have the dealer chop a bigger chip and some people just don't tip. $1 or so is still pretty standard, though, and the dealer is not making $5/hand in a red chip game the way he might make $1/hand in a white chip game.

SpaceAce

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

$1 is the standard tip, even in $100-$200 games. You ask the dealer for change if you don't have the proper denomination chip.

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

I spoke to a dealer during the WSOP this year, who was dealing a very loose, big-stakes PL Omaha game, with many pots being over 10,000. He said that all of his tips were only a few dollars each, maybe a 5 dollar tip here and there. Crazy.

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

This thread is now linked for future reference at http://poker.wikicities.com/wiki/Tips . Everyone's heartily invited to add other relevant tipping threads.

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

Dealers don't deserve more money for pushing chips of a different color. If dealers do a good job, they get a $1 tip when they push me a pot, regardless of size. $2 for the occasional monster if I like the dealer. If dealers got 5 or 10 bucks a hand, they would make a hell of a lot of money.

Jeff

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

I won a big pot one time of like 1200 (this is big to me) bucks and gave the dealer a 10 dollar tip. Was this out of line? She was a great dealer though and made the game a lot of fun.

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

What if "dealer always kill you?" Their tip would be that you don't kick their ass on their way out of the box, right?

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

[ QUOTE ]
Dealers don't deserve more money for pushing chips of a different color.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess it depends on whether you see tokes as, "I'm rewarding you for your hard work," or "I'm sharing part of my recent good fortune with you." I tend to see it as a mix of the two -- but of course, that suits me as a low-limit player because it gives me an excuse to tip half-dollars at the Foxwoods $2/4.

Just curious, would you apply the same logic to a several-day $500 buyin tournament (if such exists) as you would to the World Series of Poker Main Event? And shouldn't the person who finishes on the bubble tip almost as much as the one who just barely makes the money, since they both generated about the same amount of work for the dealers? It's just interesting to me that in tournaments it's taken for granted that the person is tipping based on their win, but in ring games, "Dealers don't deserve more money for pushing chips of a different color," is apparently accepted as conventional wisdom among high-limit players.

Re: Tipping in higher limit games
 

If dealers don't infringe on my action, I'm not going to infringe on theirs. Tip what makes you happy; if you like the dealer and feel like being generous, do it. That said, dealers probably deal about 30 hands an hour with fills and other delays. If they make $1 a hand, I think that is a good living for most people. Say they get stiffed on 10 hands and $1 for the rest. Thats $20 an hour. 40 hrs a week is $3200 a month before taxes (just under 40k a year). I think that's a fair wage for what they do.

Also, I play for money which is quite meaningful for me. While I have fun playing, I don't play for fun. Tips come off my bottom line so I want to be reasonable and not cut into my earn to badly...that said, I make sure not to stiff b/c I want competant dealing staff and know they need to be adequately compensated to want to stay there. I'm always happy when a tourist showers dealers with big tips and would never say anything to discourage that.

Jeff