The highly anticipated grudge match between Cate Hall and Mike Dentale has now spun off a new controversy because apparently no one initially tipped the dealers. Now, this particular event muddied the waters of responsibility because it was a charity event. James Guill covers the nuance well in the linked article, so I won’t go into the specifics, but he brings up the issue of tipping in poker in general. Guill cites a Daniel Negreanu tweet that includes the general axiom “Players are never required to tip.”
To Tip, Or Not To Tip…
I imagine a good number of dealers and poker room managers will bristle at this comment, but of course it is valid statement. In fact, tipping, unless expressly stated ahead of time, is never mandated in any service context, in or outside of poker.
Poker adds another layer of complexity to the general problem of tipping because not only does the house take a rake, but some players are playing as a means of self-employment, rather than entertainment. The profits they make are keeping a roof over their heads. Tipping is no small matter in determining the profitability of a player grinding it out in a $5-$10 NLH game for hours every day.
Certainly, there is a contingent of players who believe in “no tipping ever.” However, I am going to start with the premise that most players agree some form of tipping should occur. If one is going to play in a card room regularly, it is only the coldest among us who could cheerfully interact with the hardworking dealers, and then fail to throw in anything after a big cash hand victory or saunter out at the end of a tournament with 100% of the winnings tucked in his pocket.
How much to tip in cash or a tournament Click To TweetMy Experience
On the other hand, how much to tip in cash or a tournament is certainly up for debate. I ran into this issue last July when I was fortunate enough to receive the 30% share of a tournament bad beat (I flopped a royal flush and my opponent made quad 10s on the river). I won $11,600 in a $50 buy-in tournament, which was several times more than my previous top tournament cash. Until that moment, the exact percentage to tip did not matter much to me. If I won $800 and tipped 10% it was $80, if I decided 8% was more equitable, I’d round to $65. The $15 delta just did not seem all that critical, and I tended toward the high end of that 8%-10% range.
But now 10% was $1,160 and 8% was $928 and a $232 difference is no small change. Both of those figures seemed pretty high, and I started to wonder how much people who win tournaments for hundred of thousands of dollars tip. I was pretty sure that players winning $500,000 were not leaving $40,000 for the dealers. So how much do they leave? I found myself scanning the Internet for advice, but before I could gather my thoughts, I witnessed my even more fortunate bad beat colleague (a young guy with limited tournament experience) leave $2,000 of his $20,000. Social pressure and a desire not to look bad led me to tip about 10% as well.
Considerations
After this event, I studied poker tipping conventions and thought about the issue more myself. These are some of the factors that I believe should be taken into account when deciding how much to tip:
- The raw amount of the tip. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of your win and the percentage of tip you should leave. If you win $20 in a cash hand and tip $1 (5%), you do not therefore have to tip $20 when you win $400. Yes, it should be more than $1, but something more in the $5-$10 range makes more sense. The same holds true for smaller tournaments cashes versus larger ones.
- Poker as vocation versus avocation. If you are playing poker merely for entertainment, and winning or losing does not impact the quality of your life, then I think tipping generously is a good practice. If your profit margin affects your ability to feed your family, you need to be judicious in deciding how much to tip.
- Quality of service. As at a restaurant, while all reasonable service should be recognized, superior service deserves a little bump. Great dealers make the poker experience special, and they should be rewarded.
- Personal preference within a conventional range. Those who tip at all are going to be irritated by those who never tip. However, within the reasonable range of tipping convention, your choice to tip at the high end does not make you morally superior to those who do not.
- What is included in the house rake? At some poker rooms, the tournament rake includes a portion held back for dealer gratuity. Make sure you understand how the portion of your buy-in that is held out of the prize pool is allotted. If 3% of a buy-in goes to the dealers, you can adjust your tip size accordingly.
Live poker has a service component delivered by trained, but often poorly paid, professionals. Tipping is part of the implicit agreement you make when you play. How much to tip is a personal matter, but one, like many elements of poker, that should be considered thoughtfully.
Like this post? Head on over to the sidebar and subscribe. You will be alerted whenever a new APT blog post goes live!
Follow us on Twitter! Follow @pokertraining
I recently won about $800 in a tournament, and I decided I was going to tip $50 (there was already 3% withheld for the dealers from the prize pool, so it seemed fair). But what I didn’t like was, they asked me how much I wanted to tip when I went to the poker cashier. The tip was going to be divided evenly among all the dealers, and frankly I didn’t care for several of them. So instead, I told them I didn’t want to tip anything, and then I went and found my favorite dealer and handed him $50 cash, and thanked him for a great tournament.
Again in the restaurant analogy, if service starts to fall below minimal levels of acceptability, then tipping practices change. You found a way to reward competence and professionalism without diluting the impact. I’ll keep this one in mind!
Poker is not a gme for the weak of heart or for that matter for anybody with one. Hugoism #13.
In one of the small $80 buyin tournaments I recently played, we started with 6k chips, you could fork over and additonal $10 and get two $5 cash game chips that you could give to the dealer and get 2000 more chips. Most exercised this option. This 10 dollars went to the dealers not the prize pool. I did the math and of the $90, only 65 was in the prize pool The vig is big.
What I call the mROI, multiple ROI, first place money/total buyin, was 16, this is a very bad investment. So these kinds of games are only good for fun and practice or as a satellite to win a buyin to a big game. btw, an mROI of 60 or more is your goal. You have to win enough to cover all the times you’re not ITM and have some left over for profit
In ring the smaller the blinds the less often you should tip and only after large pots. If everyone tips one SB after each pot, there are only two guaranteed winners, Mr. Rack and The dealer.
There is an advantage with the larger blind games say 5/10 or higher. You can tip less than a SB. even 1/5th or 2/5th of an SB. But at 1/2 it’s always a full SB.
Speaking of ring. I’d like to run an experiment. sort of a ring/tournament. In which 9 players start with one buyins and they play until one player has all the chips
My guess is it will go something like this. 6/15s to winner , 5/15th rack and 4/15 to dealer. [ Assuming a 1/2 game and standard tipping practices. ] f course knowing it’s a freezeout ring/tourney will alter the tipping pattern, So would have to just set one SB tip for every 10 sb in the pot for testing purposes.
I’m sure the programmers at ADP could set this up and let the bots play it out. It would be very informative to do at 1/2 and 5/10 game.
Next we have to ask what are we tipping for. It’s not for the cards, they are random, it’s not for intent, the deal cannot honestly help you. It is for the vib. That’s right. Did the dealers or a dealer’s speed of dealing social demeanor and other factors make you feel good, stay focused or think clearer. or it can be that you just don’t want to like a cheapskate.
Having said all that, for me it’s not a matter of whether to tip or not to tip, I like tradition, so I tip. I like sharing the fun so I tip. .
I never feel obligated to tip, but I do, even when I losing. But like Einstein, I keep it relative.
Speaking of which, I’m sure, before long, there will be post here where I can share my thoughts on the Sting Theory of Poker and Tournament Play.
.
Sting as in Police frontman and faux jazz impresario? If so, I look forward to that!
Your experiment would be an interesting one. When I have informally calculated where everyone should stand after say 4 hours in a newly formed ring game given rake and tip in a $1/$2 game it has provided some insight into my subjective experience of “hey it looks like no one is ahead.” It is the conundrum of balancing the profitability of playing at a level at which you can compete better versus the greater percentage going to the house/dealer. As you say.some smaller buy-in tournaments are plagued with similar issues.
I’d really like to know what’s appropriate. When in a restaurant, I understand that 20% is about right, but that means a $100 dinner for 2 is $20. If it’s a really fancy restaurant, maybe 25% is appropriate, and if the bill is $200, we’re talking about $50.
But if I win $10,000 in a tournament, is it really appropriate to leave a $1,000 tip? And what about that extra $10 or $20 for the dealer that almost everyone gives at the start of a tournament for and extra 5,000 chips? Recently I won $9,000 in such a tournament with a $50k prize pool with 205 players, in which probably 200 players paid a $20 add-on that went to the dealers. So that’s $4,000 already paid in tips, equal to every person who finished in the money tipping over 8% of his or her net winnings. How much more should I have left for a tip?