Hosts are paid in a few different ways.
We don’t know the exact percentages, but we suspect most hosts are remunerated with the salary-and-benefits packages common to marketing departments the world over.
And that's a good assumption for hosted players to make, since if you believe that your host is an overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated salary szhlub, you might want to look a little more deeply into "the care and feeding" of your casino connection. In other words, at the same time you’re finding out what your host can do for you, inquire as to what you might be able to do for your host -- what gifts and tips he or she can accept, what he or she likes and doesn’t like to get, that kind of thing.
Some hosts are salaried and receive year-end bonuses based on the results of the play of their customers. These bonuses are commonly a percentage of customers’ losses. This is easier to quantify and incentivize (than their theoretical, explained below), though it puts the host in the unenviable and morally ambiguous position of rooting for his or her customers, some of whom become real friends over time, to lose lose lose as much of their money as possible.
Talk about good being bad and bad being good. When a host’s player wins, the host has to put on a big happy face, while mentally subtracting the applicable percentage of the win from his bonus. And conversely, he has to pretend to be all broken up over a friend’s losses at the same time he’s ka-chinging a nice little percentage of it for himself.
The best deal for a host, and his player, is when his pay or bonus is based on the customer's "theo" -- meaning the theoretical loss. Say a player rep hosts a crapshooter who makes a lot of wild and crazy prop bets -- playing the field, taking the hardways, tossing chips at the big 6 and 8. Added all up, his action has, perhaps, a built-in 6% house advantage. If he buys in for, say, $50,000 and puts it all at risk over the course of a weekend, his theoretical loss would be $3,000 (even though he could actually lose all $50K or double his money to $100,000). And if the host gets, for example, 15% of the theo, he makes $450 whether his crapshooter loses, breaks even, or wins.
In this case, a host can actually root for his player against the casino he represents (and that signs his commission checks). Since his remuneration isn’t based on actual, only theoretical, results, it doesn’t matter if the player wins or loses, just so long as he puts lots and lots of money into action.
This is a best-case scenario for a host, though our understanding is the theo deal is usually reserved for the hosts who have the highest levels of player and are independents, under contract to, rather than on the payroll of, a casino.
