Other than Wynn Las Vegas and Encore, no other Strip casinos practice tip-sharing at this point, although Caesars Palace has threatened to institute the practice. In the case of Caesars, the parent company’s massive indebtedness may be motivating covetousness toward the tip pool. When Steve Wynn did it at "Wynncore," his stated reason was that dealers were, with tips, making more than pit bosses. (Our research has indicated this to be true of the best dealers, but not average ones.) This made it harder for Wynn to recruit quality pit bosses – "team leaders" in Wynn parlance – when they could make more money as dealers. He also had class-based objections to the idea of floor workers making more than "the suits."
How the tip pool at Wynncore is split is a well-guarded secret. However, we suspect you’re more interested in industry standard practice. Former Las Vegas dealer Daniel Baldonado gave us the following explanation: "It doesn’t depend on the game. All dealers get an equal hourly share. So the toke rate in my time was $10/hour. Then the dealer who worked two hours got $20 and the dealer who worked eight hours got $80.
"It didn’t matter what game you were on or what shift you worked. That’s how a ’24 hour’ split house works. Some places would do a ’shift for shift’ split but that’s rare anymore in Vegas. The box man and the floor supervisors were paid salary. Box men aren’t dealing the game they are supervising it. The stick man is just another dealer and he rotates to the ’base’ on craps."
The dealer demimonde is a somewhat mysterious subculture, filled with insider jargon. But we hope that at least partially satisfies your curiosity.
