Question of the Day - 03 September 2017

[Editor's Note: This answer was supplied by Blair Rodman, long-time poker pro and author of our book Kill Phil.]

Tipping in poker is a touchy subject. There are no set guidelines. First, a little history.

When I was a rookie in the ’80s, the standard tip for tournaments was about 2% for big events, 3% for most, and a bit more for smaller events. Everyone seemed happy with it.

When more foreigners started coming to the WSOP in the ’90s, tipping became an issue, because Americans tip better than most of the world and dealers’ tips were going down. (In the early days of the WSOP, dealing was pretty lucrative, especially in the Main Event.) Jack McClelland, the WSOP tournament director at the time, finally got tired of fielding the complaints and started withholding 3% from event prize pools for the dealers. I had no problem with that, as it was about what I tipped anyway. But I figured it would take about two years before the 3% was considered a given and a player who didn’t tip more would be considered a stiff by dealers. I was off by about eighteen months.

Greatly adding to the problem was when Becky Behnan, who had taken over the Horseshoe in the late ’90s, started taking some of the dealers’ tip fund and using it to pay other help. Now dealers were getting maybe half of the tip pool and more pressure was on players to tip extra.

This remains the situation today and dealing tournaments isn’t nearly as good of a job as it used to be. It's exacerbated by the fact that a lot of pro players are staked in the bigger events. Investors, who stay in the background, are generally loath to tip more than required, so even more pressure is on the players. Most don’t tip extra; they simply can’t afford to.

If you play cash games for a living, tipping is a significant drain on your bankroll. However, not tipping, especially in mid-level games, is definitely noticed and, unless you have really thick skin, might make your experience rather miserable. Dealers know who the pros are and the good ones understand the situation and aren’t offended by players who tip more sparsely than amateurs, as long as they make the effort. The strange thing is that in the highest games, such as those played in Bobby’s Room at Bellagio, most of the players don’t tip at all. Many dealers hate dealing those games. The best dealing jobs are at rooms with low- to mid-level games populated by locals who frequent the room.

As far as your question goes, there’s no set answer or guideline. I think it’s a highly personal issue. If you're well off, to the point where what you tip is largely irrelevant and you just play for entertainment, tipping generously will make your experience more pleasurable, not to mention helping out the dealers, who have a tough job. If you're well off and are cheap with tipping, it will be noticed and you will get a lot of cold shoulders.

If you play for a living, there are a few things to consider. One is the tax issue you brought up. The tax bite could be a third or more.

Another is that jackpots aren’t free money. Extra rake of a dollar or two is taken from pots and it really adds up. Also, a $390k jackpot will be split up many ways. Generally, the hand getting beat gets something like 40%, the hand that beats it gets 20%, and the rest is split among players at the table, sometimes the whole room, or even the chain of rooms under the same company, such as at the Stations casinos poker rooms in Las Vegas.

I think if you're very wealthy, a tip of $20k or more if you actually got $390k would be generous, but still appropriate. If you’re a low-level pro or play to supplement your income and you play often in the room where you hit the jackpot, a tip of $100 on a $390k jackpot might be worse than nothing, as you’re admitting that you know you should tip, but are too cheap to be more generous.

My suggestion is to tip what you’re comfortable with, but don’t feel pressured. A lot of players like to make grandiose statement about how much they'd tip if they hit, but then tighten up considerably if it actually happens.

I think if I got the losing-hand share of $390k, which would be about $150k, I’d tip $5k-$7k, depending on how I felt toward the dealers. But that’s just me.