Every now and then I get a question about tipping. Somebody hit a 50\u00a2 royal flush and wanted to know how much to tip on the $2,000 jackpot. He actually tipped $20 and wanted to know if that was too much or too little. Although everybody has a different formula for this, most folks would consider tipping 1% on such a jackpot to be in the ‘reasonable’ range. I think it’s the wrong question.<\/p>\n
A 50\u00a2 royal is a pretty rare–every 40,000+ hands–event. Tipping $5, $10, $20, or even $40 for such an event doesn’t affect your EV very much because it happens so rarely.<\/p>\n
If you’re playing a $5 or $10 game, you’re probably getting hand pays every 400 hands. This is 100 times as often as you’re getting them on 50\u00a2 machines. The amount you tip here makes a HUGE difference in your EV.<\/p>\n
Do the math: A $20 tip on an every 40,000-hand event is the proportional equivalent of a 20\u00a2 tip on an every 400-hand event (i.e., 20\u00a2 is 1\/100th of $20 and a 400-hand event is 1\/100th of a 40,000-hand event). And tipping 20\u00a2 will tick off casino employees worse than tipping zero.<\/p>\n
As a percent of total bet, tipping $1 on a jackpot earned while playing $10 games is comparable to tipping $20 on a 50\u00a2 jackpot. Tipping $1 on a jackpot will give you strange looks but it will probably be accepted with a “thank you,” albeit perhaps sarcastically. If this is the amount you deem appropriate, it’s probably better to stiff them nine times and give then $10 the tenth.<\/p>\n
I care about EV and as such I look at tipping as a proportion of total bet, not the amount of the jackpot.<\/p>\n
The other factor to consider is how often you play. A $10 player could be getting 100 times the number of hand-pay jackpots of a 50\u00a2 player who plays as many hands. But if the $10 player is a pro and the 50\u00a2 player is an occasional recreational player, the $10 player is getting thousands of times the number of hand-pay jackpots simply because the pro plays a lot more hands.<\/p>\n
In this scenario, the 50\u00a2 royal may well be a once-every-two-year event. A once-every-two-year royal is VERY exciting. Folks tend to tip more when they are really excited. For someone who gets 100 hand-pays a month, however, each one is not such a big deal. It makes sense to tip less in this kind of situation…if at all.<\/p>\n
Although it varies quite a bit depending on the availability of games, I typically receive between $4 million and $10 million in W-2Gs annually. Tipping 1% of that would be $40,000 – $100,000 per year. Forget about it! That’s not going to happen. More than once that would have turned a winning year into a losing year.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard folks say, “If I had the money to play $25 machines, I’d definitely tip well.” Perhaps. Talk is cheap when it’s unlikely you will ever be in such a position. If and when you actually get into that position, you’ll find the world looks a lot different than you thought it would beforehand.<\/p>\n
And it remains much easier to tell others what they should do with their lives rather than figure out what’s best for your own life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every now and then I get a question about tipping. Somebody hit a 50\u00a2 royal flush and wanted to know how much to tip on the $2,000 jackpot. He actually tipped $20 and wanted to know if that was too much or too little. Although everybody has a different formula for this, most folks would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15763,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15763"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/shop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}