The Rules Guy: How To Conduct Yourself at the Poker Table: Poker Room Tipping Etiquette

Most players learn poker’s explicit rules pretty quickly: the “one-chip rule,” for example, or “verbal declarations are binding.” But not everyone seems to have digested the game’s vast book of unwritten rules, admonitions like “don’t berate other players (particularly bad ones)” or “say ‘nice hand’ even when you mean something entirely different.”

Enter “The Rules Guy.” TRG believes that civility and sportsmanship are never wrong, and that bad behavior (even when you’re simply trying to get an edge) is bad for the game. Have you got a question about how to conduct yourself at the poker table? Email TRG at [email protected].

Dear The Rules Guy:

From time to time I have read that it is appropriate to tip floor persons. Can you tell me something about when floor persons should be tipped and what the customary amounts are?

I play mostly $1-$2 no-limit at Foxwoods in Connecticut. The people I play with and I all tip dealers and cocktail waitresses on a very consistent basis (generally $1 per hand, more for a very large pot). But I don’t think that I have ever seen anyone tip a floor person.

Also, while I don’t expect it to come up anytime soon, is it usual to tip a security officer for walking you to your car? How much?

— A Player at Table 16 at Foxwoods

Dear Player,

In the interest of full disclosure: The Rules Guy is not merely a humble scribe for Card Player. In his spare time, the Rules Guy is a floor man at a local card room, though many of his excellent colleagues, all of his managers, and most of his customers are convinced he is not a particularly good one, particularly when it comes to the rules of seven-card stud. But every last one of TRG’s colleagues on the floor would answer your first question as follows: Floor people should be tipped early and often. The customary amount is a black chip ($20 at our card room) or a white chip ($100). Larger denominations cheerfully accepted.

Just kidding. Even TRG has fantasies. But just kidding.

Tipping the floor is a good idea, but the whole endeavor is considerably murkier than tipping dealers, waitresses, and chip runners. TRG has written before about the whys and hows of card room tipping, but the short version is worth repeating: Dealers and waitresses and chip runners depend on tips for the bulk of their income. Their standard of living relies on your generosity. If they can’t make a living, they won’t do the job. Therefore, tipping is, for all practical purposes, part of your cost of playing poker, a form of rake.

Of course, tipping is a voluntary part of the rake, but do you really want to deprive a hard-working person of a living wage? Of course you don’t. And as you state in your email, you and your fellow players at Foxwoods are commendably diligent about tipping. Bravo!

Everyone in the gaming business is in the service business, and tips are (in the most common paradigm) rewards for service. The waitress brings your sugar-free Red Bull and a shot of Jägermeister; you give her a dollar or two.

The transactional nature of that exchange makes sense, but what does a floor person do for you? Plenty of services: He or she puts you into the game you want. Handles your requests for table or game changes. Starts games and ensures those games run smoothly. And, perhaps most important (if not always the most popular), the floor makes procedural decisions at your table. These duties, of course, are all part of the job — but none of them, honestly, is particularly tip-worthy in a transactional sense. (And the last, of course, is not tip-worthy in any sense of the term.)

A good floor person also handles a lot of extraneous tasks. TRG has gotten chips for people when chip runners were busy, located some obscure college basketball game on one of the TVs, moved a player’s meal to his new game, fetched a bag of potato chips from the vending machine, supplied aspirin and gum, and lent a sympathetic (if jaded) ear for about 15,000 bad beat stories.

Again, these are all part of delivering good customer service — a fundamental mandate for everyone in the card room — but not many of these are transactions in the same way as pushing a pot or delivering a drink. They are simply part of being helpful, and making your poker experience easy and hassle-free. It’s difficult to put a value on these services too. In other words, it’s entirely understandable that you (and others) are often unsure of when to tip, why to tip, and how much to tip.

Forget, for a moment, the notion of tipping as a transaction, as payment for a particular service. There is an alternative perspective. Think of tips as a way to reward consistent service in the past and to ensure goodwill in the future.

The best analogue comes not from the card room but from New York apartment buildings (or in any large city). In Manhattan, most people tip their doormen and building supervisors (and garage attendants and who knows who else) at Christmas time. They are, at once, paying for the past year’s worth of service and investing in a future year’s worth of goodwill and good service.

TRG is quick to point that you shouldn’t have to tip people in advance. As a customer of the card room, you are entitled to good service, courtesy, respect, and professionalism. A good floor person will deliver that to every player. But floor people are human, and they will remember those who tip. They will go out of their way to be helpful going forward, to ensure you feel welcome. This is not just because they appreciate the cash (though of course they do); it’s at least in part that they appreciate the acknowledgement of service provided. (They also like smiles, “pleases,” and “thank yous” too, and they remember these as well.)

You might think of tipping as an investment, and if you’re inclined to tip, here are some opportunities to do so:

Whenever the floor is unusually helpful: When your floor goes above and beyond the call of duty, a small toke ($1-to-$2) is a reasonable “thank you.”

When you’ve been difficult: Say that, for perfectly valid reasons, you’ve changed tables five times in a single session. A reasonable reason for shipping a small tip.

When you’ve been successful: Some players will leave something for the floor when they’ve had a particularly good session. The size depends on your stakes, but $5-to-$25 is generous.

When it’s Christmas time: The holidays are always a good time to tip the floor. When TRG was a more active player, he would give $20 to every floor man with shifts during his normal playing time the week before Christmas. This kind of generosity never goes unnoticed and is always appreciated.

But there is a time you must never tip a floor man: just after a favorable ruling. This is simply and obviously bad form, for simple and obvious reasons. The floor’s overarching mission is twofold: to ensure the fairest possible game for every player and to protect the integrity of the game as a whole. In this regard, the floor must be objective and be seen to be objective. (Some card rooms prohibit players from tipping floor people for this very reason.)

Perhaps the easiest way to handle tipping for the floor is to simply do it when the spirit moves you. Your floor people will appreciate the gesture (no matter how small), and TRG can guarantee that you’ll be rewarded many times over with even better service in the future.

A final note: You should tip the security guard who escorts you to your car; $2-to-$5 is sufficient. ♠