I’ve been around some really hard-core gamblers who wanted to get every penny of their profits under any circumstances. For the most part, these were poker players, but the thing I couldn’t help but notice about many of them is that they really HATED giving a tip.
One world-famous and very successful gambler, Bob Dancer, once told a story of a situation where tipping in the casino actually added to his profit.
That’s why I’m going to relate that situation and give some analysis as to why tipping can be profitable in the casino.
Playing With An Advantage In The Casino
To be an advantage player in the casino, you’ll first have to find a game where you can get a positive expected return. It would be nice to have that positive expectation on each and every bet. That’s virtually impossible. After all, casinos exist to make money.
But there are two exceptions that you can find in most casinos. Blackjack and video poker can give you at least a fighting chance to be a winner. But it doesn’t happen automatically. The positive expectations occur only when game conditions are aligned in your favor.
And for both games, a defined strategy is involved. The more perfectly you play the strategy, the more likely you can expect a positive outcome. That is, you can find the greatest blackjack conditions or the best video poker pay tables on the casino floor and still lose about 2% of your bankroll if you’re a sloppy player.
Sometimes, the closest you’ll get to a positive expectation is by finding a break even game that can turn positive only when a promotion or a rebate can be calculated into the equation. You want to get your total expectation as much over 100% as possible.
You Can Measure Your Expected Return in Dollars and Cents
You can easily calculate your hourly expected win rate fairly easily.
First you need to figure out the edge that you have over the casino. If your game is blackjack, and you’re good at it, you likely have something around a one percent advantage. That’s an estimate but pretty much it’s an average that players would agree on.
When playing video poker, calculating our advantage can be more precise. That’s because your expected return is displayed on the pay table of the game. So it’s just a matter of crunching the numbers. This can be calculated online at various sites. Input the pay table and the site spits out a payback percentage and will even generate an appropriate strategy for you.
Here are some popular pay tables and their corresponding returns: Common pay tables and what the payback percentages are.
Once you’ve determined your advantage over the casino, you determine how much action you’re bringing the casino per hour. This is the average bet you’re making multiplied by the number of bets you’re making per hour.
In video poker, for example, you might be betting $1.25 per hand and playing 600 hands per hour. Your hourly action in this case is $750.
In blackjack, you might be betting $10 per hand and playing 80 hands per hour. Your hourly action in this case is $800.
The next step is to multiply your hourly action by your percentage advantage. In that blackjack example, if you’re a card counter with a 1% edge, you can estimate winning $8/hour.
If you’re playing with some kind of promotion, you can add that amount into your hourly calculation, too.
An Example Of A Video Poker Promotion
Let’s suppose the casino is running a promotion where you get a card with 25 squares on it, and every time you hit a four of a kind or a straight flush on video poker, the change person stamps one of your squares. Let’s also assume that six of the squares were freebies, so you only need to get 19 squares stamped to fill your card.
Now, suppose that the casino pays you $200 for a completed ticket. What does this do to your hourly expectation?
The first thing to do is break the squares on the card down into a dollar value. $200 divided by 19 squares is $10.53.
The next thing to do is figure out how often you’ll hit one of the hands that warrant getting a stamp. If you’re an average player getting in 600 hands per hour, you’ll get one of your squares stamped 1.5 times per hour.
1.5 x $10.53 is $15.80 per hour in free promotional money. You’d add this to your hourly expected win or loss to come up with your hourly expected win or loss after the value of the promotion is accounted for.
Now, let’s assume that you’re playing a breakeven game besides the promotion, so you’re making just the value of the promotion every hour—$15.80 per hour.
The Value of Tipping Becomes Clear Soon
Suppose you tip your change person $2 every time you get your card stamped. That’s going to reduce the amount you’re winning by $3. Now, you’re making $12.80 per hour.
But say you’re a recreational gambler, anyway, so you don’t necessarily need to maximize your wins. It makes you feel good to be polite.
The staff notice that you’re tipping a little better than the average gambler, though, so you start getting some extra attention. You’re getting more free drinks more often. The staff are laughing at your jokes and smiling. Some of the women working at the casino are even flirting with you.
Now, suppose you’ve hit a losing streak and haven’t gotten your card stamped in a couple hours. The change person comes over and asks you what’s going on, and you tell her you’ve been on a losing streak.
She likes you, though, because you’ve been tipping and you’re polite. So, she decides to give you a free couple of stamps on your card gratis. That $3 you tipped her in the first hour of her shift just resulted in $21.06 worth of free stamps on your card.
Now, suppose the change persons are excited to be stamping your card. One of them rushes over to stamp your card, and you thank her and tip here. Another change person comes over to see if you’ve been taken care of, and you laugh and say, yes, my card’s already been stamped, but only once.
She laughs, too, and stamps the card a second time. Before it’s all said and done, you’re averaging two to three stamps on your card for every one you’ve actually earned just because you’ve been tipping at a rate of $3 per hour.
You’re trading $3 for $21.06. I’d make that trade repeatedly for the rest of my life anytime it was offered to me. Wouldn’t you? And on top of that, you’re a mensch.
This Actually Happened to Bob Dancer
I’m re-reading Million Dollar Video Poker, and the hypothetical scenario I outlined above actually happened to him. It’s one of the reasons he was able to win his million dollars in the course of three years.
One of the things I love about stories like this is that they provide insight into a side of professional gambling that’s beyond the obvious. After all, how many times does someone have to tell you that the better pay tables in video poker result in a higher payback percentage before you say you get it?
How many times do you need to be told that higher ranked cards favor the player in blackjack, so a deck rich in 10s and aces results in more blackjacks?
I’d much rather read an interesting story about the human side of gambling for a living.
Does all this constitute cheating? What do you think?
You’re encouraged to tip the casino staff, right? And there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, is there? Can you help it if the casino staff decides to provide you with a little extra service because they like you?
If you were offering to bribe them to stamp your card endlessly, that would be different. No one’s suggesting you create a counterfeit stamp so you can stamp your own card.
This isn’t cheating at all. It’s just savvy gambling.
Our Final Thoughts on Tipping the Casino Employees
Tipping is the right thing to do at the casino because it’s polite. Those employees work hard, and they get some relatively low wages. They rely on their tips to earn a living.
But tipping can also be profitable in surprising ways, as you saw in this post.
