Casino Dealer Toke Rates

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  1. Casino Dealer Toke Rates
  2. How Much Does The Average Casino Dealer Make
  3. Las Vegas Casino Dealer Toke Rates
  4. Dealer Toke Box
Casino Dealer Toke Rates

As a casino dealer, earning great tips may feel like it comes down to the mood of the table. However, any dealer who has spent time on the gaming floor knows how attitude can positively influence tips. Earning higher tips is all about having good customer service skills: smiling when appropriate, having a professional yet friendly approach, addressing players by name, and most important, celebrating players’ wins.

Seasoned dealers know that while acknowledging customers by name and being prompt to start a conversation is important, having a customer recognize you, know your name, and prefer to approach your table is invaluable.

This being said, what can a dealer do when armed with the best attitude and desire to serve, but there are not enough players and too many tables open? Alternatively, during busy shifts, tables are packed and the good tippers at a table do not get to play at their preferred pace of game. This lower-level of patron experience can potentially hinder a dealer’s tokes as well.

Of course, there are many factors that affect the toke rate such as the player quality and game mix. All other factors being constant, can toke rates increase with dealer shift start times and schedules that are better aligned with patron demand? This is where management’s role is pivotal.

In North America, table games typically have three core dealer shifts: 12pm-8pm (day), 8pm-4am (swing) and 4am-12pm (grave). Between 6am-9am, demand generally bottoms out. With low demand, the house is making less money and the dealers are earning lower tokes. Low earning hours decrease the overall dealer toke rate. Keeping dealers for their full shift, particularly during off-peak periods, causes frustration since many rely on tokes.

If Pit Managers are not actively managing early outs, many tables could be sitting empty. However, if dealers are sent home early, it can result in a short-staffed day shift for the mid-morning resurgence of business (around 10am) and a missed revenue opportunity.

Toke distribution can also affect the toke rate. In many parts of the US, tokes are typically pooled and distributed daily or weekly. A daily toke pool benefits both the operator and dealer as individual dealers have more control (and reward) over their tokes. They have a stronger incentive to provide a good patron experience. A weekly toke pool can be simpler to administer, however, stretching out the tips over a longer period can be less motivating for dealers.

As an operator, an effective solution in the above example would be to realign schedules to demand. For example, switching dealer shifts from the above scenario to 10am-6pm (day), 6pm-2am (swing) and 2am-10am (grave). By decreasing off-peak labor hours, the toke rate can increase without compromising the day shift. Alternatively, staggered shifts can be used as a strategy to bring staff in at 10am instead of noon and still keep the same core shifts. The realigned dealer shifts spread out the tokes over fewer, but more profitable hours. Thus, the dealers earn more money, in less time.

A step further would be to identify the strategy, or ideal environment that enables dealers to generate the highest toke rates. It can be argued that maximizing the net contribution of a player’s visit to the property will result in the highest toke rate. A topic for a different blog post, but optimal utilization or optimal table occupancy will allow for this. For example, if a $25 blackjack game has an optimal occupancy of three players per table and we are forecasting 21 players to come to the property next Monday at 10am, the operator needs to schedule enough staff to open seven $25 blackjack tables for that time.

Aside from bottom-line gains from reducing wasted labor hours and better table performance, dealers are given an optimal environment to earn a higher toke rate.

Casino Dealer Toke Rates

It is management’s responsibility to schedule dealers in the most efficient way. By realigning dealer shifts or better yet, moving to dynamic scheduling, operators foster a motivating dealer environment while also reducing wasted labor hours. In turn, dealers are more engaged, have a higher toke rate, and therefore, can provide a better patron experience.

When I was younger, I had a few jobs where tips were an important part of my salary. One of those jobs was as a dealer, where tips (or tokes as we called them) are the most important element of your salary. I was a dealer in three of the Atlantic City casinos for a total of about six years early on, and sometimes I wondered about the system that split up all that tip money. There was a state regulation that required casinos to split the tokes on a weekly basis, based on the hours worked that week by all the dealers.

Casino Dealer Toke Rates

Casino Dealer Toke Rates

When I first started out, I dealt $2 and $5 blackjack in the busiest casinos I’ve ever seen. On some nights, you took your 20-minute break in the pit, because the crowds were so thick, you couldn’t get to the dealers’ lounge and back in time. I didn’t see many tokes at those low-limit games, but when I graduated to baccarat, I saw much more action and many more tokes.

Now, some of my supervisors in those days had worked in big Vegas casinos where either they kept their own tokes or divided them by shift or by day. So the busier shifts or days got better tips because they worked harder. In Atlantic City, dealers with seniority who had weekends off got paid the same as dealers who worked the busiest days and worst shifts.

Last month, I was reading a blog on LinkedIn by Tangam executives Ari Mizrahi and Victor Tanase talking about how attitude can affect a dealer’s ability to earn tokes. (The blog can be found on the Tangam website, Tangamgaming.com.)

How Much Does The Average Casino Dealer Make

“Earning higher tips is all about having good customer service skills: smiling when appropriate, having a professional yet friendly approach, addressing players by name, and most important, celebrating players’ wins,” the authors write.

They go on to discuss how to build a high toke rate by managing the games correctly. A dealer can have the best attitude in the house, but when there are too many or too few players, that attitude can go for nothing. Managers must understand how to deftly control the number of dealers versus the number of players, and not leave the company short during a surge in players or leave too many dealers on the tables as demand falls off.

They also talk about the methods of toke distribution—shift versus day versus weekly. This can be crucial for the reasons I stated above. With distribution on a shift or daily basis, you’ll have your best dealers—or at least those with seniority—bidding for the busiest shifts and days, providing your best players with your best dealers. The weekly distribution model discourages that.

But I wonder why we can’t go back to the old days where dealers kept their own tips. It happens in the poker rooms; why couldn’t it work on the casino floor? Yes, I know there’s a fine line between being friendly and helpful and hustling tips (a definite problem), but it can be controlled by attentive supervisors and pit bosses. I also know there would be some IRS concerns, but again, that can be handled rather simply.

One time when I was a baccarat dealer, I spent a week with a couple of crews dealing 12-hour shifts to a high roller from Hong Kong playing $50,000 a hand. After about a week he was even, but he recognized the great service we gave him and wanted to buy all the dealers Rolex watches as a gift. Management wouldn’t allow it because state law prohibited individual toking of dealers.

Las Vegas Casino Dealer Toke Rates

Casino Dealer Toke Rates

But can you imagine if your dealers could be recognized by your best players, and how that would change their approach to customer service? It would encourage great service and a positive attitude at all times. Would it take a little more policing of the relationship between players and dealers? Yes, but that’s why we have cameras and surveillance (which as a side note, need to be upgraded in almost every casino).

Dealer Toke Box

I know it’s occurring in some small Nevada and California casinos but haven’t heard any results. And why not try it in a destination resort? You let your bellman, valet parkers, waiters and waitresses, bartenders, etc. keep their own tips. Why not your dealers? Let’s give it a try and see how it works!