Poker Dealer Salary

1. Poker Dealer Salary Las Vegas
2. Poker Dealer Salary Reddit
3. Poker Dealer Salary In Vegas
4. Poker Dealer Salary California
5. Poker Dealer Salary Uk

Is a Career as a Poker Dealer Right for You?

Poker Dealers in America make an average salary of $47,431 per year or $23 per hour. The top 10 percent makes over $119,000 per year, while the bottom 10 percent under $18,000 per year. The average Poker Dealer salary in Alaska is $21,380 as of August 27, 2020, but the range typically falls between $19,363 and $24,496. Salary ranges can vary widely depending on the city and many other important factors, including education, certifications, additional skills, the number of years you have spent in your profession. The national average salary for a Poker Dealer is $14 in Canada. Filter by location to see Poker Dealer salaries in your area. Salary estimates are based on 3 salaries submitted anonymously to Glassdoor by Poker Dealer employees.

Compared to being a player, dealing has one big benefit – you get paid regardless of how the cards fall. There is plenty of demand for experienced dealers around the world. These include regular casinos and card-rooms – as well as the big tournament events like the World Series of Poker. Before you jump in and start dealing, this guide gives you an objective overview of what this involves.

Poker Dealer Salary Las Vegas

Here are how the various aspects of becoming a poker dealer are broken down below:

• Pros and Cons: An objective look at the benefits and drawbacks of dealing cards.
• Routes to Becoming a Poker Dealer: Dealing schools and working your way through the ranks.
• What a Poker Dealer Does? There are multiple aspects of this role that you might not have considered.
• Qualities of Poker Dealers: What kind of skills and attributes do successful poker dealers have?
• Dealing Poker vs Dealing Casino Games: How poker compares to dealing blackjack and other card games.
• Income Expectations: How Much Money Can a Poker Dealer Make?

This means that 50 percent of dealers made more than $19,290, and 50 percent made less. However, as PayScale.com notes, dealers can also earn money from tips. As a result, the take-home income of poker dealers depends on where the dealer works and her overall job performance. About the Industry. Poker dealers work in casinos and poker rooms.

Pros and Cons of Becoming a Poker Dealer

It takes a certain type of person to stick out a career as a poker dealer. You’ll need to be sharp enough to keep track of the pots, rules and cards – as well as dealing with the human elements. Here is a quick overview of the pros and cons, which are discussed in more detail in the section below.

Benefits of Dealing Poker:

• Steady income: You’ll get a base salary, plus tips. year.
• Social Elements: This is a service job, and if you enjoy working with people it can be an enjoyable way to earn a living.
• Plenty of Demand: Casinos around the world need experienced dealers.
• Retirement + Insurance: Dealers for big casino corporations get employee benefits.
• Flexible Schedules: With poker being 24/7, many casinos will have shifts which suit your lifestyle.
• Learn on the Job: If you deal the bigger stakes, you get to watch the poker experts in action, which can only improve your own game.

Drawbacks of Dealing Poker:

• Standing Up: You’ll be on your feet the entire time during your shifts.
• Unsocial Hours: When you start to deal, you’ll be lower down the pecking order when it comes to picking the best shifts.
• Tips are Variable: Depending on the players, tips can fluctuate widely. Since these make up a lot of your income, you need to account for those ‘dry’ days.
• Disgruntled Players: Some players take out their frustration on losing a pot on the dealer, you’ll need to be emotionally tough enough to cope.
• Seasonal Work: Poker does have down periods, when players are scarce.

How Much Money Can a Poker Dealer Make?

Base salaries for poker dealers are low. These range from $15,000 to $20,000 per year – a minimum wage job. Benefits are based on this salary range.

Of course, poker dealers make a lot more than this. A good dealer can earn between $30k and $60k a year. This extra income comes via tips. A very experienced poker dealer can make $100k+. To get to this level, you’ll need to be dealing the biggest games and working at peak times.

How Do Poker Dealers Make Tips:

• Per Pot: Most players will tip the dealer $1 or more when winning a decent pot. This can be bigger in the high stakes games, where pots of $1000+ are being pushed regularly.
• Tournament Tips: Many casinos include tips for dealers in the tournament buy-ins. For example, the World Series of Poker has between 2% and 4% included for each event.
• Tournament discretionary Tips: Often, the winner of a tournament will give a tip, which is usually divided among the active dealers.

Note that in some countries, tipping is not permitted in casinos. This is balanced by higher base salaries for the dealers. Some casinos pool tips and divide these among all staff equally, others allow dealers to keep their own tips.

Tips don’t only depend on the size of the game you are dealing. Your personality plays a role. Players are more likely to tip competent and personable dealers.

How to Become a Poker Dealer?

The usual route is to attend a training program. This involves a 4 to 8-week course, which will cover the many different aspects of dealing. These courses range from $1000 to $2000.

Many casinos have big enough demand for dealers that they run their own training programs. You will not need to pay for these if you graduate and then deal for that casino.

If you have plenty of experience dealing, though no formal qualification, you can still apply for a job as a poker dealer. This will involve a live audition, with the poker room manager watching you closely. If you impress, you’ll be hired – and possibly offered on the job training for any areas you lack experience with.

Exactly What a Poker Dealer Does?

You might think dealing poker is all about shuffling cards and pushing pots. There is a lot more to the role than that. Primarily, dealing is a customer service job – keeping control of the game and enforcing the rules need to go alongside making sure the players have a great experience. If they do not, your tips will be small – and the number of games will fall.

Here are the primary tasks of a poker dealer:

• Card Skills: Shuffling the deck, keeping count of the cards, burning cards for the flop turn and river and collecting mucked cards needs to be done accurately every time.
• Controlling the Pot: The dealer needs to announce bets (though not the pot size), deal with side pots and rules on minimum raise sizes that reopen the betting – and push the pot to the right player.
• Enforcing the Rules: Poker involves a lot of small rules, and the dealer is expected to know them all by heart. These can involve capped betting limits, betting the nuts when someone is all-in during a tournament and how to handle situations with exposed cards. If there is a dispute, the dealer is expected to call the ‘floor’ to help out.
• Watching for Cheating: This can take many forms including soft-play, collusion and under-betting the pot. Dealers need to be aware at all times, and to report anything unclear to the floor.
• Dealing with Unruly / Nasty Players:Live poker unfortunately attracts a lot of unpleasant characters. While often they are harmless, a dealer does sometimes bear the brunt of abuse from certain types. An experienced dealer will know when this crosses the line – and call either security or the floor to deal with it.
• Knowing Many Poker Variants: Casinos run many variations of poker, and a dealer needs to be able to switch between them seamlessly.
• Concentration for Long Periods: Avoiding mistakes involves being focused for long periods (shifts usually last an hour, before a 20-minute break). You’ll be expected to remain 100% focused all the time – even a rare error can significantly disrupt a game.
• Signalling the ‘Eye in the Sky’: Security cameras watch every game. When you see a dealer tapping the table (for example with a chip given as a tip) those are for the benefit of security. You’ll be expected to stick by these rules and know the different signals for specific situations.

Personal Qualities of Poker Dealers

So far, I have talked about the practical aspects of dealing cards. This section flips things around, asking whether you have the personal qualities to enjoy this line of work.

A poker dealer needs to enjoy working with people. Despite the many practical skills, this is first and foremost a service job. If you prefer your own company, then this might not be the right job for you. If you like interacting with a diverse range of personalities – and can keep smiling when things get tough – you could be the perfect fit.

You’ll need a thick skin. Bad tempered players are a fact of life for the poker dealing profession. Many of these will make up for their own bad play by taking it out on the dealer. Patience is needed – you won’t be able to answer back (though calling security or the floor is always an option!).

Dealers also need to be good at mental arithmetic. This comes into play with side-pots, pot-limit betting and many other situations. You also need to be fast and accurate at reading boards – pushing the pot to the wrong player is a major mistake.

Personal flexibility is needed, especially at the start of your career. The prime shifts will usually go to the most experienced and reliable dealers. This means you’ll have to take the remaining shifts while you get your foot in the door. Flexibility will win you a lot of credit with the poker room management, and you’ll soon find yourself getting a better pick of shifts.

Dealing Poker vs Dealing Other Casino Games

Poker is not the only game which requires dealers. There is demand for people to deal blackjack, spin roulette wheels and join craps teams. Those games have a house edge, and you’ll be facilitating a welcoming environment for people to enjoy themselves while losing money. The balance is that there is plenty of variety – especially when you consider all the casino ‘carnival games’.

If you enjoy poker and want to learn from experienced players – then dealing those games is the way to go. This can allow you to learn on the job. Things like physical tells, which require years of experience to pick up, can be very obvious to experienced dealers.

Playing poker at a casino is a super fun and thrilling experience. If you love the casino experience that much, being a poker dealer at a casino will definitely seem like a dream job for many people. Not only will you get to always be part of a game that you like but you will also have the chance to always enjoy the authentic atmosphere that cannot be found anywhere else that is not a casino.

However, as much as being a poker dealer may seem to be glamorous, the first thing that you should probably consider is the pay. So, how much do poker dealers make?

In this blog, I delve into every important detail involving the amounts that poker dealers make. From the average wage, what determines your earnings and training; it’s all covered below.

Let’s begin.

What is the average wage of a poker dealer?

According to Glassdoor, poker dealer salaries in Las Vegas, Nevada range from $18,000 to $49,000 annually with the average salary amount clocking in at $20,991 per year. In California, the average base pay for poker dealers is $10 per hour or up to $38,122 per year.

Poker Dealer Salary Reddit

Top 4 Poker Dealer Salaries in Las Vegas:

1. Wynn Resorts $60k – $100k (including tips)
2. Caesars Entertainment $54k – $58k
3. MGM Resorts International $36k – $44k
4. SLS Hotels $34k – $37k

Tips are usually very vital to the salaries of most croupiers. Professional poker dealers will, of course, get more tips since they are more knowledgeable and skilled at dealing and handling players. Tips usually range from just a few dollars to $50 or even more depending on the aforementioned factors. These tips can add up to huge sums of money and they make the job even more interesting for many poker enthusiasts.

“The Average Salary for a Poker Dealer in the US is $19,107 per year as of September 2020”

Even so, it is worth noting that different casinos will have different policies regarding how tips are dished out. Some will pool all the tips together and share them among all the poker dealers. Others allow each dealer to keep all their tips.

“The average hourly rate for a card dealer is between $8 – $11 in the United States”

What Determines How Much a Dealer Earns?

Several factors come into play when it comes to determining how much poker dealers make. Perhaps the most obvious will be location – what poker dealers make in Las Vegas, for instance, will certainly not be the same as what poker dealers make in California. While both cities are great destinations for casino lovers, the gambling scene in Las Vegas is more vibrant and thus attracts more people. This means that croupiers stand a chance of making more money from tips in Las Vegas since more players will be visiting the casinos.

In many places, casino work including poker dealing can be seasonal and this too will have an impact on what game dealers get.

Another important factor that determines how much a poker dealer earns is professionalism. Well, you do not necessarily need to go to dealing school to become a poker dealer but this could certainly make you a better dealer.

Dealing is a customer service job where you not only need to keep control of the poker game but also enforce the rules while at the same time ensuring that the players are treated to a great experience. That said, it is pretty easy to see that experienced and professional poker dealers make way more money. This applies to both tips and the base salary.

Typically, tips make up a huge chunk of what most poker dealers get to take home. One AMA from a poker dealer on Reddit stated:

“As for income, I only get paid in tips. No wages. I make an average of $15/hour.”

The amounts will range depending on several factors, from experience to the casino you are dealing at. It might be a little too difficult to accurately predict how much in tips they make since these are not often factored in when calculating the wages of casino dealers.

In the same AMA the poker dealer commented:

“The biggest tip I ever received at once was $100”

Poker Dealer Salary In Vegas

While another commented:

“[the] Biggest tip I recieved in my time as a dealer was $1000 chip”

It really does show how much tips can vary from dealer to dealer.

How Can I become a Poker Dealer?

If you are impressed by what poker dealers make you might be probably considering taking it up as a career. If that is the case, you will need to be aware of some of the requirements that you will need to meet to qualify. While some of these factors will vary from one casino to the next, some standard ones apply across the board.

To begin with, poker dealing is pretty complex, and to get ahead of the curve, a training course would be great even if you are an avid poker player. This does not mean that mastery of the game is thrown under the bus – in fact, it is vital to your application. Even so, before you are allowed to start, you might need to pass a dealer audition where everything from your knowledge of the game to your customer service skills are put to the test.

There are some casinos that train you in-house but if you want to apply for one of the larger casinos you will need some previous training. There are school dedicated to training casino dealers (including poker) such as:

Each of these schools teach new dealers everything they need to know about dealing poker. There are plenty of schools out there so check your local area for ones close to you.

In addition to that, there are a few other important factors that you may need to consider. For instance, you have to be of the legal gambling age and have a flexible schedule. It goes without saying that you should do a bit of research and background checks on the casino you wish to work at to ascertain whether you are okay with their policies.

All in all, the overarching requirement when it comes to being a dealer is having a well-rounded personality in addition to all the related experience. This means that things like being able to speak multiple languages, a warm personality, and exceptional math skills will give you a huge edge. Casinos are always looking for new talent and all you have to do is put yourself out there. Better yet, you can start small and built up some progress as you perfect your skills and gain more experience.

Is This the Dream Job For You?

Poker Dealer Salary California

If you still think that being a poker dealer is your dream job even after going through the estimated salaries then you should go for it. It all comes down to why you are doing it – some people take their dealing careers very seriously while others prefer to have fun with it by doing it as a hobby. Either way, there is a lot to be gained from it so long as you have the right attitude and are ready to deal with all of the things that come with the job.

Just make sure that you take every relevant factor into account just as you would for other jobs.

FAQ

Poker Dealer Salary Uk

According to a recent listing from tripadvisor.com, Wynn Las Vegas pays its dealers the highest – an average of $100,000 annually in salary and tips.

Yes, most casinos require that you get a few weeks of training and certification from a certified poker dealing school before they can hire you.

Yes. Depending on several factors poker dealers in the United States can make up to $100,000 in salary and tips every year.

Poker dealers tap the poker table lightly to let the players know that the previous round of the game has ended and they are about to deal again.

Visors help poker dealers to reduce eyestrain which is usually caused by the glaring overhead lighting that is normally characteristic of many poker rooms in casinos.

Yes, some casinos allow the poker dealers to keep all of the tips that they get from the players at the tables they are dealing.

The main difference between dealers and croupiers is the fact that dealers are usually found in card games such as poker while croupiers deal handle roulette games.

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