Two downtown casinos are now letting their dealers keep their own tips in a changed policy. Binion’s and its sister property, Four Queens, will now let dealers keep the tips given to them at a game instead of pooling with the other dealers, as is most common in Las Vegas casinos.
Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted Glenn Casale, Director of Casino Operations at Binion’s and Four Queens, as saying that Binion’s has been running the policy for about three months, while Four Queens will start it on October 28. He said the properties, owned by parent company TLC Enterprises, chose to switch because they found casino dealers would earn more.
Casale said it had a ‘double effect’ on staffing at Binion’s. About 10 percent of the team left because they preferred the tip-pooling policy. However, according to Casale, the new strategy seemed to work, allowing the casino managers to fully staff swing shifts or the most active daily shift at a casino.
“The dealers, who used to average $50-$60 a day were now averaging $150 on the swing shift,” Casale told Review-Journal. “So it attracted a lot of dealers from other casinos. We were 30 to 40 percent below where we needed to be on swing shift and now we have enough dealers over everything.”
Planning for the new strategy included several months of training the dealers on all games. Casale said most dealers need to know all the games available in the Binion’s pit so they can rotate every 30 minutes.
“No one dealer gets stuck on any one game,” Casale explained. “So if it’s a bad game or a dead game — like they don’t make a lot of money on Pai Gow for example, so you don’t stay on Pai Gow all day.”
Tip pooling is a common practice in Las Vegas casinos, partly because of an IRS program that encourages casinos and their employees to establish average tip rates for consistency among all types of tipped casino workers. Casale said Binion’s dealers will now report how much they received in tips at the end of each shift so it is added to their payroll for tax purposes.
Original article: https://www.yogonet.com/international/noticias/2024/10/17/82120-downtown-las-vegas-casinos-binion-39s-and-four-queens-change-policy-on-dealer-tips
