Ask The Wizard #104
- A dealer works the same game for an entire shift. There is a big disparity in how players tip depending on the game. For example Caribbean Stud and Let it Ride players are very bad tippers.
- Some shifts tip better than others. 75% of tips are earned on the swing shift.
- Our casino is close to the Canadian border and if a dealer gets stuck with Canadian players for the shift then he will go home broke for the day.
- The dealers who are friendly with the pit bosses will get the good games and good shifts.
Furthermore I disagree with calling tip sharing "institutionalized favoritism." If dealers share their tips, every dealer receives the same pay for putting in the same hour of work. Thus, it seems to me that tip sharing reduces institutionalized favoritism, rather than contributing to it as you allege. Letting people keep their own tips would mean the good looking woman would earn more than someone else doing the same job, simply because she is a good looking woman. That would be a policy of institutionalized favoritism.
In the case of your casino if tip sharing were optional I would expect only the men who are not friendly with management would opt to join the pool. If the casino didn’t do a better job at rotating dealers and treating them equally then some dealers would quit, forcing the casino to take action. It may also lead to more female heavy workforce through attrition but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Men have a competitive advantage at other jobs, like lifting heavy objects.
It is hard to study economics, as I have, and not have a healthy respect for free enterprise. Tip sharing is a form of socialism, which will obviously benefit some, but as a whole will only results in inferior public service due to insufficient incentives.
To answer your question I’ll assume a four of a kind pays 25 times the bet. Then a four of kind on the deal in a $0.20 50-play game will pay $0.20 * 5 * 50 * 25 = $1250. You will get a four of a kind on the deal once every 4165 hands, on average. If you were to drop the number of hands to 47 the win for a four of a kind on the deal would be 47 * $0.20 * 5 * 25 = $1175, staying under the W2G threshold.