Tipping in Live Dealer Blackjack vs. Tipping in Landbased Casinos Mines Games Easy Win
The way to go about tipping depends on whether you are playing at terrestrial casinos or are joining the live dealers remotely from the comfort of your home. Either way, it is important to do it according to the corresponding rules of etiquette or else you risk spoiling your entire experience.
Tipping at Land based Blackjack Tables
Tipping at Online Live Blackjack Tables
ARGUMENTS AGAINST LIVE BLACKJACK DEALER TIPPING
1. Overview
Some blackjack players vehemently argue against tipping and rarely, if ever, hand out any gratuities to their dealers. This aversion to tipping is more common among players who deploy forms of advantage play, the most popular of which is card counting.
2. Reduction of Hourly Expected Value
Consistently implementing this technique gives counters a small edge over the house that seldom exceeds 1% or 2% at best. Many card counters refrain from tipping because it could diminish or altogether overturn their advantage. Consistently handing out tips to the dealers may lead to a dramatic decline in the player’s theoretical hourly profits and completely negate their positive expected value (EV).
Indeed, tipping is not a great idea from this perspective, although doing it occasionally does have some practical applications for advantage players. Some counters resort to it every once in a while for the purposes of coverage and extending their longevity at the blackjack tables, which we shall cover in more detail in the next section. Now, let’s have a look at the effect tipping has on regular basic strategy players.
3. Tipping Increases the Negative EV of Basic Strategy Players
Most blackjack players who frequent live casinos on the internet are strangers to advanced techniques like card counting. The best they can do is follow basic blackjack strategy, which reduces the house edge to a tolerable 0.50% on average and enables them to maximize their returns.
Nonetheless, basic strategy alone cannot entirely negate the house edge, which is why players who implement it still face negative expected value in the long run. Basic strategists inevitably suffer losses over the long haul no matter how perfectly they play. Respectively, tipping the dealers consistently only increases their negative expectation.
In other words, they will end up losing even more money than they normally would. Dealer tipping makes no sense from the perspective of a basic strategy player. It does nothing to improve their odds of winning, not to mention placing a tip bet has -100% negative expectation. The money such players tip is immediately and irrevocably lost to them.