Optimal Casino Tipping: A 1,500-Word Guide to Not Looking Cheap (or Stupid)
Tipping at a casino is more nuanced than at a restaurant. Here's exactly how much for dealers, cocktail servers, hosts, and bell staff — and why undertipping costs you more than the tip you saved.
Casino tipping rule of thumb: dealers $1-5 per winning hand or 5-10% of session win, cocktail servers $1-2 per drink, hosts $50-100 per comped meal, valet $5 in/out, bell $2 per bag. Undertipping costs you more than the tip — slow drinks, slow service, less attention from your host. The cocktail tip in particular is the highest-ROI tip in the building.
Casinos run on a tipping economy. Most floor staff (dealers, cocktail servers, bell staff, valet) earn modest base hourly wages — often state minimum or only slightly above. Their actual income comes from tips. Tip generously and the staff will take care of you. Tip poorly and you're invisible.
Dealers
Two acceptable approaches:
Per-hand tip. Place a $1-5 chip alongside your bet on a winning hand and tell the dealer "this one's for you" or "for the dealers." This is the most common approach at lower-stakes tables. End-of-session tip. When you cash out, hand the dealer a tip equal to 5-10% of your session win. If you lost, $5-10 for the time is fine.What not to do: tip nothing. Dealers split tips at most properties (a "toke pool"), and your dealer's hourly take depends on the room average. A bad-tipping table makes the whole pool worse and the dealers know it.
The dealer remembers the cheap players and the generous players. The dealer can also "speed up" or "slow down" play within reason — and a 10-hand-per-hour difference matters a lot when you're a recreational player burning through bankroll.
Cocktail servers
This is the highest-ROI tip in the building. A $1-2 tip per drink (in cash, slipped on the tray) and you'll never wait for a refresh. Skip the tip and you'll be ignored for 20 minutes.
The math: at a $25 hand of blackjack with 60 hands/hour, you're betting $1,500/hour. A $2 tip every 15 minutes is $8/hour — half a percent of your action. A 20-minute drink wait is 20 hands you don't play. Either way you're paying.
Casino hosts
If you're rated highly enough to have a host (typically Pearl/Diamond tier or high theoretical), tip them $50-100 per comped meal or $100-200 per comped show. Tip them at the end of the trip, in cash, in an envelope, with a note.
The reason: hosts have discretion. They decide whether your next reservation gets the suite or the standard room, whether the show comp is the front-row or the back. Generous tippers get better discretionary upgrades. Cheap tippers get the by-the-book treatment.
Valet
$5 when you drop off, $5 when you pick up. If you have a luxury car or want it kept up front (instead of in the back lot), $20 makes that happen at most properties.
Bell / luggage
$2 per bag, minimum $5. If they help you to your room, $5-10 on top.
Other tipping situations
- Slot attendant (after a hand-pay jackpot): 0.5-1% of the jackpot. So a $1,200 hand-pay = $10-15 tip.
- Pit boss (for a comp at the table): not a tipping situation. Pit bosses don't accept individual tips at most properties.
- Front desk (for an upgrade): $20 with your ID and credit card. This is high-variance — sometimes works, sometimes ignored. We've had 50% success with $20 at MGM properties, ~30% at Caesars, ~10% at boutique non-chain.
- Restaurant servers: standard restaurant tipping (18-20%) regardless of whether the meal is comped. The comp is room/board; the server's tip is on top.
When NOT to tip
- Slot machines (the machine doesn't have feelings)
- Cage cashiers (it's a transaction, not a service)
- Pit boss (per above)
- Surveillance / security (definitely not — looks suspicious)
The annual tip math
A regular casino visitor (10 trips/year, 4 days each) tips roughly:
- Dealers: $50/day × 40 days = $2,000
- Cocktails: $20/day × 40 days = $800
- Hosts: $200/trip × 10 trips = $2,000
- Valet/bell: $50/trip × 10 trips = $500
Total: ~$5,300/year. That's real money, and it's a real cost of being a regular. But it's also the reason your host returns your call, your drink shows up unprompted, and the dealer at your favorite table greets you by name.
For our take on whether casino comps actually offset the tip cost: see how casino comps actually work.
Topics
- etiquette
- tipping
- beginner