2 downtown Las Vegas casinos change dealer tip-out policy

A pair of downtown casinos are letting their dealers keep their own tips in a changed policy.

Binion’s and its sister property, Four Queens, now let dealers “go for their own” — industry speak for keeping the tips given to them at a game instead of pooling with the other dealers, as is most common in Las Vegas casinos.

Glenn Casale, the director of casino operations at Binion’s and Four Queens, said Binion’s has been running the policy for about three months, while Four Queens will start it on Oct. 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. But 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 said. “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 said. “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 common at casinos, in part 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.

Kanie Kastroll, a Wynn casino dealer and union member of UAW Local 3555, said her 35-year career as a dealer has always included tip pooling. She said some advantages include reducing favoritism, which could look like frequent assignments to a high-limit game or an unpopular table.

“The benefit of the pool is even if you have awesome skills and you’re a five-star dealer — you’re fun and witty — you can still have fluctuations,” Kastroll said. “Tip pooling makes it less volatile.”

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.