The short answer
In a United States cash game, the common convention is $1 to $2 from each pot you win. That is the whole rule most of the time. Everything below is the detail around it.
The tip has a name at the table. Dealers call it a toke, and in most American rooms it makes up a large share of what they take home.
Why the toke exists at all
Poker dealers in US rooms are generally paid a low base wage on the assumption that tokes make up the difference. The room takes its own cut separately through the rake, and none of that goes to the dealer in your seat.
So the tip is not a reward for good cards. It is part of how the job is paid, in the same way it is for a restaurant server in the same city.
Cash games: what the number actually looks like
Tipping happens when you win a pot, not on every hand. A dollar chip tossed toward the dealer as the pot is pushed to you is the standard motion.
The tip does not scale with the pot in most rooms. Winning a $40 pot and a $400 pot at the same $1/$2 table usually draws a similar toke, perhaps a dollar more on the larger one. Players who tip a fixed percentage of every pot end up paying far more than the room expects.
| Situation | Common US practice | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Small pot won | $1 | Chopped blinds or a walk usually draw nothing |
| Normal pot won | $1 to $2 | The everyday case at low stakes |
| Large pot won | A little more, not a percentage | Tokes do not scale with the pot in most rooms |
| Hand you lost | Nothing | Nobody expects a tip for losing a hand |
| Jackpot or high-hand payout | Discretionary, usually more than a pot toke | Ask the floor what the room's custom is |
| Tournament cash | Often already withheld from the buy-in | Read the structure sheet before adding more |
Tournaments: much of it is already handled
Tournament buy-ins are usually advertised in two parts. One part goes to the prize pool, and a smaller part covers the house fee, staff and dealers. A listing written as buy-in plus fee is telling you exactly that.
Some events go further and state a separate dealer or staff portion in the structure sheet. When that line exists, the dealers have been paid from every entry in the field, yours included.
On top of that, many players who reach the money add a discretionary amount when they collect at the cage. It is voluntary, it is not deducted automatically unless the room says so, and the structure sheet is the only place that answers the question honestly. Our tournament section covers how the major circuits are put together.
Outside the United States, the custom changes
Tipping norms follow local wage structures rather than the game. The further you get from Las Vegas, the less safe the American convention becomes.
- United States. Tipping is expected, and dealer pay is built around it. This is the case the $1 to $2 convention describes.
- United Kingdom and much of Europe. Dealers are on higher fixed salaries and tipping is far less routine. Some rooms pool tips; others discourage them outright.
- Some jurisdictions and some houses. Dealers are barred from accepting tips at all, and offering one puts the dealer in an awkward position rather than a grateful one.
The reliable move in an unfamiliar room is to watch one orbit before you do anything. If nobody at the table is tipping, you have your answer. If you would rather ask, the floor will tell you plainly.
What tipping does not buy
It buys nothing at all in the cards. The dealer does not choose them, cannot influence them, and has no stake in who wins the pot. Anyone who implies otherwise is describing a room you should leave.
What a steady toke does buy is a smoother table: faster attention on a ruling, a dealer who keeps the game moving, and a seat where you are not the person everyone remembers for the wrong reason. That is worth a dollar a pot. Table manners more broadly are covered in our etiquette entry.
Budget it before you sit down
Tokes are a real cost, and they are easy to leave out of a session plan. If you win 8 pots in an hour and tip $1 on each, that is $8 an hour on top of the rake and on top of whatever the game itself costs you.
Put the tipping money in the same envelope as the buy-in rather than treating it as loose change. Anyone building a trip budget around a poker room in Las Vegas or Atlantic City should carry a stack of dollar chips for exactly this.
Where the numbers on this site come from
This article is editorial. The reference sections below derive their figures from the cards, the dice or the pay table rather than quoting them, and each one shows the working:
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First published on this site's WordPress blog between September and December 2025; rewritten to this site's current standard in August 2026.