If you ask a child about his/her aspirations; you are unlikely to hear becoming a poker dealer as one of the options that is of course if the child's parent is not a poker dealer or the kid is not from Las Vegas. However it is a fact that on some great days the tips earned by a dealer can amount to hundreds per evening!
Most people have in the course of their life opted for this as third or fourth career choice and found that they are making quite a significant amount of money and enjoying the atmosphere too.
Being involved in poker has a few other advantages over the other games like not being the victim of passive smoking since poker rooms now are mostly non-smoking ones. In this you get to sit too as compared to some other games like black jack, Caribbean stud etc. which require long hours of standing.
Dealers in casinos get minimum wage plus tips. The tips serve not only as a source of income but also a motivation for a better job. In some casinos the tips are put into a pool and equally distributed among all dealers but most of the casinos allow the individual dealer to pocket the tip he or she has earned as incentive for better customer care.
However a dealer is not allowed to ask for a tip nut it is customary to tip the dealer in all casinos and all states. Sometimes a player may forget to tip the dealer but more often than not he will be reminded by another player to do so as it has become an unofficial rule.
The great part of this job is that if you have a friendly nature and have built a good rapport with some regular visitors to the casino you will get some tip whether they win or lose.
In a tournament or in private parties there are no tips but you can negotiate on the wages.