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Sunday, September 10, 2000
Letters to the editor
Las Vegas Review-Journal
(Fax # 383-4676)
Dealer's
tips belong to dealers!
To the editor:
Your Gaming Chips (9/10/00) carries a story of a casino
boss in Harvey's Casino in Iowa chasing down a player to ask if a
tip he left for the dealers was really meant to be so big. Of
course, given time to think about it, and with a bit of prompting
by the exec, the player decided, "I wasn't thinking
clearly," and took the money back.
When a player "loses a bet" or "gives a
toke" it is not tentative, nor is it the subject of further
decision. It is an irreversible action. He cannot ask for a lost
bet to be returned, nor can he decide to take back a toke, after
the fact, because: ..........."I wasn't thinking
clearly."
If casino management chooses to allow players the option of
making tokes conditional on a cooling down period, then it is
logical that they also offer the players that same option when
they lose a bet. Of course we all know that they would not, and
could not offer that choice to players because they could not
survive economically with that policy in place. By the same token,
dealers will not be able to survive a policy that allows players
the option of subjecting each tip to not one, but two positive
decisions.
Another question one might ask, simply to show how asinine
this policy is, would be: If a tip is conditional on a second
decision, just how much time must elapse before the tip can be
considered final and in fact become dealer's property?
A similar situation took place in January this year in Las
Vegas' Paris Casino. We wrote to the control board's Steve
DuCharme and asked that he investigate an incident where
management ordered the dealers to return a large tip.
Essentially, the same situation as that reported in
Sunday's Gaming Chips column. This could well be the beginning of
a trend that could hurt our industry. What they did in Paris
appears to be a case of illegal conversion. The money was already
in the payroll loop when management ordered it be withdrawn and
returned to the player. Although the money was legally in the
possession of the casino, it was illegally converted when they
forced the dealers to return it to the player. Actions like this
must not be allowed. We are still waiting for a reply from Steve
DuCharme.
Jack Lipsman, VP
National Federation of Gaming Employees
Las Vegas
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