I played at Caesar’s tonight. There were five players staring at their IPads when I was seated at my table. The dealer was even getting frustrated having to deal with these guys not listening and holding up the game.

That’s not a Vegas problem though and not even something specific to poker.

Attention spans get shorter and people seek additional ways of stimulation.

FWIW, I am posting this on my iPad while sitting on the toilet for way longer than I have to.

Ceasars Palace is notorious for ipad/smart phone promotion or comp nits, so this absolutely sounds familiar. If i had 5 of these clowns i would have instachanged table or go to another pokerroom to find a better game.

What you are adressing is definetely an evolving problem for the livepoker environment (so so many bad games these days wich scares away the fish and whales cause they want to have fun while they are losing money), and i would guess the casinos would need to handle this in some ways in the future if people cant handle it themself.

Last year at Venetian i also saw several guys rigging themself with huge laptops on their lap/rail, to sit and watch movies or netflix series while waiting for the nutz.

Same with excessive tanking that needed to be handled, this is a development that needs to be discussed and taken care of in the future if we dont want the poker rooms to be completely destroyed by this.

There was a clock in some of the WSOP events this year. At least, I think that's where I saw it. That might attract more recs/whales, while deterring the curmudgeonly nits. The house rule should be that the dealer doesn't say anything to the player who's on the clock. If they time out, their hand is folded. Timeout chips could be dispensed when the half-hourly time charge is collected, one per person per down.

As said, this is due to shorter attention spans, from the use of electronics, as well as players playing a much tighter range than in the past. Sadly it is all too common and makes live poker even less fun.

I think everyone needs to start complaining to the floor to try and correct this behavior or just start mucking their hands for them if they're not paying attention.

Caesars has the nittiest regs in all of Nevada, bar none. It's the gathering of the comp chasers, convention attendees, and wsop.com nits.

I will admit, I had a lot of fun the last time I played in Caesars. Three WWE wrestlers were at my table as they had a show in Mandalay Bay that weekend. That game was super fun and splashy, but it was a busy Saturday night. Saturday nights is the only time I can even imagine Caesars being an option for a good game. And even then, there's easily 10 other rooms for better action.

I recall when phones were not allowed at the tables, but times change.

Your point about recs and whales wanting to have fun is valid .... one remedy is to make sure you talk to the recs and whales.

Alternatively, keep asking the ipad/phone-doofus sitting next to you about whatever he has on his screen that he is watching .... better yet, give him a spoiler if you have one or really pester him until he complains to the dealer/floor, then apologize as needed.

Finally, simply refuse to give a phone-doofus any action without purposefully looking around for as long as possible before acting in turn ....

One of the problems is the rake structure that makes it +EV for the casino to have half the table being distracted as long as they don’t hold up the game too much. That’s why they don’t stop players from doing that.

The perfect hand for the casino has one player raising preflop, one or two calling and postflop action only to the point where max rake is reached. Among the worst hands for the casino are the ones where 7 players go to the flop and after some tanking, 5 of them make it to showdown.

I was playing at the Nugget this summer, and a guy moved to my game, and is playing on his phone from the off, then after a couple hands gets up to fetch his laptop.

I've seen iPads in games, but never seen someone actually plot up with a proper laptop at the table, lol. He spent half his time staring into whatever was on there, and the rest of the time playing with his phone.

I lasted about 10 hands, before I staggered back to the bar.

For a while, I often used to see a guy wearing a cavalry hat and sporting an unlit cigar routinely set up his laptop to watch movies while sitting in $1-2 games at the Venetian. Haven't been back in a while, so I can't say if he is still doing it, but that was complete and utter nonsense for a live poker game.

(The guy was not loud or offensive, his get-up and laptop were the oddity, but he did play some hands on occasion.)

This guy wasn’t loud, just slow and had his laptop stuck on the table

Who would want to sit down at this game? The rec fish looking for a good time is going to turn around and go play in the pit, and who would blame them? These guys ruin it for everybody else. Can we just ban laptops already?

Logged in just to respond.
Mainly a pit games player but I use to end my nights in the poker room after having good nights at the table. Didn't care if I dusted all my pit profits for the night drinking and having a good time talking with other poker players. Stopped going to the poker room altogether now because it is like extracting a tooth trying to have any sort of fun banter nowadays. Always miserable people now staring into their phones or not people being able to banter in jest. Now I just take my good night in the pits to spearmint rhino or sapphires and give it to the strippers that can fake a conversation. The glass has been knocked too many times for me to deal with the bs in a poker room.

Thanks for giving us your point of view, its very important- even though i suspect the ones who need the most to read this unfortunately isnt doing it.

In my opinion the casinos needs to deal with this one way or another in the years to come, if the future of poker is gonna be bright. If this trend continues even more rec players/action players/fish who wants to have fun will stay away from the predatory environment in the pokerrooms, the amount of games will drop and the casinos will lose money.

To be clear i want rules from the casinos: no laptops or tablets at the tables. When people cant set the boundries themself, somebody else got to do it.

Smartphones is gonna ba a bigger issue, and i dont think a rule preventing using smartphones at the table is gonna be realistic in our day and age. But still, no laptops or tablets/ipads (those are the nutworst imo) would come a long way and send a very strong message.

Younger Millenials and Gen Z'ers hate human interaction, they just didn't grow up immersed in it like generations before. No banter, dead stares, and on the spectrum behavior is the new wave. This isn't going to change. I always have headphones in, usually just 1, because I would rather listen to calming music than the banter at the tables and the chip riffling. If the game gets too friendly, soft play starts coming up between newfound buddies. If the banter keeps going on, it almost always leads into strategy talk which is the nut low.

I had been playing for a couple hours before he arrived, but went back to the bar when he got there.

I'm not a massive whale, but I'm definitely a recreational player, and I want to have a laugh when I play, not stare at the back of laptops/iPads.

Just curious, which wrestlers were they?

Elias "The Drifter" Sampson
Tye Dillinger
Dash Wilder

It was an nXt show and a lot of them were at Omnia that night.

I am not sure OP. I heard from a highly respected player that "More iPads is better."

Take away labtops and iPads from people and those same people are unlikely to just start chatting it up with the other players at the table. They will probably just sit there, not say a word and have a serious look on their face.

At least they'll fold quicker. It's getting worse every year and makes it drives casual players nuts.

It really depends what people would do if you took away their iPad/laptop/phone. People may play just as badly but faster (which is good), or they may pay more attwntion to the game (which is bad). They may just remain antisocial and glare creepily at people (which is bad), or they may tell you about their sports betting habits (which is good).

A highly respected player might be playing in a higher limit game where he's fighting with other pros constantly, he wants them distracted. Whereas a casual player who only plays on weekends may rather people get bored and leave so they can be replaced with tourists.

Live poker for rec players is completely dead

The guy who said he'd rather sit in the pit -ev than play poker with robots is totally right. I love dropping drunken dollars in a fun poker game, but on my last trip I enjoyed like ten minutes total of the poker I played. I'd legit rather sit in my room tbh.

Live poker "pros" are the worst

They just need to ban phone / electronic device usage while in a hand, or altogether. That is actually a rule already in many places and peeps will generally follow it with the odd exceptions that need to be reminded 10 times

There are lots of card rooms in the US that ban laptops and iPads, but are there many left that ban phones?

I can’t remember playing in a single phone-free room in at least 5 years and I doubt any casino would go back to prohibiting phones after allowing them for years. The only reason for them to do that would be to generate more rake but as I mentioned earlier, that’s not the case.