I played live in Vegas full time from like 2005-2016 but went in a different direction and barely played any poker since then. I have no idea what the poker scene is like now, or what differentiates the rooms or the crowds. I've decided to dip my toe back into it and see how poker is now and if my skills are still relevant to even be a winning player, but I have no idea where to start.

I used to like the Wynn because it had the most spikey haired young asian males, which meant super aggro macho gambling **** that built huge pots. I'd play 1-3 to 5-10 there. They used to run a 1-3 game with $3 chips which I loved because the apparent size of the pot due to the number of chips made the game super loose. More $1-3 games should try that. I actually liked Planet Hollywood a lot - I know, no one here took that room seriously - which is exactly why it was a great room. Almost no other pros there. It was noisy and in the middle of everything and attracted a lot of rec players. I know it shut down now. I played at the Venetian a good bit when they first reinvented their poker room around 2010, they had the best rake in town and a lot of good limit games for the change of pace (8/16 and 15-30) and some mixed games, found the room itself pleasant, with the player base being kind of a generic mix. I actually really liked Binion's before new management murdered the poker room in like 2010 because they had a super pro staff and they'd deal weird dealer's choice and mixed games on the regular. I'm definitely dating myself with that one.

So, if you could, please tell me about all the rooms in town. What are their players like? How many pros vs recs? Aggro, loose? Any rooms have an unusual games lined up with mixed games or limit games (8-16 or above) maybe? Any have unusually good comps? Who has the best rake? What makes each room unique? Anything you want to share about what you know about the rooms in town. This can include both strip and off strip - I see that south point is actually one of the biggest rooms and red rock seems to stay busy enough.

I will probably ease back in with 1-3 or 2-5 hold 'em and move up from there if it turns out I can still play poker after all this time. I know there's a lot more PLO than there used to be, but I'm going to ease in with the familiar. Are PLO games better to play now than hold'em? They certainly were 10 years ago if you knew what you were doing - they were rare and had a lot of people who didn't really know how to play. I would imagine they're more competent now.

Are there any rooms that aren't on bravo or pokeratlas that are worth looking at?

Anyway, anything to catch me up on the current Vegas poker scene would be appreciated.

Resorts World is new and they have 8/16 and 80/160 mix games very regularly. Haven't been yet but planning to go play next chance I can get to Vegas.

WSOP is over, weekdays prepare to see a room full of nits no matter the casino.

LOVED the peach chips at Wynn and the crazy uncapped 1/3 games. People buying in for $2000 and reloading $1000 a pop.

Venetian was at $6+$3 rake when things got shut down because of the pandemic. I’m not sure what the rake is now, probably $5+$2. The limit games were finished off after the rake was no longer $4+$0.

They also moved the comps from $2 an hour back down to $1 an hour.

They added some big promotions, mainly the high hand ones and I think they have an hours played promotion (similar to a freeroll).

NL games are 1-3, 2-4, 3-5 and recently during the WSOP some 5-10. I tried the 2-4 recently and was disappointed it wasn’t softer, but I don’t know what it’s normally like there.

Orleans has 8-16 limit, Bellagio still has 20-40 and 40-80.

Is there a reason to have a limit between 1-3 and 3-5? Seems redundant. Is there something unusual about it? Maybe uses $2 chips or something?

It looks like the strip rooms have really gone in heavily on jackpot drops. Used to be almost none of them had any, now they all seem to have a $2 drop. Are the promos directed at regs or random or does it vary per room?

The buy-ins are all different in the NL games. Each level has a much bigger max buy-in than the level below it.

The 2-4 game did use $2 chips but there weren’t that many in play. And dealers had to slow down a bit and make change more often in this game. I often had zero $2 chips and if I got any, I would use them in the blinds and quickly lose them as a result.

I always assumed promos targeted regs because they are the ones most aware of the promos. I guess the Venetian promos might attract more tourists because they have done the high hand promos long enough and the payouts attract people, even though the chances of winning are low.

South Point and Orleans use a ton of promos and they’re locals rooms.

I guess I can see the logic in that, and hey, if you're going to spread 10 games of 1-3, why not 5 games of 1-3 and 5 games of 2-4, basically the same thing but gives people more choices. I've just never seen limits split so thin like that. Anyone know if the three limits there play differently with slightly different crowds? Just curious, I guess I can try them myself.

Right now it’s eleven 1-3 games, two 2-4 games and three 3-5 games. People love 1-2 and 1-3 NL too much. Looks like the 2-4 game struggles the most of the three (from looking at Bravo recently).

From Bravo:

1-$3 NLH: $100 - $300 Buy In
$2-$4 NLH: $200 - $600 Buy In
$3-$5 NLH: $300 - $1,200 Buy In
$5-$10 NLH: $500 - $2,400 Buy In


South Point has done something similar with its NL games. According to Bravo they offer:

$1-$2 No-Limit Hold'Em ($100-$300)
$2-$3 No-Limit Hold'Em ($200-$600)
$3-$5 No-Limit Hold'Em ($300-$1,500)
$5-$10 No-Limit Hold'Em ($500-No Cap)

Of course the 1-2 NL game is the most popular game by far lol. Maybe people are looking for the cheapest way to chase promotions.

What's the Venetian room like these days? I'll be staying there in January (after a 2 year COVID hiatus) and I notice the room closes at 4am. Do things get crazy in the last hour or is it depressing at 3am that closing is the only option?

I also notice they've added a 2-4 NL game sandwiched between the 2-5NL (which has upped the buy-in from $1k to $1.2k). Has that changed the dynamic of the 2-5NL game since it seems like it's often the biggest game in the room?

I actually played at the Venetian the other night and was shocked that they closed the room at 4am. It's the first time I've ever left a poker room because they closed. I'm not sure what the logic there is.

Played 3-5 there for a few hours, seemed.... standard. Staff was okay, pretty crowded, nice enough room, players were a pretty standard mix of players. No one too spewy, no one super good.

Also tried the Wynn 2-5 which had a more LAG style of play which is what I observed years ago, but we're talking about comparing 12 hours spent over 4 tables so that's not nearly enough sample size to get a feel for the player base in a room.

At the risk of sounding like a nit*, I do not at all like how almost no strip rooms had a jackpot drop 5 years ago to almost all of them having it now. I don't mind jackpot drops so much at places that have a lot of local reg casual social games to keep them going - like the station poker rooms for example - but I don't feel like they're necessary to get people in there on the strip. $4+0 was available in a few places a few years back, but now $5+2 and 6+2 are pretty standard, which is double. I know that you can't count all the jackpot drops as lost money, you get most of that EV back depending on the type of promos, but I hate seeing like $250+ going off the table every hour.

I haven't cross-compared all the promos. The ones at the venetian were prominently displaying high hand bonuses, which I guess might attract a gambool crowd, but I doubt people are picking their rooms based on promos like that. I bet some of the rooms actually have promos that benefit the regs, like freeroll tournies that you need 100+ hours a month to qualify for, in which case it's a transfer of money from tourists to regs, but I don't even really like those because it kinda binds you to one room and makes it feel like a job sometimes when you need to go out and get your hours.

* I am a rake/drop nit. I'm actually pretty loose at the tables so I break the stereotype of someone worried about rake but I get butthurt by rake increases and other obnoxious cost increases like parking fees. I hesitate to even go to the properties that charge for parking because of the principle of the thing, it just seems super greedy. I know one day I'm going to leave down $1000 and then come out and have to pay $20 in parking on my way out and it's gonna tilt me harder.

Staffing shortages/difficulties would be my guess. I know this is what's limiting hours at my local casino.

The room closed at 3am a few months ago. I don’t know when it moved to 4am. I went in there sometime around 2:30 and was shocked when they told me the room would be closing soon.

Aria, Bellagio, Caesar's, Wynn, and Resorts World dont have jackpots.

Venetian only big room with it. The rest, eh, who cares. Like, why would you go to Westgate, Mandalay, Sahara, or the others for poker.

Dealer at the Venetian here.

Since the pandemic we have had limited hours. We closed at 2am, then 3am, now we're at 4am since the start of the WSOP. There may be a return to 3am closes soon. I agree it seem silly to close while we still have 8-10 games going, but the tables used to drop very quickly after that leaving us with one game that may stretch until the daytime old man rock shows up around 9-10, so it's not really worth it to keep the amount of staff necessary at a certain point.

Staffing is a huge issue since the pandemic and the purchase by the arch devils Apollo Global. We might be able to stretch the number of dealers needed and that's a big big might, but the cage closes at 3am no matter what. The cage closed for some reason at 1am on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and it was embarrassing having to tell players it could be a while before they could get chips to reload or enter the game because of a long walk by the brushes back and forth to the main cage. Apparently we have no pull over staffing of the cashiers in the poker room.

As someone who plays as often as I deal, I too am confused by the offering of a 2-4NL game. That being said, there does seem to be some interest in it by people who want to play a little deeper than the $300 allowed at 1-3 but don't want to pony up $1200 at 3-5. It seems to me to be a little bit looser than both 1-2 and 3-5.

Play does seem to become more wild the last half hour in my opinion.

We have a high hand of the half hour promo right now for $300 and I think we're going to be adding another hours played freeroll in DEC. Personally, I love the high hand promo as it potentially rewards the tourists. The freerolls so far have been limited to the highest hour earners, meaning nothing but regulars get rewarded for the $2 promo drop. I think it hurts us tremendously when tourists learn they get nothing for their $2. They might finish playing that session, but many play somewhere else the rest of their trip.

This is fantastic insight, thank you so much for posting!

I'm hoping as more and more international travellers like myself return to Vegas we start to see it booming again.

Mandalay Bay, played about 5 hours last night There has been a management change, for the better.

Except for masks, and an inexplicable closing of the room at 2:00 am on a Friday night holiday weekend with 5 full games running, the experience went well. Happily, I can tell you it was a lot like pre-pandemic, the game was friendly, talkative, social and played pretty deep fo a 1-2 game. (I did not win, but that was on me for playing like crap on one long stretch. )

Closing a room at 2:00am, while several games were running full, with a long wait list at 1:00 am is just poor management.

The closing was announced at 1:25 am, so I picked up and cashed out. No way I wanted to wait among 40 or so players for one guy at the podium to cash everyone out.

More importantly, an early closing bell robs one of the key brand elements for Las Vegas. (It is a BAD move for the brand that sets Las Vegas aside from a local joint in another town.

I was in Vegas for 3 weeks during the WSOP and have been coming to Vegas for 10+ years. Venetian has been my go to poker room for many of these years, but I feel like that may change in the future.

As you said having a 2/4 and 3/5 game really makes no sense to me. The 3/5 was never that good the few times I played it as it was mostly competent players. I get the idea was those who want to play deep plays 3/5 and everybody else plays 2/4, but it seems like an unnecessary split. I loved the Venetian 2/5 game with a 1K buy-in and never heard anybody complain about the game or buying. I wish the 2/5 would come back as it provided a reasonable mix of recs and competent players.

The lack of games during the day due to needing tables for tournaments was an issue on multiple days for me as well. Why not create space somewhere to have tournament tables so the poker room can still run cash games.

While I understand there is a dealer shortage it really forced me to go to other casinos to play poker. I played over 100 hours at the Aria during those 3 weeks and I really started to enjoy the room more.

The Aria had lots of games going and with some planning I could easily get in to a game by 1PM. Planning meaning calling my name in on to lists and having 2 hours to get there. The 2 hours really allowed me to get a relaxing lunch somewhere on Spring Mountain before heading to the Aria with plenty of time to spare. I wish Venetian had a 2 hour call in as the 1 hour limits you to eating on property if you want to make it in time.

Why is there no table side food service at the Venetian? It seems like a casino decision because Aria and other poker rooms had normal food service so it's not an issue with state COVID protocols. I also liked how Aria did food service with having multiple restaurants to choose from. Sometimes you just don't want to eat Grand Lux Cafe for the 5th day in the row.

Also, why no bomb pots at the Venetian? Seems like something simple that many players want to do. I'm not sure who they are trying to protect here by not allowing it. I've never been on a table where if somebody objected that people got angry.

While I understand the Venetian is trying to set themselves apart from other casinos I feel the are doing the wrong things. Get the comps back up to $2, bring back food service, bring back 2/5 and remove 2/4 and 3/5, and allow double board bomb pots. The high hands set the room apart from other rooms just fine and players can choose if they want to play with a jackpot drop or not.

Just my random musing on the room anyways.

Upper upper management has been limiting our space for years. They put in the stadium gaming in an area we used to be able to place another 25 tables. The only overflow we get nowadays is in the sports book which used to get 12 tables, now it's down to 7.

I agree with almost everything you said, and what I disagree with isn't worth mentioning.

Seems like we're cutting our own throats...or to put it more accurately death by a thousand cuts.

I assume the 3/5nl deep stack game is to capture some of the wynn/aria deepstack 5bb clientele and the shallowish 2/4 is to replicate the 500 cap Bellagio 2/5 game. 2/4nl used to be spread a decent amount in vegas, at the PCA, and a few other places for many years. I don't see a problem with the similar stakes and don't know why people are calling for 2/5 over 3/5. I have never felt a big difference in either of them other than the sb flatting more junk at 3/5 facing a raise or 3bet.

Is there a general impression about which of the major rooms in Vegas have the hardest and easiest 1-3, 2-5, and 5-10 NLHE games?

Went out for 2.5 weeks also during WSOP and thought I would also share my views here. Solely played 1/2 or 1/3 during my time there at 12 different rooms.

• Bellagio waiting lists were ridiculous. Always seemed like there were 30+ people on the list for 1/3.
• Most rooms were not letting you eat at the table, citing COVID. I got pulled up for eating a sodding banana whilst not in the hand at MGM Grand ffs.
• Most games were soft. I'd say Bellagio was the toughest and Sahara the easiest.
• Sigh at the Flamingo dying. Yet another room gone on the Strip and the less rooms there are, the worse it is for players with regards rake etc.
• Why Strip casinos offer freerolls as promotions is beyond me. If you're going to have promotions, target the tourists. As referenced above, tourists are less likely to play in your room when they discover that every hand the pot is losing $2 that they aren't going to have a sniff at. I'm looking at you, Sahara.
• On that note, will someone please tell the OMC's in Vegas to STFU about how many hours they have at the table. Nothing more offputting!
• Cocktail waitresses were back on form. Never had to wait long at all in pretty much every room.
• Weirdly for me, never had any bad dealers either and I played over 100 hours during the 15 days I actually played poker. Was pleasantly surprised.
• Sadly, WSOP cashgames at the Rio were an absolute shitshow this year. Played once, had been in the game for 2 hours and they suddenly closed all cashgames with approx. 10 mins warning. Never went back. Hopefully they sort it out at Bally's next year!

reading this, and getting in the mood to play live again ;-)

about to plan my next trip (usually go over christmas, nice relaxed crowd, not that many regs), but was shocked to see the costs for rental cars, they skyrocketed, at least 3 times the amount i used to pay.

is that all because of covid?
anybody has a tip for a cheaper one (instead of mccarran rental car center), or are they all the same?
thx