Having lived near Laughlin for the past 9 years, I can tell you a few things about it.
We moved 20 miles east of Laughlin in September 2003. I started out playing at Colorado Belle because they had some Stud and the only real LHE games (15/30 on the weekends). They also had tourneys mostly every day. I rarely played the morning ones, but almost always played in the evenings. Back in 2003-2004 I played two O8, two NLHE per week, one monthly $100 NLHE tourney and other weeklies.
After getting kicked out of the Belle in 2004 I moved my play to the Riverside and River Palms later that summer (Palms had the only Stud/Stud 8, O8, PLO8 tourneys in Laughlin). Long story about the boot. Basically I saw a card room employee get sexually harassed. Dealer made me promise to report it. I did. Couple days later the tape is "lost." And I get the call on April Fool's that my business is no longer wanted. Abuser keeps his job, employee is fired.
Later got letters, apologies, phone calls asking to come back, especially after MGM bought them. Never went back. When local girl made good in Card Player and the WSOP got more calls and letters, e-mails, etc.
Repeat: never went back. YMMV.
No worries about ever getting kicked out of Riverside. I remember my Mom once telling me that when the worst locals in Vegas were kicked out of all of the card rooms they would go to Riverside in Laughlin. First time I played there an 80+ year old man punched a dealer at the 1-5 Stud table (you know, those thousand dollar pots at 1-5 Stud just bring out the beast in the elderly). I expected security, police, guy handcuffed and dragged out. Naw, the CRM went over, wagged his finger and told the guy to go out into the pit and cool off a bit. Next time I was there, old man in plain sight, dealer fired. Yeah, in Laughlin the DEALERS get fired when they get punched. Go figure.
I remember another incident. Middle-aged guy from LA with an anger management problem punches RV retiree in the jaw during a 2-6 LHE game. Punishment for middle-aged angry guy? He has to come to work there as a dealer, lol. Retiree never seen again.
Ah, good times
Anyway, I migrated to mostly tourneys and O8 cash games at Riverside. O8 cash games are pretty juicy at Riverside. Mostly played with a kill. Mostly 8-10 every flop. I could go on. Sometimes they get two or three must-move games going, they are that good.
Once the poker boom came, NLHE became the game of choice for the younger (50-ish, lol) crowd in Laughlin. I know this seems statistically unbelievable, but on weekends sometimes the games would go on 48 hours straight and the average on the table was 20k. Yeah, this is like a max $500 buy-in game!!! I was too tight to make the most of it, but I'd try to double or triple up, then cash out, relax in O8 or a tourney, then buy back in another time.
I could quote the other posters all day, but suffice it to say,
Laughlin is not the place for poker. Not the place for kids. Not the place for non-bikers, non-smokers, non-drinkers, non-nascar, non-bowlers, non-country music lovers, non-old 80's mediocre band lovers, etc.
If you like your beer warm, women old with a case, hookers in the Loser's Lounge (we always called it the hooker bar), cigarettes filterless, big comps for virtually no play, bad beds, cold coffee, green pools, muddy river, nasty water, old rooms, dark 70's-80's decor, rusty colored water coming out of the faucet when you brush your teeth, river taxis, old nits, angleshooting, poker cheating, floors that side with the locals, average player age of 80, dealers who fall asleep during a hand (only later to get promoted to floor, bonus), locals who softplay everyone but you, 120 degrees in the shade in March, a local economy which rivals Peru, a sucky outlet mall, stealing chips out of your stack at the table boldly, surveillance that is somehow always corrupt or lost, doorjambs that look eaten open, safes that magically don't work, locals with more teeth than IQ points, Harrah's with a $6 rake, then you WILL love Laughlin.
Fast forward to 2008. I went through cancer. I was in and out of hospitals for pancreatitis caused by some old chemo that later got banned by the FDA. My insurance premiums for a bad policy are horrendous. So husband comes out of retirement to get some health insurance cheaply. He decided to work at Riverside. The tips are tremendous, but dealers have to "pay" to work at the Riverside. If one is full-time this amounts to about 6k or more per year.
You must pay every day to deal. This was later outlawed by the gaming commission, but my husband paid the first year or two. Then they made this crazy rule about how they are going to become more player friendly, family-friendly by making the male dealers cut their hair and no more facial hair. So Glenn's long, beautiful hair gets cut off. Good deal is that he donates it to kids with cancer.
Over the next 3+ years Glenn deals at Riverside. Things change. Almost every CRM gets fired for stealing. This is pretty common at RS. The blackmail the dealers have to pay, the skimming in tourneys or the drop, arranging rooms on the side for cash, RV spaces, food and drinks, etc. Employee turnover is outstanding, too, due to mandatory drug tests and the ever accuasations of stealing by dealers. Somehow the cameras always work when an employee is skimming the drop.
Since Glenn is their fastest, most reliable, most mistake-free dealer he manages to stay on. He has never taken drugs, never stolen, never gone along with the blackmail policy of dealing. That doesn't make one immune from accuasations and firing, but in the case of Glenn, he escaped injury.
Unfortunately, about a year after he finally qualified for insurance, RS decided to eliminate all full-time dealers and cancel their insurance. Since he was working for the insurance anyway, we just continued to pay via Cobra. It was still a good deal compared to my old BCBS policy. Good beat: so many employees complained that a clinic opened just for casino employees. You could see any doctor for anything and the co-pay was only $5. Discount RX cards, too. We never had to use it, due to having Cobra, but it helped a lot of people.
Fast forward to 2012. Glenn still at RS, albeit part-time and cutting back hours all the time. Poker is dead in Laughlin (not that it was ever that live to begin with). Glenn gets an opportunity to come out of retirement (we retired from AOL back in 2002 and moved to Arizona). He gets an offer in North Carolina back in the tech field. He worked tech for about 15 years, basically his whole career, before we retired.
He snaps up the offer. Other considerations in place are that his parents who retired to NC are getting elderly and there is no one else in his family living NC who can help out. So we can come to the rescue. Even more, there are better hospitals/treatment for pancreatitis in NC. Duke and UNC are close by. Naturally we take the offer and head out to NC on March 12, 2012.
We keep up the Cobra payments. Glenn takes a FMLA for three months while he is on probabtion, just to be sure. Everything works out, he resigns from Riverside and here we are.
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Everything pretty much stopped for me and poker in Laughlin in 2007 when I got pancreatitis in June. Everything in the Laughlin poker world after that is relayed by Glenn working at RS.
I also took a long semi-hiatus from Laughlin poker during 2004-2007 while I played the tourney pro circuit. Getting kicked out of the Belle was probably the best thing that happened to me pokerwise. I never thought I could compete in the bigger events (turned out I couldn't after all. I started playing scared after a good start in 2004/2005). I freerolled almost everything from Vegas to LA to AC to Foxwoods and back again. I stopped playing in the WSOP in 2007 due to not really caring anymore. Plus I got pancreatitis in June when the WSOP was just heating up. I also decided I was better at cash games. Tight play can pay off there, whereas tourney structures got so bad and the juice so high that playing tight was for losers and chumps. Not to mention scared money, but that is another subject for another time.
Ah, memories. If anyone wants more info please feel free to PM me for my old journal archives. I don't want to post the link here, my journal was so horrid.
Hope this helps, and remember YMMV since I haven't played poker in Laughlin for so long, although it seems little has changed, lol.
Felicia
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Cliff Notes: Laughlin poker does indeed suck. Do yourself a favor and make the 90 mile trip north to Vegas if you can.