The tournament area for the upcoming Deep Stack Extravaganza will be different.

Tables were being set up across the hallway from the Venetian poker room. When you walk into the Venetian at the main entrance, the poker room is on your immediate left. The new DSE area is on the immediate right. Usually, that area has slot machines (often for slot tournaments).

The normal DSE/tournament area still had lots of tables today. So, I expect it will also be used.

If what i am told is correct the new area will be the designated area for satellites, but will be used for tournament play when needed.

I have heard rumors that the Venetian has hired some of the best dealers in the western part of the country specifically for the upcoming tournaments, is this true? also sort of an aside, does anyone know if there will be entertainment this year?

I assume they told you this. Anyway their dealers tend to be pretty good, not that there's any real quantifiable way of measuring that or their hiring abilities.


Yes, I will be performing "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang when I win one of the tourneys.

The Venetian will have 120 tables when the DSE and WSOP starts. 42 are inside the main room. 78 will be in the two tournament areas.

Between the holiday, WSOP, and DSE, I've never seen a poker room as busy as the Venetian this weekend. All 50ish of the normal poker room tables were filled most of the weekend with cash games and a bunch of cash games even bled outside into the tournament area, and then another 40+ tables of tournies were full too. There were points where there'd be 20+ names on the list for some of the 4/8 games because I don't think they had any more tables to open one. Even at like 2am it was still mostly full.

They handled it well though.

Venetian is no question the center of the poker universe for Vegas. Even during the WSOP when the RIO is rocking, Venetian is still top dog. I am bummed the NAPT couldnt have worked out for them. Maybe in the future.

Three of the past five days I have played there. This is far from true. There are many good ones, but many horrible ones as well. I play the 8-16 O/8 game and some of them are a joke. Also, when the lists were 20 people deep with no dealers (not tables) to open more games, they were doing a lousy job filling the seats. They started putting cash games outside in the tournament area as well.

I will still play there and I agree that it is the center of the poker universe at least in Vegas. But they need to work on that stuff.

There's a lot of really bad temp dealers. Some good ones, sure, but many bad. Be VERY careful that the dealers are counting pots/bets correctly. I saw probably 10 math errors yesterday, two of which involved me getting paid about 1300 instead of 5300 on the river in level 1, and then I would have been out of the tournament when a dealer counted 70k in my opponent's stack in an all-in instead of the accurate 47k. Yikes.

Did you intentionally try to make this the worst written few paragraphs in the history of the english language.

Yeah seems like some angry, grumpy, tired old dealer at the end of his shift, that was just annoyed by the noob and wanted to teach him a lesson. It's hard for me to jude without being there in person though. like one of those things about live tells that is hard to explain or quantify.

Dynasty what was you're read on the situation? Were you fairly unsure as to the intentions of the dealer/dealers? Or did you feel like they were grumpy and trying to punish noob? Or did you feel like there was a good chance it could have been somehow a non- will-ill accident?

Wow, nevermind re-read you're post. Seems like you're probably correct. Like I said this is kind of the type of live-tell that us experienced players get that sometimes can be hard to put-into words.

The Venetian has been at capacity since the WSOP and DSE started. Yet, they still have long waiting lists early in the afternoon.

If it's possible, they need to add even more tables and dealers.

I f.ing love this place, I met my future exwife there last year playing 2 5

LOL!

I was there last weekend and the brush told me their NGC license allows them to run maximum 52 cash tables, so when they are at capacity that's it. However, the lists were clearing quickly and i was usually seated within 10 min.

The V is turning into the Commerce. I think it may be time for the Venetian to request more tables on their license and build out their tournament area to be part of the poker room. I have to believe the execs have noticed the rake is starting to contribute in a big way to the bottom line, plus the massive spill over into their table games. Win win for all.

The problem with expanding the actual walls of the poker room is that those tables aren't really needed when there isn't a DSE or holiday weekend. The casino doesn't want to remove slots for poker tables that will be empty most of the time.

But yeah, it would be fu**ing awesome if they could actually do it.

how bout a high-end private gondola,w/ bar and masseuse?
really. that canal needs to be casino-wide gddammit.

The tournament area outside the main poker room, between the room and noodle asia, is around there year-round, right? They definitely don't need the tables on the opposite side year-round, just during the DSEs. There are probably only a few days a year they have to worry about being overloaded in the current configuration. They could get a few more cash table licenses and then put the games out in that tournament area (that's what they did this weekend with a few games) but they don't need to expand the actual poker room.

My worry is that if they wanted to cram in more cash games, they'd put the tables closer together in the main room, which would suck - the amount of space is one of the nicest accomodations about the room.

Some of the "Noodle Asia" section is pretty much year round, but not all of it. The tables in the 50's and 60's around the raised final table have been there since April I think, but the 70's and 80's that are further away from the poker room come and go.

I was there this weekend and it was a mad house. I was on the 15-30 LHE list and they started it with 6 players though a full list and no rake under 7 players. This was good. The bad part was we were out in the tournament area and we could not get chip runners AND they took it off the board so nobody knew the game was running. Within 45 minutes, we broke. The floor swore it was on the board but it was not. We all eventually racked up and went to the Bellagio.

Sounds like growing pains. The V is one of the more responsive poker rooms, so, at a minimum I would let them know of your experience and Im sure they will work on it. They definitely need more runners and more waitresses.

How was the 15/30 game? I assume they're still doing $2 max rake for all limit games which is nice.

It was a pretty good game. Pretty aggressive since we were short-handed which of course I didn't mind. I think the $2 rake is in effect until June 4th and then maybe $3 from what I heard. However, we never got enough players to invoke the rake.