I'm going to Vegas for a long weekend this weekend, my first time out there in a couple years. We're staying at the MGM Grand, which I've heard doesn't have a great poker room. Any particular recommendations if I wanted somewhere good to go play 1/2 for a few hours or get in on a tournament?

most all the poker rooms will have something around your stakes.

Reports of the MGM not having a decent poker room are overblown. The room has suffered in its following by regs and locals because of a constant moving around within the casino the last three or so years. One will still find pretty good and touristy 1-2 NL all the time there, up to five decent 1-2 tables on any weekend. Still, you have asked for a "great' poker room.......and you are at MGM.

Nearby- Mandalay Bay has a beautiful room, but little action. A recent Sunday night found just two 1-2 games going, and the 10pm MTT failed to go. I made a nice score in less than 90 minutes of play against overly aggro Euro-based players who didn't respect an OOP three-bet w/KK, and then again with a 3-way pot turning Broadway.

Nearby- Luxor and Excalibur are easily dismissed by most, but I find the MTTs they run very soft and cheap. A Saturday afternoon MTT at ExCal had 42 entries, incl. rebuys, and a 1st place payout in excess of $500.00, along with five prizes.
Monte Carlo is a smallish room, but beautiful, and has a small locals following as well as a decent weekend following of tourists.

Aria- close still to MGM by taking tram from MonteCarlo- great room, needs no puffery here. Same for Bellagio, trammable.

Other rooms will need to take monorail or vehicle.

Monorail- Flamingo has been CETs most busy room, despite efforts by that company to sustain poker in bigger and nicer rooms. (news- Caesars room closing/moving back out on the floor) I find the action at Flamingo to be very good, and on a recent Sunday evening at 12:30am found the room SOLD OUT between 2-4 limit, 1-2 NL and the MTT. Sure, the freeroll at 10am helps with the locals, but a few recognizable professional players were here, playing, getting their ten hours in for the freeroll for WSOP.
Across from Flamingo, I find Mirage to be a great room for 1-2. Everything you want- recognizable rocks, locals, plenty of tourists and newbies. And decent table selction most nights.

Luxor and Excalibur are great because you can take the moving walkway between the two poker rooms and just straight up bumhunt because the easy money at those two rooms is very very obvious.

I like the Rio 1/3 a lot. A lot a lot. IMO it is way better than the Bellagio or Venetian games. The Rio is reg infested but the regs are also not very good players either and if there is anything resembling easy money in the game at all they will just best hand softplay with anyone who resembles difficult money.

The Orleans also runs great low buyin tournaments on Friday that get a massive field of players.

Remember, there are lots of 1/2 & 1/3 NL games in Vegas, so if your table sucks and you can't get a table change in the room you are in, just go to another room. The game will probably be better there.

For example, the very first session I ever played at Bally's was great--game full of terrible older rich Middle Eastern guys with broken fold buttons that made CET rake bearable. Then the next time I went there, ended up at a table of young guys that played like a tough internet game and I got up and went elsewhere.

I played one session on the last day of my last trip at the Rio. Weekday afternoon just before Xmas, so a slow time of year. As ProRailbird said, the game is reg-infested but with absolutely terrible regs (based on my sample of n=1).

thats really the secret to playing in places that have many games. just keep moving places till you find a good game.

MGM is fine for 1/2 and certainly convenient if you are staying there.

It's OK to stay on south strip but for pete's sake dont hang out there. Sheesh. Have some pride, man. It's not that hard to get to Bellagio or Aria.

Is this a level? If not, I disagree.

You lose massive amounts of time going from room to room. Let's say you can plop down in the hotel you're staying at for X bb/hr, and play for Y hours. +X*Y bb is your baseline, your opportunity cost.

Now, let's say you play in Room 1, decides it sucks, walk next door, wait for a table, play, leave, wait, play, table change (and lose half an orbit), and finally find your dream table. How much time do you have left? Are you really making more than what you would have playing a longer time in a worse game? If you spend half of your play time searching for the perfect game, you need to double your winrate (2*X) relative to plopping yourself down at the closest table. (More than double if your poker time is limited by having to be back at your hotel at a given time, because travel time is doubled.)

Now, I agree that for tougher games (5/10+ NL, 40/80+ LHE) it may be worth shopping ... but then you run into the problem of not having too many places to shop. Remember that you can find out about game availability but not game quality on the phone.

I'm not trying to sound like I'm awesome at poker, but seriously, if you ever sit down at a 1/2 NL or sub-8/16 LHE game and literally cannot beat the lineup, spend an hour browsing through the SSLHE or LLNL FAQs and get better instead of spending an hour looking for something that may not even exist.

yea if you only have a couple hours to play.

but if you are trying to make money and are putting in decent amounts of time you had better find good games.

plus your win rate increases substantially in good games as you can get above the rake more easily.

how hard is it to look at the games and see if they arent real soft and walk across the street.

thats my take on it anyway.

Does MGM or PH have a 2/5 on a Saturday night? Or should I just go to Bellagio/Aria?

"Across the street" in Vegas isn't trivial. It adds up if you start hitting more than two places or if they aren't directly adjacent.

Non-hypothetically, how long does it take Dynasty to do his quarterly survey? I was under the impression it took the better part of a day. And he's not even looking at the play, just scanning the board to see what games are running.

When you're bumhunting the best bums to find are obvious from their visual appearance. In general, people who look like they are total idiots actually are total idiots. When I'm bumhunting I just look at peoples faces. The biggest drunks, degenerates, idiots, maniacs etc you can see it in their face.

It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the Luxor to the Excalibur room and about 2 minutes to scan each room.

I also have a very large sample size at the Rio, both during the series and during the most poker dead months of the year and have a lot of hand history with the regs there and know most by name. I can confirm they are mostly nut peddlers and bad players with very exploitable tendencies, and they mostly besthand each other and will try to talk you up and start besthanding with you too if they recognize you have a deeper understanding of the game than the average player.

The most immediate impression I had of Vegas the first time I visited was thinking, "That next casino seems like it's a block away," and that next casino being, in reality, a ten- to fifteen-minute walk away. While Ray of course is right that you can find an excellent game in Vegas any day any time, calli also has a very good point that you could spend an entire day searching for that excellent game.

Door to door from MGM to Bellagio is like 10 minutes. It might take longer from your room at the MGM to the front door than to the Bellagio from there.

MGM to Venetian is around 20 minutes if you are at decent health and it's not a weekend night where the strip is overcrowded. I consider that "walking distance" but some people might disagree.

Bueller?

I'm basically rolled for 2/5 but don't have consistent access to a game where I'm from, so this is definitely shot-taking. Since I'm getting in on a Saturday night finding a party drunk table is appealing but I feel like that's more likely at PH or MGM.

Today is Saturday. Check Bravo tonight.

There are many 1/2 and 1/3 nl games running all over Vegas, definitely download the bravo poker live app or check their webpage. Table selection is key, if you don't see people stacking off and rebuying fairly frequently it can't hurt to find a better table in the same room or next door.

Last night at the Rio I witnessed a 4 way all-in on the turn, 3 people were drawing completely dead. If you have to complain about CET rake you aren't game selecting well enough.

It wasn't even some insane Casino Royale style hand either where everyone is holding what looks like the effective nuts. It was literally a situation where every one of those players should have known their hand was no good.

This is not an uncommon kind of situation either btw.

The OP wouldn't be taking the tram to Aria. The tram doesn't take anyone from Monte Carlo to Aria. It's in between those two places.

It's not uncommon to see horrible play in any room with 1-2 or 1-3 NL. It's not like CET rooms have all the fish to themselves. The last time I played at Venetian I had a great table with lower rake than CET rooms.

I agree it would not make sense when OP can walk directly into Aria from inside MC, however if he really wanted to take the tram he could take it from MC to Crystals and walk into Aria via Crystals.