it depends on the stakes they're playing. if they're playing 1/2 nl you can find good games at almost any time if you put in some effort so you should be putting in way more hours so you can actually move up in stakes since living expenses take up so much of your win rate.

at 5/10+ there just arent that many good quality hours in a year.if you're playing for the love of the game that's fine- but if playing to make money playing 2000 hours a year when half of those hours are in garbage games is just going to make you burn out faster.

It really depends how you judge "best." I am a recreational player so for me the best tables are ones where there are lots of very bad players, not ones with lots of action or lots of skilled players.

I just got back from Vegas so I will give an opinion of each of the poker rooms I played in.

Mandalay Bay- terrible place to play. Several regulars and the tables had trouble filling up. I hate playing five handed. I am still working on winning pots that don't belong to me by playing aggressively but I was completely unable to at this table. Not a lot of people playing in general and too many regulars for me to make money.

MGM- iplayed forty minutes here and immediately left the table because I was completely outmatched. Several players were regulars and several were very good tourists. They told me they fly in a couple times a month and play poker for 30 hours straight, tournament and cash games. Seeing as table selection is my most important factor I left while I was up. Not a fair representation with just one table.

Excalibur- table full of rude locals. Guy argued about a two dollar raise with the dealer for several minutes.
Locals were also not bad players. They knew each other and wouldn't talk to anyone else. Excalibur has a flush promotion that if you hit all four suits in 24 hours you get $350. So these guys sit and play all suited cards to hit their four flushes. Definitely wouldn't play here again.

Planet Hollywood- both times I played here the tables were full of bad-mediocre players. Lots of preflop calls, lots of multiway pots, lots of calling statins. Great place to play. Also, if you play at night there are go go dancers that dance at the bj tables across from the poker room. Very good distraction for other players.

Aria- several good players but a lot action and a lot of player turnover. BD players frequently entered the game, gambled with all ins, then busted out.
Lots of good players at the table as well though, several locals.

All in all a mediocre player like myself was able to win money. The tables aT the middle of the strip still have lots of bad players. I can't speak to other locations but I do not think that vegas is full of nit grinders only. You can still go there and win at 1-2 1-3 against lots of bad players.

Bonded part kind of negates my response. However, I didn't think any pros would actually play 1-2 or 1-3, I thought the minimum for pros was 2-5. Part of the reason I avoid 2-5, I'm not interested in playing against pros.

If you are trying to make a living at poker, you will play at any level that allows you to MAKE that living...

If you want to be a pro, one of the smartest things you can do is play in games that have less pros.

I usually just play 1/2 and 1/3 when I'm in Vegas (I've played over 2000 hours of poker there over the last 4.5 years) because the games are more available, and because almost all casual players just choose to play the lowest stakes, while "hotshots" think they're too good for 1/2 or, like you, think 2/5 is the minimum "pro" stake. These players may or may not be good enough to make it as pros, but they're generally much better players than the casual tourists who gravitate towards 1/2 and 1/3 games. Thus, I've found in general that 1/3 games are consistently more profitable for me. Many times I'll look at the 2/5 game, see a bunch of hoodies and headphones and tablets, and then look at the 1/2 or 1/3 games and see some people drinking and having fun. So the choice ends up being easy. And in many cases, despite the stacks being bigger at 2/5, the pots are often smaller on average. In any other city I choose bigger games when possible.

More and more though these lower games are being populated by grinders, who aren't good players IMO but are good enough to survive and not have jobs, at least for awhile. Most put in over 50 hours a week and are probably averaging $8-$15/hr, while having free drinks and taking advantage of comps and status levels and promotions that might bring some of them up to a $20/hr value. Some strong players might be hitting about $30/hr in value from 1/3 games but these players are rare. I left my Vegas trip early this last winter, and it was the first winter trip (my trips have ranged from 250-600 hours of play until this trip where I left after about 130 hours) I've ever left a loser, after crushing the games every previous year I've been. Whatever the factors, variance or game quality or poor play, I went to California and made a recovery in games that seemed much better and came home a modest winner for the trip. IMO the games this winter were by far the worst games of any of my 5 winters in Vegas, and possibly the worst games I've ever played in anywhere, and because of this, it very well might have been my last winter in Vegas and I'll choose a different place to get away in the winter in future.

Can you clarify what you mean by bad games? Do you mean it is too full of the described grinders, so it's too tight to make a profit? What makes a terrible game to you?

It's definitely still possible to profit, but if you are good enough to profit in Vegas, you can profit more somewhere else is my point. Unless you are one of the "promo-nits."

So what makes the games terrible?

A very low percentage of tourists.

An extremely low percentage of people that "want to gamble" - ie. less straddling, less blind raising, less stacking off with a draw just for the hell of it, stacking off because it's time to go etc.

A high percentage of nitty players. Even at Encore, a room with no promos and one of the most upscale hotels in Vegas, I saw some absurdly nitty games. I actually saw a dealer go an entire down with dealing a flop. I saw games where 3 or 4 hands in a row were just the blinds chopping. In many other cities I've played entire nights without seeing a single chop.

A high percentage of people trying to play really tight, hoping to do better than breakeven at the table while collecting comps and bonuses and high hands and qualifying for promotions and freerolls. These people are the nut low. The people who choose to grind at a room "because of the 34 tier credits per hour" or because "I'm collecting hours for the freeroll" or "I'm playing to get/keep diamond status."
You might say, "well if everyone is so tight then why not just run the table over?" If games were shorthanded this would probably be reasonable, but "running the table over" just doesn't work in 9 handed NLHE, or at least I've never figured out how to do it and I've tried far too many times.

I've always done everything I could to play in the softest games Vegas had to offer. I tried playing all hours and all rooms and was always selecting better and better games. But no matter how much I selected, the games just suck now. I mean, sure you can find a great game at 4am on sunday morning, but you would find a game twice that juicy in most other cities.

play graveyard, less regs and more short handed. You could make 90-100 an hour playing 4 handed at ballys with one nit on your left and 2 fish who will limp call most of their hands. You just button straddle and UTG straddle and most of those pots are 60-110 preflop in position.

I think this is kind of the evolution of NLH. Casino operators were wise to steer casino poker in the direction of LH way back in the day especially when the player pools were much smaller. My first trip to Vegas was in 95 and the majority of casinos didn't even have poker rooms.
the ones that did spread LH and some stud. Maybe you could find a NLH tournament but that was it.

Poker is on the decline in about every established market in the USA and this likely only going to get worse. i have often wondered why the casinos don't treat poker like any other pit game. Make the rake so high it is unbeatable and let the recs and degens gamble it up. Sure they would have a lot less games, but those games would be far more profitable and the casinos would rid them selves of the leaches that populate the low limit NLH world.

The answer IMO is to promote games where you get flops every hand. Tables full of tight players playing NLHE are just awful for the casino, the dealers, and aren't of much use to players either.

LHE and PLO on the other hand have flops almost every hand and generate consistent rake.

there are definitely better places to play and nl is only going to get worse. nl games are significantly worse at 5/10+ than 3-4 years ago in vegas.

It's a flawed boring game that is really easy not to be terrible at it. it doesn't help that almost no grinders even make an effort to make the experience enjoyable for rec players.

my last trip i was at aria and there was a 10/20 nl game running.someone at my table comments "no amatuer will ever sit in that game" and he was right.
most of the table was on tablets, they all bought in really deep and the game just looked miserable.i've played with every single player in the game and only 2 actually every talked much at the table and were pleasant to be around.3-4 were miserable human beings to be around when losing and berated bad players. one i had played with a few days earlier in 5/10 nl. he raised kings pre got 3 callers, cbet a q high board and check folded the turn when the flush card hit face up then gave the table a 10 minute lecture on how he "isn't some idiot who is going to go oh my god kings and stick in 3000 dollars with one pair"

Great table talk buddy. way to make the game fun.

tight games,tankers, mute nits,tablet "pros" etc.
How fun is poker when nobody plays a hand and nobody talks about anything interesting at the table?

great call on short handed games.
i mostly play plo now and there have been times i was going to leave a not great not terrible game at like 5 am but 4 people left at once and now it's me one nit and 2 passive players left. dream spot. oh and time rake to top it all off.

sometimes if i'm in a main game that isn't great and i know theyre going to call a must move game in an hour or two i'll get up and go eat just to play short handed. the players don't have to be any worse in a 5 handed game for it to be way better than the 9 handed game.

I think it would wise for the long term health of the game to change the format to PL preflop and NL postflop. It would be more fun for recs and more profitable for pros to see more flops. Too often in NL, players get shut out of the pot because of a huge raise pre.

timed rake? $12-14 an hour to play punishes the nits.

Long thread .. skipped some posts ...

I always tell players from our area (Michigan/Indiana) that if they have the bankroll that they will be very comfortable playing 2/5 in Vegas. Our 1/2 is pretty tough IMO and the 2/5 shouldn't intimidate them .. if they want to 'take a shot'.

The trip report above actually seems pretty much the same as my last trip. I would add that I thought PH had quite a few dealers from other properties when I played there and were pretty chatty with the PH dealers. GL

Not sure I agree with this. Many new live poker markets have sprung up and are booming, especially in the east. And in many cases the dying markets vefas/AC are dying largely because of the new markets. People don't need to travel to these markets to play anymore because of the new casinos especially out east.

My own observation about one of the markets discussed earlier - Lake Charles action is not nearly as good as it was a few years ago. There are still a few whales, but most of the bad fish had a lot of their money dry up with the oil and gas slowdown of the last few years, and it shows in the games. A fewer people buying in for 500-1000 at 1/3, being replaced by people buying in for 100. Also, waitlists on Friday/Saturday used to be really bad, even after Golden Nugget opened, but now the lists never get deep, and the rooms don't even really both fill up on the weekends. Sign of the times.

bigger games in vegas are timed rake as all games should be

really pathetic to see nits not even do a time flop (which is neutral ev) bc they don't want to "gamble" for 63 dollars in time games.

Well, if is the oil and gas slowdown that hurt the game, things are ramping back up very quickly. Houston and Lafayette are starting to blow and go again. Lake Charles itself based more on the ports and the new LNG export plants under construction and that never did slow down like O&G itself. But, to be real--the real money in Lake Charles games comes from Houston.

TLDR - is this a level? Vegas is one of the easiest places I've been to when it comes to winning cash games. I once had a woman call 3 streets with bottom pair on a board of A4JT9 after I barrelled every street with JJ. Juicy.

Yeah your one hand experience clearly trumps the experience of dozens of players that have played hundreds or thousands of hours in Vegas.

If you post something like this, you should add a little more information:

- What different games do you play? NLHE, LHE, PLO, mixed games?
- What stakes do you base that statement on? 1/2 or 10/20 or everything in between?
- In how many different card rooms in how many countries did you play?

No offense, but often you read things like that from people who only play 1/2 and 2/5 NL in their local card room and have logged maybe a couple hundred hours in Vegas and two or three other cards rooms within the US. That doesn't make their statement less valid but is not too different from saying "Burger King has the best burgers" if all you are having is BK, McD and Wendy's.

Wendy's....ainec

No idea why anyone would want to increase his variance for no increase in EV; isn't that pretty much the definition of having a gambling problem?