figured since no one from bellagio seems to give a **** about helping promote their series (i asked them on twitter to join 2p2 to no avail!) i figure i'd give the structure a quick rundown on here. the $300/500 buyins have 40 min levels, 10k chips and the following levels

50-100
100-200
100-200/25
150-300/25
200-400/50
300-600/75
400-800/100
500-1000/100
600-1200/200
800-1600/200
1000-2000/300
1200-2400/400
1500-3000/500

and that's as far as i made it. might have a few antes off. devo might be able to provide y'all with the rest of the levels

the main has 25k chips and 90 minute levels i believe, that one is def up on the bellagio's website though.

a few notes as to why the bellagio sucks though. the tournament tables are all set up in the main poker room (way too little space for all those people). the tournament clock is on only two of their dozens of TVs in the tournament area, and CONSTANTLY goes to the "computer is locked" screen in windows XP (LOL on both the fact that after 3 days they still don't know how to fix that and that they still use XP). the betting line is actually (loosely) enforced which allows for angle shooting aplenty... absolutely ridiculous that in this day and age that it's still used.

during hand for hand, they refuse to stop the clock/add time stating "it's part of the game." yes, 4 years ago when poker tournament directors were a little less player friendly... but for the love of god, every tournament i play in town nowadays either stops the clock between hands, or adds it at the end. caesar's stops the clock and rolls off 1 minute if no flops are taken and 2 minutes if a table takes a flop. the world series of poker, with all their tables running and inability to do such a system, will almost always add about half of the time lost during hand for hand back to the clock. not the bellagio! not at the "best place in the world to play poker" as they like to think of themselves.

mostly posting this to either get more people to pile on how terrible the bellagio has become so that hopefully someone there will get it in their head that it isn't 2006 still and they need to adapt their tournaments to what everyone else is offering. i appreciate soft fields and tournaments with relatively smaller buyins and large prize pools, but despise the bellagio's staff and their arrogance. this tournament would be 10x better if it was run by someone else, at another property with more room for it, and had nothing to do with the bellagio. so basically, if it was a venetian tournament, it would be awesome.

and OFC the payout schedules are absolutely absurd.

10K chips
40 min round

Structure is standard

PS. The lady won event #2. She beat Justin Young heads up..no deal

Event #3#2 $540 Omaha Hi-Lo

83 players
1st $13K

Congrats Devo

The 5pm $540 has 98 entrants with 90min reg left

Final table tomorrow at 1pm... short stacked but hopeful

I'm thinking about making a trip to Vegas specifically for single table satellites.
Are they running single table satellites for this series? If so,
1) What are the buy ins?
2) Are they paying out in lammers, cash?
3) How often do they run?
Thanks

pretty terrible idea, they do not run very often

I like the Bellagio but I agree it is just too crowded 10-handed. I just sent the following to Doug Dalton. I will post any reply I get.


Here's the point of my email:

There are some things that you are able to change and some things that you can't. One of the MAJOR beefs that is consistent with everyone that it is TOO CROWDED PLAYING 10-handed.

There are many BIG people playing poker and it just is NOT comfortable.

I know you are restricted on space, but maybe for the $500 and up (or even $1000 and up) you could start out 9 handed. I read online that they had only 100 players for a $500 tourney the other day and they played 10 handed.

You can't cram your guests in like sardines and expect them to keep coming back when the competition is playing in more spacious surroundings.

Please pass this on to Jack and the staff and let me know if there is any possibility to go in this direction. I will pass the word around on the internet forums and promote it in a positive light if you are able to change this.

I love the Bellagio and look forward to playing there, but the numbers with steadily decline if something isn't done.

I look forward to your reply.

at least the O8 was 9 handed

10 handed is pretty widely disliked. I find it hard to believe that cramming 1 more chair per table saves the casino THAT much money when they're rarely short on tables or dealers.

It would also be pretty easy to run it 10 handed until registration closes then go to 9 as people are eliminated. That would ensure that you don't shut out any players who would have otherwise been able to play.

Last night's $540 ended with 110 runners and with 5 tables left switched to 9 handed.

This is the final straw for me.. called them from overseas to ask about tournament specifics and they put me on hold forever when I told them at the start "I have a few quick questions regarding Festa al Lago and I'm calling from overseas so don't put me on hold"... I'll be in town this weekend but I think I'm going to play tournaments at MGM/Venetian/Caesars over the next month and a half and skip Bellagio.

Today Event 12:00 $540 NL
142 players
$68K prize pool
1st $22K

28 players still playing
Notables still in
Scott Clement
Joe Tehan
Doug Lee

I'm glad I didn't plan a 4 night stay around this series...whew

12pm $540
18 players left in the money

Still In
Joe Tehan
Scott Clement
Doug Lee
Tom Brauban or a dude that looks like him
And a pretty red head with lots of chips

Railbirded Justin Young playing HU while waiting for a cash game seat forever. That lady was sick. He got it close to even and then she checked top pair twice, letting him get second pair, and costing a big chunk of his stack from which he couldn't recover. Didn't see it end as I finally got a seat, but she played pretty bad and Justin couldn't pick up a hand. Playing at the V til this is over. Also had a look at the structure and it looks OK except blinds should start at 25/50 not 50/100 and antes come in on level 3 wtf? Maybe I'm just too used to online MTTs.

I am not sure that playing bad means what you think it means

I got a very speedy reply from Doug Dalton who in a detailed email explained the circumstances of table availability. He stated that all the $1,000 and up events will start 9-handed and the smaller buy-ins will be 9-handed from 6 tables down.

I for one have always found the Bellagio staff very responsive and couteous.

I don't anticipate playing any 10-handed events unless I'm really bored, so I was pleased with the reply.

Here is his complete reply below to anyone interested.


Hi Stan,

Thank you for taking the time to send this informative email. In the $1k and $5k tournaments we are planning to seat the tournament players 9 handed. As soon as we get down to 6 tables in smaller buy-in tournaments we go down to 9 handed. Unfortunately we are space restricted at this time for larger volume tournaments because we have to run them in the regular poker room. We are trying to accommodate the tournament players as well as our regular daily cash game customers. Every table is critical to us when we are restricted to using the poker room only for a tournament event. So far the complaints from regular cash game players have been kept to a minimum and we are still able to offer a variety of games and limits daily.

Up until 2 weeks prior to the first event we were designated use of pit 4 next to the entrance of valet parking. As we neared the first day we were told that pit 4 would not be available and we would have to host the tournament in the poker room or cancel. We advertised the Festa al Lago for months and cancelling seemed out of the question. So far, a lot of customers adapted to our dilemma and we had 637 entrants for the first event.

In December we have been told that pit 4 will be available to us for the 5 Diamond Poker Tournament events. The final event is also televised and, if available, we may be able to televise the final table in the new Hyde Park Lounge where Fontana Lounge was located. The final table coverage is probably a one time event in that location and we will have to seek out something else for the future.

We were fortunate to have had the luxury of using Fontana Lounge since 2002. Most other casinos felt that they could remove slot machines for extra space. The executives at Bellagio are doing their best to maintain the expectations of accommodations for poker customers as well as revenues in other areas for stock holders.

Thank you again for bringing everything to my attention. I hope that we can sit down in person to discuss further as well as online chat lines. I really do appreciate your patronage and support.

Doug Dalton

Director of Poker Operations

Bellagio Resort & Casino

Hi Stan,

Thank you for your email. We are planning to play the 1k and 5k tournaments 9 handed, because we at the Bellagio are well aware that our tournament attendance is going down the toilet, so there's no way running these tournaments 9 handed will be a problem because nobody is going to show up.

We had some extra space reserved for the poker tournaments, but on account of my boss not giving a flying f**k about poker players, that space was revoked. Please pity us.

We were forced to make a choice between accommodating our tournament players or our cash game players, and we obviously chose our cash game players, because they make us more money. The cash game players haven't been complaining too much, and 1/2 NL is running strong, so clearly we made the right decision.

By the way, did you notice that 637 players showed up for event #1? Obviously nobody cares that they have to play 10 handed. Please ignore how the rest of the tournaments have been getting 100 players.

In December, we'll probably have that extra space I was talking about for our next tournament series. We're favoring the slot players over the poker players for now, but in December I'm sure we will care about poker players again.

From 2002-2011 we had the best tournament poker room in the entire United States. My boss is forcing us to sh*t on the tournament players now, but never forget how awesome we used to be.

Thanks again for emailing me. Feel free to come up to me in person to tell me again how ****ty 10 handed is, so that I can again explain to you that we need the space for slot machines and 1/2 NL.

hahaha <3

i was getting ready to leave for the bellagio for today's noon event, but then i had an overwhelming urge to stay home once i remembered the feeling of sitting at the table in the bellagio poker room. it's worse than an airplane flight in coach! at least in coach, people can't walk by and bump their ass or belly on the back of your head. at the bellagio it's a mandatory one ass-bump per tournament.

It's nice that this will be the case and I can understand a lot of players not wanting to play a 10 handed tournament. I actually had more of a problem with the 3am finish time. I think a lot of the older guys would have a problem with it too since the next days are always started at noon which basically means going to sleep almost immediately to get about 8 hours of sleep.

I could understand if the majority of poker players don't care about playing until 3am then returning at noon but that's my biggest reason for not playing tournaments at the Bellagio. It was good of the staff to respond even though _augie ripped through their reply perfectly.

i know what you mean, i got that feeling the last 2 years there & avoid this place at all costs now, i posted in the beginning of this thread some q's that were never answered & its not hard to tell they have other priorities

ty for the confirmation though, was thinking about going

i wanted to get away from my computer this evening, and i was in the mood for some donkament poker, so i moseyed on down to the bellagio for their 5pm. i anticipated a small field, which i actually wanted, because i wanted to just play 9 handed for once in my life. the damn tournament had 8 people regged when i sat down. table quickly filled to 10. GOD DAMN HAYHCHACHACHACHA. I CAN NOT ESCAPE 10 HANDED POKER.