Quote:
Originally Posted by joomorrow
I'm French Vietnamese living in Saigon. I play regularly at New World hotel (~3 times a week), and occasionally at Ho Tram casino near Vung Tau. If anyone wants to ask about these locations, just shoot me an email ( joomorrow [at] gmail [dot] com ), I don't check this forum often.
New World hotel
- Locate in the International Player Club right next to Catwalk
- Machine dealer, but play against human players. You choose your action from a tablet-like screen in front of each player. I love this format as you combine both advantages of live and online poker: you can still observe physical tells, socialize with the players, while the game is very fast (instantly deal the next hand), no misdeal, instant access to information such as bet size, stack size, pot size, etc...
- Blinds $3/5, buy in $300-3000, you have 40s for your decision, no time bank, no calling time. Rake 3% no cap.
- 10 handed max. One table only
- Game usually starts at around 9 pm or later, until ~1-2 am. Game starts earlier and lasts longer on weekends obviously, sometimes 7pm-7am.
- Free food free drink (we usually tip the waitress $1-3)
Ho Tram casino
- Live dealer, against human players. The dealers there are still learning though so they are a bit slow and misdeal is frequent
- Two $1/2 tables (buy in $40-400), one $2/5 table (don't remember the min buy in but the max buy in is $1000). Rake 5% cap $10 ($1/2) or $20 ($2/5), plus $1 for the jack pot. No flop no drop I believe.
- About 2h drive from Saigon. Free shuttle bus from/to Saigon (around 4 times per day).
- Free drink, you have to pay for your food though (there are many cheaper places outside the hotel)
- Not enough players there, so almost no games during weekday, some games on Friday night or Saturday night if you are lucky. I mostly come here during the Vietnam Poker Cup or Asian Poker Tour, then there will be enough players for cash games.
I wrote this a few months back, but the situation has changed, so just wanna update you guys.
Ho Tram Poker: 90% dead, as the new management doesn't seem to like poker much.
New World Poker: it was going very well for the past few weeks but then now it's closed (from January 5th 2016). Apparently the poker table is far less profitable for the casino than the slot machines, so they no longer want to run it.
Nowadays I just play home games, there are many games running all week from $0.5/1, $1/2, $2/5, even $5/10 or $10/20 sometimes. So far my impression is that the game is good (tougher game at higher stakes obviously), reasonable rake (5%, no rake in chopped pot, no flop no drop, reasonable capped...), honest dealer, ok security, though there's no guarantee of course.