Is Your NL Game Getting Tougher?

Is the No Limit Game you play in getting tougher? Well, of course it is. Its happening all over the country and there are several good reasons for it.

First off, the flood of new fish into the NL games is mostly over. The brand new totally clueless dupes who saw poker on TV have mostly found the game by now. They would look and say; "I wanna play that "1-2 all-in" game. It was fun while it lasted.

Secondly, the players who were truly terrible at the game have all been beat up pretty good by now and have either lost all their money or gotten a lot better.

Thirdly, the games are much tougher now that the worst and new players are gone and the remaining players are much better. This makes the previously marginal winners into the new fish in the game.

The next step is when its no longer fun for the recreational players to play in a game where they usually lose. Then the games get even tougher. Look who is remaining in the games then. Add to this the impact of suspected and actual cheating. All the angle shooting, taking the shots, collusion, and all the little "cheater moves".

The last reason is that there is finally (this year) some really good printed material on playing NL cash games. Limit holdem has a large library of excellent books, etc. Tournaments have had some good books too. NL has lagged behind until this year. The two new books are;
Professional NL Holdem, by Ed Miller, et al
Harrington on Cash Games, by Dan Harrington
Both are two volume books. PNL volume 2 is about to be released and HoCG is a two volume set. Both provide excellent information to the NL cash game player. If you are not reading these books, you are falling way behind your opponents. Many of them are reading these.

NL games will eventually fizzle and self destruct. This has all been written about and predicted for years. The usual NL game just takes the bad players money way too quickly. The money quickly finds its way into a few strong hands, and does not really circulate in the poker economy. Repetitive (and rapid) losers will find something else to spend their money on. The nature of NL players and games is to accelerate this trend. Look at the interest in "uncapped games" etc.

So, if you want to play NL, be sure to study up to remain competitive. Enjoy the rest of the ride. And be alert for the point when you have turned from a winner into a loser in the game.

Hammond Horseshoe

The next big thing in poker for the Midwest (and probably the whole USA) is going to be the opening of the Horseshoe in Hammond, Indiana.

The Hammond boat has been completely replaced by a huge $500 million facility. Its supposed to be "Vegas style" and will include a 34 table poker room. The poker room will blow away the competition in East Chicago, Gary, and Joliet.

They are set for a mid august opening.

Road Trip?

Las Vegas Highlights - June 2008

This was a great trip. Lots of time to play all the poker and see all the sights.


Hotels - We stayed 4 different places (we slept around) burning up CT's comps.

Red Rock (Summerlin) was the nicest. WOW! Really plush and top notch room, restaurants, pool workout area, etc etc. Beautiful. We could have stayed here another day but it would have been $400+. So we moved on.

Green Valley Ranch (Henderson) was also very nice. Another upscale Station property. Not quite as nice as Red Rock. Confusing to get around in - lots of corridors, elevators, halls and staircases, etc.

NYNY (Strip) was a full step down from these, but they gave CT a nice room. No buffet or poker room on property, but still wonderful NY theme.

TI (Strip) was the place we should have stayed. Perfect location - next to Mirage and across the intersection from Wynn. CT had comps here but we chose to stay (and pay) at Palace Station. A very bad choice.

Palace Station (Off Strip) is a very blah place. I've stayed here before and you can always get a very good room rate here. Room small and quite a letdown from the other places. Kind of a downmarket crowd in the casinos and restaurants.



Rental Car - We caught a break and got a free upgrade to a Chrysler 300. Nice big car. Lots of "cool guy" tooling up and down the strip like Dan Tanna.



Parking Garages - Access to poker rooms is very important;
Excellent - Wynn -- park on 2
Good - Mirage -- park on 4
Poor - Bellagio
Terrible - Venetian, MGM, Planet Hollywood, Caesars


New Casinos and Poker Rooms -

The only new casino is the Palazzo, which is connected to Venetian. Its beautiful and spacious and is understated luxury as compared to the Venetian's eye popping opulance. No separate poker room in Palazzo, but they do have separate chips. I suspect this will be the case for the Wynn "Encore" property when it opens in a few months.

The only new poker room is in Bill's Gamblin Hall - the site of the old Barbary Coast. Its 2 tables stuck right in the doorway -- let the good times roll.


Too Many Poker Rooms - There are 26 casino/hotels on the strip and 24 of them have poker. Missing only NYNY and Casino Royale. Off Strip, about 2/3 have poker, maybe more.

The retrenchment/consolidation is now at hand. 3 have closed recently; Stardust, LV Hilton, and an off-strip property. Conventional wisdom has it that several more will close after the WSOP. TI and Paris are thought to be the first to go. Several others could go with no big loss. They are mostly small low limit dumps. Harrahs has several all in a row; Harrahs, IP, Flamingo, O'sheas, Bills, Ballys, Paris.. MGM could easily close Luxor, Monte Carlo, and TI with no big loss. All of these room offer the same product. Just a small NL game and a small limit game. Closing these room swould be good for everyone.


Construction Boom - What a difference from last year. Construction cranes everywhere and buildings going up all over the place. Many of these are residential, but many are casinos. City Center (between Bellagio and Monte Carlo) is huge. Echelon (old Stardust/Westward Ho site) is going to be almost as big. Wynn "Encore" almost complete.


Rick J @ Bellagio - Talked with my old Jr High and High School buddy. He is now a daily player at Bellagio. Quite a story. Think I'll make a separate blog post about him.


Poker Discussion Groups - Attended the meetings of the Wednesday Poker Discussion Group (WPDG) in the afternoon, and the NL discussion group on Tuesday eve. Good serious poker discussion at each and a chance to talk with some people I hadn't seen in a couple years. Dr Al Shoonmaker, Jan Fisher and Linda Johnson. Linda had just cashed in 2 wsop events so she bought lunch for the group.


I Just Wanna Beat The Old Guy - I was playing at the Wynn with my buddy Robyn. There was a young aggressive talkative player in the game and when I put in a raise it came back to him in the small blind. He paused and looked like he did not want to call, but then said; "I Just Wanna Beat The Old Guy". Everyone at the table broke out laughing while I was looking around the table to see who the old guy was. (haha- I was the old guy)


Floorman Ruling - You learn something every day. A dealer puts out the turn card and two players start betting. She drops the stack and mixes the muck, burns, and stack all together. Yow! Players hoot and holler. Floorman is called over and asks what happened. It gets explained a few times and it seems like he doesent know what to do. After a couple minutes, the two players agree to split the pot. I ask the floorman later -- how were you going to get a "retrievable stub" for the river card in that situation. He explains it all to me. Stub was NOT retrievable, so the only correct answer is to mix all the cards together (including discards, burns, etc) and put out a river card. He said that players do not like this and sometimes complain about this AFTERWARD, so he always stalls and lets them agree to split the pot.


Extra $ for Rake and Jackpots - Lots of Harrahs (and other) pokerrooms have $5 rake AND another $1 drop for a bad beat jackpot. Several of the other rooms have a $4 rake and the additional $1 drop for jackpots. The best pokerrooms (Bellagio, Mirage, Wynn) have only a $4 rake and NO bbj drop.

Assume I played 8 hours each of the 8 days. At 64 hours of play times 30 hands per hour, thats 1920 hands I was dealt in. My stats for several years have shown that I win about 5% of the hands I am dealt -- or about 1 1/2 hands per hour. So -- thats 96 winning hands for the trip. The $2 (rake and bbj) I saved on each of those hands is now the $192 sitting on the table in front of me. Plus, I got to play in the top notch poker rooms instead of the crummy dumpy ones. Its like they paid me $3 per hour to play the Wynn and Mirage instead of at Harrahs or Ballys.

Poker Rooms in Las Vegas - June 2008

8 days of poker in Las Vegas and I enjoyed every one of them.

Played in 5 poker rooms that I had never played before:

Suncoast
Sunset Station
Gold Coast
These 3 are small dreary locals casinos. Nothing much to recommend them unless you lived nearby.

Bill's Gamblin Hall (the old Barbary Coast)
This property is a new Harrahs acquisition. They are using the O'Sheas model of putting a low limit (and small NL) game right on the entrance to the strip. Lots of drunks, kids and newbies stumble in and say; HEY! Its poker like on TV.

Green Valley Ranch
This is an upscale locals casino in Henderson. A very posh property with a nice poker room. Even a HORSE tourney on Wednesday nights -- I got 3rd.

I played another 10 rooms where I had played before. Some comments;

Mirage -- still my favorite. They have even made some improvements since last year. Automated wait lists, 10 handed tables, and starting to use a "swipe in" system with your MGM card to make comps easier. Also, while I was there they removed 4 tables from the poker room and repositioned the others for more space. The poker room manager told me that they are getting larger tables to make it even more comfortable.

Wynn -- 2nd choice and its very close. Wynn has changed their lineup of holdem games. Used to be 4-8, 8-16, then 15-30. Now its 4-8, then 9-18, then 20-40. The 9-18 game is cool. It uses $3 chips, so you are playing a 3-6 format.

Bellagio -- No rude staff this time. Really! Polite and friendly floor staff, brushes and dealers. They must have read the nasty things we were saying about them on the internet the last couple of years.

Red Rock -- Another really upscale and posh property. Very pretty poker room with lots of tables. Limited game choice and selection though.

TI -- A fun little card room. Only 2-4 this trip and no mix game when I was there.

Rio - WSOP side games -- lots of noise and chaos with no comps. If thats what you like.

Golden Nugget -- A new location for them --- 3rd in 5 years, and this ones the best. Nicest poker room downtown - and its not even close.

Palace Station -- blah

Planet Hollywood -- Their new location and cardroom is great. Easy access from the strip to attract lots of tourists and hotel guests. Very plush and well equipped. A buddy is the midnight shift manager, and when I was there the tables were filled with drunken Australians playing wildly and gambooling it up like (well) drunken Australians.

El Cortez -- The new owners have spent many millions of $ fixing up this place and its lost a lot of its old (dirty nasty) charm. Played there in a 1-3/1-6 holdem game with the previous owner Jackie Gaughan. He is 86 years old now and still lives there. He is a Las Vegas legend and has owned about a dozen different casinos in Las Vegas over the years. He bought the El Cortez from Bugsy Sigel in 1945.

Did not play at the following rooms;

Harrahs -- Went in and complained about the $5 rake though. Said I was going to an MGM property to get more for less.

Caesars Palace -- Just don't like this room. Hope they close it.

Venetian -- Got about the same treatment as last year. NO - we don't have ANY limit games, and we might not. A few days later did see one 4-8 game going out of their 25 + tables. A pretty room, but its better to play at Mirage, Wynn, or Bellagio.

MGM Grand -- Its SO noisy. How can anyone stand to play poker here?

So -- I played;
10-20
9-18
8-16
4-8 with 1/2 kill
4-8
3-6
2-4
1-3, 1-6
and a HORSE tourney.

Financial results were good. Booked winners on 7 of the days and the one day that I lost it was a small amount. Comped buffets were $7 at Palace Station, two @ $25 at Mirage, and $35 at Wynn.