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.