Miserable Live Poker

Until this past weekend I had played live poker about a dozen times with no sessions longer than 4 hours. About 95% of my poker experience has been online at Paradise Poker for the past 1 1/2 year.

I just returned from a 3 day weekend in Vegas where my sole purpose was to play as much poker as possible. My wife did not accompany me on this trip so this would allow me to play more and longer sessions.

I was stunned by how miserable and surly the majority of the players I encountered were. Why spend so much time playing a game that seems to make them so unhappy? I understand that poker is a confrontational and competitive game but there were players that would react with a level of anger and disgust to losing a pot that was astonishing.

I hope that these were isolated incidents because I would like to play more live games in the future. Otherwise I will continue to play online where there seems to be much less hostility except for the occassional chat abuser.

If all you want to do is play poker there are plenty of better places to go & play besides vegas!!

Games in Seattle ,LA, San Diego,San Fran, Pheonix,and from what Ive heard Tunica all might suit you better than the hardboiled locals in LV.

Unfortunately that has also been my experience witrh Las Vegas and LA. You might try a Northern California trip sometime. Quite different. For instance, Lucky Chances, in SF Bay area has a "zero tolerance" for abuse policy which they seem to enforce. No abusing dealers, no abusing players, period. btw I have no financial interest in any cardroom, just telling my experience.

The LC zero tolerance policy gets enforced faithfully at 2am when Gene the night floorman comes on. He's better than a roll of Charmin.


They're getting more comfortable enforcing the rule, which is great.

Just curious..what limits and what games were you playing?

I was playing $3-6 at the Mirage and $4-8 at the Bellagio.

Could it be possible that your experience is out of the norm? Not to defend LV as I play mostly in AC but my experiences during my last 3 trips to LV were pleasant ones. I also played 3-6 at Mirage and Circus Circus and 4-8 at Bellagio and Mandalay Bay. I can recall of only 1 sore loser in Mandalay Bay and its because he was more interested in playing the ponies while calling with K2o all the way to the river.


Maybe my trips were made more enjoyable by the fact that I won enough to heavily discount my vacations.

It is possible that it may be out of the norm. My only other previous live experiences were short sessions at the Orleans and Flamingo in Vegas and the Tropicana and Taj in A.C.

Hopefully, this weekend was an aberration. The games were extraordinarily passive and loose making them seem much easier than the online games that I am accustomed to playing. What made the games unpleasant at times was the hostile manner in which some of the players spoke to each other. On two occassions a dealer had to call a manager in to calm the situation.

Games during the day and early evening can be that way, especially on weekdays. Weekends are better and anything after 10pm is best. Daytime players are mostly the retired locals and they are so bored and miserable that is usually what they do for entertainment. Only thing that ever gets them to act nice is talking about their chidren or grandchildren. Otherwise forget it you aren't going to have a fun social experience. Also play higher limits if you can, once you get out of the smallest games in the room you start getting decent players and most of them aren't as obnoxious. The 10-20 games has a rude person or two, but most of the players are either serious and polite or fairly social.

In cases where there are some hostilities on the table, take a break for a round or two or wait for change of dealers. Chances are most dealers or other players will not tolerate such behaviour. In the meantime, you can think about you played previous hands or watch other tables as you may find a few tips or watch other people whom you may play in the future. Refuse such behaviour to affect your game especially if the table is profitable. JMO.