Vegas Rants and Observations

[RydenStoompala]

I just spent a week in Vegas. Although I am already suffering withdrawal I thought I would share a few observations. The poker material is mixed in with the rants (sorry).

Wynn’s poker room is fantastic. The observation previously posted by Mason, suggesting that Wynn move some of the middle limit games to the rail, is valid. The chairs, the décor, location, waitresses(holy cow!) and the poker room staff all score big points with me. The 15-30 game was my favourite. 8-16 chewed me up a little due to the preponderance of local full-timers but in four sessions I booked a nice profit and really loved the place. The dealers are competent but not quite up to snuff with Bellagio or Mirage card pitchers. One guy, a twitchy Asian kid of indeterminate sexual orientation, really bugged the crap out of everybody and should be punted ASAP. He nags all the time and really does not fit into the atmosphere. The card room staff, some of them quite young, did an excellent job of managing the list. The announcement system is a little loud and it got some complaints.

No limit is really the dominant sport now. The 1-2, 2-5 and 5-10 NL games were busy and full most of the time. Typical 2-5 hand: Guy makes a $50 raise in early position holding AK suited. Young (really, really young, not just young) guy wearing sunglasses and the Unabomber hood raises it to $500(all in) as if he’s calling someone in a 5-10 game. He has only been sitting at the table for less than 5 minutes. Big stack who made the opening raise thinks about it for a moment and then calls. Unabomber turns over 9-2 off suit and rivers the second pair to beat the opening raiser’s flopped Kings. The kid then laughs at the guy, heads for the cage and cashes out. Now that’s poker! And I saw a lot of it. Tip for the poker room staff: move the 2-5 NL off the rail so the tourists don’t see the WPT wannabees wearing the wrap-around shades, headphones and ugly hats stomping each other with crap hands. It’s like watching a car wreck, which is fascinating, but it wont bring people into the regular games.

Overall rating on Wynn: 9/10. Is it worth going to Vegas just to play there? YES.

Rant: MGM Mirage (off poker now) now owns about half of the large joints in town including Mandalay. I am hoping they don’t pull the kind of dog crap they pulled at T.I. where the casino has been reduced to the worst grind joint on the strip. Nothing but autoshufflers at blackjack tables, unless you want to play $100 minimum. If the memo writers have their way, Vegas casinos could become as boring as a dentist waiting room. I’m serious. These mega corporation guys are way worse than the mob ever was at screwing casino patrons. They’d better be careful or the little independents will get all of the action from the crowd with IQ’s above 90. That still leaves them the bulk of the strip tourists who will still split tens and hit their 15’s against a dealer 6, but those retards don’t tip very well. I’d say that the overall level of gaming knowledge among the people I visited with at blackjack and craps tables last week is lower than anything I have seen in more than 20 years of gambling in Vegas. It’s no wonder Nevada booked its first billion dollar bottom line month in April.

Mirage poker room was home base for the most part and I loved it. I played a ton of 10-20, Omaha hi/lo and a little 6-12 hold’em. Despite the tournament being held last week the staff kept the place under control. Table turnover was sometimes enormous. The dealers at Mirage are really awesome. Full marks to the pitchers who handled the Omaha table for not getting out of their seat and cracking one of those crabby old farts over the head with a chair. What a miserable bunch of ugly old geezers. It sure was fun taking a box of reds off the table in an hour against a table full of “experts” who actually have no freaking clue how to play cards. Miserable bastards should be dropped off a tall building into a deep pit. Woops. Sorry…did I say that out loud?

Bellagio: It’s new and it’s good. YES, it is a little cramped but I love the layout. It’s the same people I am used to running the room and dealing so it was comfortable for me. I stayed with 15-30 for the most part, only dropping into 8-16 long enough to waste four hours catching horrible cards. No damage done and the table was much friendlier than the 8-16 over at Wynn. A group of us “normals” kind of picked on the cranky geezers a little, but so what? If you’re going to take your cowboys to the river against someone on the button sitting on a gigantic stack with both a flush and straight draw on the board then you deserve to have your fingers broken. I forget the name of the waitress at Bellagio with the world class chest and I’m sorry about that, because you may wish to travel to Vegas just to look at her boobs. They are that spectacular. The dealer at the 15-30 game did notice that we were dumping more chips on the waitress than him, but if he gets implants and loses some weight, he’ll do better.

Overall Bellagio rating: 8/10. Bellagio would score a 9 but they have not fixed the chairs yet. You’d think a long petition signed by all the players would tip them off but nope…you still cannot move without lifting your chair. Worth going just to play there? Hell ya!.

Played at Harrahs, MGM and Flamingo as well. Nothing much to report as they were all daytime games and the rooms were absolutely dead. MGM certainly wins for hugeness. The staff at MGM were very nice and I like the pagers because the casino is enormous and just wondering off to get a drink is a ten minute exercise. Harrahs was actually pretty nice, albeit small.

That’s the end of this Vegas rant. I will be back in October and again next March. Anything longer than six months and I get withdrawal. Thanks to all the people I played against who recommended New Jersey and the Borgata. I will definitely be there this summer. My apologies to you NLplayers for not playing a little and giving you a feel for the games. I will be playing NL on my next trip. There is an endless amount of action from which to choose.