Arrived Friday evening with a group of 7 all staying at Venetian on both comped nights and poker room rates. The group really likes Venetian, although that is waning a bit, due to the excellent poker room and sports book. While the Venetian is a great property the reconfiguration of the sports book is not as welcoming as the previous set-up. Also, as a guy who wants to smoke a cigar and what the games they have made the room non-smoking which sucks for me and my group.

We all really liked the new poker room and the reconfiguration of it. To me the most important revision was the move of the live action games towards the restrooms and the reduction of human traffic you must navigate through while trying to quickly get to and from the restroom. I also like that they added a back exit from the poker room to the sports book to again ease the movement from one to the other.

We all played around 20 hours each at V all of mine in cash games except for a SNG I played Sunday night. We also had three of our group play in the Monday Noon tournament with two finishing 4th and 11th. I played mostly $1/$2 winning only around $300 at V and two sessions of $4/$8LMT so I could play with my buddies winning $125. Another buddy of mine and I won the SNG for a $210 profit each.

I will do a room review but my quick subnopsis is as follows…room management, dealers, runners and waiters are all TOP NOTCH. Everyone we encountered was pleasant, helpful and in many cases entertaining which is what we all like. The tables are great but I didn’t think the chairs were as nice as the old chairs when they were new. The chairs were fine but not the best on the strip IMO. There is tons of room between tables and as stated above the logistics to the restrooms and sports book is much improved. I think the one knock you can make compared to other rooms is that while there are a lot of TVs they aren’t always as easy to watch from many of the tables due to the room layout. I don’t watch TV when I play poker but if you do a table and/or seat change should get the job done for you.

As far as the competition there is a noticeable difference between the weekend crowd and the weekday crowd. Friday through Sunday night had many more casual players such as me playing in the ring games which is both good and bad. The good is you can win some big pots off of bad play by others the bad is you can lose a big pot, which I did, when someone makes a really bad call and hits runner-runner to take down a huge pot. That is all part of the variance of the game but I bring it up because I see so many posts asking where the softest games are and sometimes the softest game can also be the most expensive. In the long run you love those types of games but for a session or a trip it could be the opposite. On Monday and Tuesday there are a lot more locals and grinders which makes the variance less so the pots aren’t as loose however I find the games almost easier to play. I will also point out that IMO the weekday games lack personality which is a negative for me because I don’t particularly like spending 4-5 hours with a group of people who don’t seem to be enjoying where they are or what they are doing. With regards to the $4/$8 LMT game I find that to be very soft and beatable every time. It almost makes me think I should play that 100% of my time at V but I don’t enjoy it as much.

We also played Sunday at Harrah’s because a couple of my group likes the splash the pot promo (I don’t). One of my guys took down a $300 splash with three other guys all in (highest being $135) with a 92 offsuit. That’s right he won with 92 offsuit and took down a $600 pot. I generally like the Harrah’s staff and management but the chairs are not very good and it wouldn’t be a room I would typically seek out on my trip. I did find the action relatively soft but there were some pretty solid players at our table as well.

We didn’t play poker anywhere else but V and Harrah’s however I did make a stop at the Palms and saw they moved their poker room to the sports book. If you like to sit at a table and watch beautiful big screens of sports while you play this would be the place for you.
The rest of the trip, while not playing poker, was spent and BJ, Pai Gow, and 3 card poker. We played and several venues but one of my favorites is the Golden Gate downtown. This is our second year of going there on a Saturday night and their party pit is great and with $5 and $10 tables to play at when you just want to pound drinks and gamble it is quite good. I also went to the Orleans for the first time to gamble and liked it as well partially because I went on a 3-card poker heater for a $600 profit and never hit a big hand. I did look in on the poker room at Orleans which I am not sure I could play at under any circumstance.

It was another great trip but I am glad to be home again. It is always satisfying to leave with more than you took after winning about $600 at poker and $400 on the other games.

SIDE NOTE – Twice in the last three trips to the Venetian when I went to check out the poker rate was not properly handled on my bill. This year we were off $300 and after 45 minutes at the desk and two phone calls to marketing it finally got worked out BUT…how hard should it be to adjust a bill to the poker room rate and not tie up my time or the front desks time. I gave them the benefit of the doubt the first time but now I am wondering if there isn’t some scam they try to work out to make a bit more on those that either don’t pay enough attention at check out or don’t have 45 minutes to invest at check out and thus pay the higher rate. Either way it is very annoying and adding to thought that maybe we need to find another home base such as Aria or Bellagio.

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