I like the PH tourny for a lower buy-in tourny. I thought the new room was very good.

Yes id have to agree with you there. Most of my poker experience in b+m casinos is at our local indian owned casinos. A " big " buyin tourney is 100 bucks a head and the 1/2 games are usually 200 maybe 300 max buyin. For a player like myself a place like ph gives me a chance to play the stakes im used to but in an environment that cant be had anywhere in wisconsin. That being said i have some concerns about the PH poker rooms long term viability. I was there 4 days and at no point do i remember seeing more than 4 cash game tables going. The vast majority of the time it was 2. One night the wife and i made a loop from PH down to TI and back up through bellagio. We walked through every casino on the way and just stopped and railbirded at the various poker rooms. There was plenty of action everywhere except PH which i can only attribute to one thing and thats the presence of the Grinder.

When i played there in may the nightly 7pm tourney was the big one. At that time the 2pm was getting 40 or 50 entries. I was happy to see something like 72 total entries in the tuesday 2pm this time around. Then come 7pm the grinder tourney starts and theres no grinder because he only has to be there something like 3 times a week. So instead of 70 plus players showing up with their 60 bucks in hand 9 show up with 120. It seems to me theres not a lot of future in this. Wouldnt it just be smarter to have the grinder play in the 60? You need those busted tourney players to feed the low buyin 1/2 game. Wednesday i show up at 6:40 i figure since the grinder has to be there on wednesday there will be a good turnout. Expecting a big crowd for the grinder " q+a " session i find 25 people in the poker room. Theres 5 sitting over at the grinder tourney table, a 2/4 limit game and a 1/2 nl game. Thats where the grinder was, from the looks of things vaporizing 100 dollar bills.

Overall i still think the planet hollywood poker room is a great place for a vegas newbie to play tourneys and cash games and i guess thats why i was sorta disappointed to see the action so limited. When you like a place you want it to prosper.

Hey "Fristhater", loved your trip report as well as your moniker! I'm heading down there with my cousin in Sept and I was planning to play a lot in Planet Hollywood. However, your trip report gives me a little pause. There's nothing worse than playing in a place that's "dead." I gotta say that's surprising. Question: what was your typical opponent like in the tourneys and cash games? You mention the 2AM drunkfests but what are the others like? A bunch of newbies, casual players, or people who know what they're doing?

I also played in PH tournaments while I was there 8/14 - 8/17. I played in the 10 am tournament twice, on Wednesday and Friday. Both days there were about 35 players, with buyins and rebuys. On Wednesday, I made it to the second break, almost to the final table. On Friday, I made it to the final table, placing 3rd, for a payout of $240, so I made money on this tournament at $60 per entry.

One notable hand in the Friday tournament. I was OTB and was dealt AJ, the flop was AAJ, so I flopped the nut full house. I raised out and only got one caller, in the SB. The turn was another J, so I slowed down, with a real possibility of a split pot, figuring he had an A. He raised all in on the turn, so I completed, since I had him outchipped and had at least a share of the pot. He turned over a flush draw!!! The fact that he made the flush on the river was inmaterial, I can't believe he called my initial raise and then raised me on the turn! Needless to say, that fueled my run to the final table.

Overall, the tournament was well run, fairly quick at 3 1/2 hours, and we got free doughnuts! I would play there again, as I liked the feel of the open poker room and the fact that it was just inside the front door - so I didn't have to walk all the way through the casino, temping fate.

thanks for the post, i will be playing at least one time when i come to vegas at the end of sept. i hope i won't be the drunk one playing.

@DLee

D
Mrs Bigdog & I will also be in town 9/28-10/1, so we are planning on making at least one or two game/sessions here. If your drunk, we will be nice to you, maybe

Mcgill94 hehe thank you for the kind words regarding my nickname. Mr Frist got his in the end and now i see Mr Gonzalez will no longing be plaguing online poker. Perhaps not coincidentally i see Pokerstars now offers Echeck directly from your bank account just like the ol days.

Regarding your question about PH competition I can say that after 2 trips out there this summer that included 14 tournies and some cash time time i probably have 80 hours in their room. The games for the most part have been pretty consistent.

The 10am tourney will be almost entirely made up of people staying in the hotel or within a short walk of it. There will also be about a half a dozen locals who are easy to spot because they are all chatty with the dealers. They have pre tourney lessons at 930 and there will be a fair number of people there learning how to post blinds who will soon be your competition. Theres alot of internet players in these things and just like on the internet youre gonna get called down by folks with no business being in the hand who are gonna donk out on you.

The 2pm has become the big one there from what i can see. With reentries it seems to run pretty steady at 65-75 buyins. A majority of the 10 am players will play in this one as well and the 30 extra people who show up for the most part will be the better players one might expect when the pool gets bigger.

At 7pm they now run the grinder tournaments. Last one i saw running had a tables worth of players and paid 550 for first. It didnt seem like a very good value to me for 120 bucks in light of the fact the worst poker player on the face of the earth was playing in it every night. A lady with about a 4 carat diamond ring who was playing poker for the first time in her life. I had played with her in the 2am at one point she called not one but 2 players all ins for over 80 percent of her stack. The flop had come something like kj5 rainbow. Cards are turned over one guys got ak the other a set of jacks and she turns over her a10 saying " i had to call ive got the queen " translation " i cant fold a gutshot "

The 2ams arent always drunkfests. In fact most of the time they arent. Theres always going to be folks having a few drinks but this last trip was the first time where i actually had to contend with for instance 5 drunk friends entering together and then jumping from table to table to do shots and stuff like that. I violated a cardinal rule of mine when it comes to this type of play. Time is money. Theres no need to mix it up with these guys youre not going to push them out and if their buddies are still in the tourney they are just gonna reenter anyway. Stay out of the way of the drunks until the reenter period is over unless you have the nuts. With each passing blind level they are getting drunker and the preflop pot is getting bigger.

The cash game competition is about what you would expect to find. Conventioners with suits and stick on name tags, internet players who know the game but dont play much cash and then a few experienced sharp players. The problem ive run into out there is this. When the 10am tourney starts lots of times theres no cash game at all going on or maybe 1 short handed table. By the time ive scratched my tournament itch and get to thinking about playing cash theres usually 3 or 4 players whove been at the table for 6 hours and its not because they are losing. Now youre faced with sitting down with 200 in front of you while a 3rd of the table has 1000. If you want to play cash id either get there right away in the morning or shine around around 5pm when the tourney players are dropping like flies and you have a shot at having a new table open up.

I should note all of my play has been during the week. Both my trips out there have been mon-thurs/fri im sure theres no shortage of juicy cash games on weekends.

So i guess to answer your question if i had to rate the overall competition at the ph pokerroom on a 1 to 5 scale id give it a 3. If youre a slighty above average player you will win there. Im not sure what sort of commentary that makes on my playing ability after 14 tournies there i think i am 20 bucks ahead. Must be variance [/quote]

Thanks for the detailed answer. The competition level seems just about right. I love that hand you described with the lady with the 4 carat diamond ring. Just like you, I try to avoid those players. Although I know I should be want to tangle with them, they always seem to hit their gutshots against me! I'm always amazed at how people in Vegas are so willing to throw their money around. I guess I'm cheap, but I would never spend $120 playing something about which I have absolutely no clue! I actually want to meet the Grinder so I'll probably play at PH quite a bit. Hopefully if I get a little better luck, I'll make out better than $20!!!