[bav]

Luxor is a hike from Rio, and their poker room frankly sucks. And Mandalay to the south and Excalibur to the north are no great shakes. You have to get to MGM to find what I consider a worthy poker room. So if you wanna play low-limit sorta cash games, not in the Rio, perhaps you'd be happier in a more central location. Harrah's, IP, Flamingo, Bally's spring to mind. They should be similarly priced to Luxor.

There are single table satellites running all the time in a variety of sizes and configurations that pay out one or more $500 chips to first, or first+second, or whatever that can be used to enter any WSOP event.

Unless you just really feel a crying need to play in the WSOP, I second the notion of skipping the little WSOP events and doing the Venetian deep stack events if they continue them, or perhaps the Binion's baby events if they repeat it. Venetian's $330, $540, $1060 tourneys were great, but suffered from being so wildly popular they sold out many days. Binion's mirrored what was going on at the WSOP, but had buyins 10% the size...so if the Rio was doing a $1500 NLHE event, Binion's did a $150 NLHE event the day prior. Very playable structure, but not so good as V's deep stack tourneys. I've done all manner of these tourneys and definitely found the $2000/$2500-sized WSOP events a let-down since you get relatively few starting chips. I would so rather enter 4 $330 or 3 $550 Venetian events than one $1500 WSOP. But if you think you'll enjoy knocking out Layne Flack, or want to say you played in the WSOP, or want a shot at being on TV, it'll probably have to be done at the WSOP.