Venetian: $1 Max Rake for 8-16 & 15-30; $2 Time for 30-60 & 60-120

[Rick Nebiolo]

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no. youre wrong. last year when i played the 40 it was very good.

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My experience was in the 2/5 blind 200-500 spread buy no limit game; one that is much more likely to be influenced by a promotion with about a $3 per hour equity for a grinder. During my stay (about two nine hour plays) I never saw the 40/80 going. And as noted in my post above many people here on 2+2 had independently posted that the games AT THIS LEVEL were overpopulated by local grinder/rocks compared to other games in town.

In other words, all games might look good to you but some games are better than others. And usually (which means not always) a club/casino that can promote to tourists or make the live ones feel more welcome will have better games.


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remember this and embrace it: no one plays lhe well. it's a game of who tilts least and everyone tilts like crazy esp. vegas locals. the games at the venetian are going to be great this year.

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Now you're wrong. I'm mediocre at best but I don't tilt, maintaining my ability to play mediocre poker at all times. That's my strength. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

~ Rick

[bav]

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My experience was in the 2/5 blind 200-500 spread buy no limit game; one that is much more likely to be influenced by a promotion with about a $3 per hour equity for a grinder.

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I thought this was really apparent the last month at Monte Carlo. Every Vegas local was putting in 40 hours to qualify for the $100K freeroll. So the NL1/2 games were often as tight as I've seen in Vegas. Most people seemed to be there just to pass the time and were trying to avoid big pots. There were certainly exceptions but by and large this was a seriously boring 40 hours of poker. I actually found the most interesting game there was sometimes the 3/6 limit--the locals just wanting to pass time were at 2/4 or NL1/2, while the tourists sat at 3/6.

[Clarkmeister]

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LA is different. part of commerce's success is it's location practically right on the I-5 and proximity to LA nicer neighborhoods. hp would have more business if it were 30 seconds from the 405 like commerce is from the 5. but since hp is dumpy and in the hood it will never be like commerce. the bike is both poorly managed and off the beaten path off a commuter freeway in a crappy area. (same for crystal park and hg for that matter).

vegas is different. everything is so close together. tourists like to go some place where the floor ansd staff isnt hideously rude and the tables so close together you cant breathe (bellagio). plus venetian is an exceptionally nice hotel.

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You significantly underestimate the importance of location in Vegas. And the Venetian has, by far, the worst location of the 4 major rooms.

The Bellagio may be cramped, but that reminds me of the old Yogi Berra saying: "Nobody goes there anymore because it's always so crowded"

[MicroBob]

Yeah Clark.
I was kind of thinking that too.

Is mike saying that tourists don't go to Bellagio because of the crappy floor and crowded conditions?
All the players there are pretty much locals?

I really don't know. My only experience there was during the 2005 WSOP and that time of year is obviously different than other times.
But it seems pretty unlikely to me that tourists simply don't play at Bellagio.

[mike l.]

plenty of tourists play at bellagio, as do plenty of horrid playing locals.

if i lived in vegas i would do all i could to get all types of players to make venetian the new place to play. i understand about the parking but besides that it's better in every way.

what this is really about is the people who play poker for a living in vegas are retarded and apathetic. btw im not just saying that, it's been my experience for the past 6 years visiting several times a year.

[mikech]

clark is spot-on in this thread, while mike l.'s doing a lot of wishful-thinking.

sure, there are things i dislike about the bellagio room. it's not as spacious and comfortable as venetian, but i actually think the wynn is more cramped. do i think it sucks that the bellagio doesn't comp for poker play? obviously. do i think it's ridiculous they don't have an electronic board? of course. but they're the only consistent 10-20nl game in town, so am i gonna play anywhere else on a regular basis? hell no.

the bellagio's where the money is, and players follow the money.

[52s]

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the bellagio's where the money is, and players follow the money.

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If I didn't suck at using the search engine, and was spiteful, I'd hunt down a post I made last spring-summerish where I quoted Erick Lindgren saying the exact same thing to Venetian management during an FHM photo shoot, followed by a bunch of "Oooooooo... Erick Lindgren said so, lol! V is GREAT! Bellagio SUCKS! Venetian will rule poker!" posts, just so I could say "I told you so", one year later.

People that think it'd be easy to up and move a game from the Bellagio to the Venetian with a snap of the fingers just don't understand... those regulars at Bellagio? That room is their home. They have a ton of money in the boxes, they have connections that were and are made in there, its a meeting place for them, they have carte blanche with the management, among many other things.

At this point it'd be the equivalent of a family moving from one house to another - a major pain in the balls, and its a major pain in the balls they have no need to do...

Until Bobby Baldwin brings in the moving trucks for the players and MGM helps with all the hefty living in getting everyone over to CityCenter. (Which I'll remain skeptical on until the time comes for CC to open - I think all the action will probably move over, but I'm not betting on it... yet.)

Tourists? It's the Bellagio! It's where a bunch of the major WPT tournaments happened, the place pimped as the end all be all of poker on those shows when they were the hottest [censored] on TV back in 2004-2005, and tourists still remember the pimping, and tourists that want to see the stars can only go one place to see them, in their glass bubble... the Bellagio.

Anyone that thinks that Venetian has a shot at being anything more but a spillover room for the mid-limit action after the Bellagio and Wynn tables are all filled this summer with this management group (I DID work under this still-there group) are fooling themselves.

[Don Olney]

As most of you know, I am a fan of the "V". But, I do think there is lots of room to improve.
Some of the floor staff is top notch. A few need a personality transplant. The smug I AM BETTER THAN YOU attitude stinks.
Will this place ever become on of the TOP 2 or 3 rooms on the strip? I am not sure.
What is nice though, is seeing they are trying to do things to bring in the players.
I see many bitch about the parking. I find this kind of strange. Step for step it is not much more of a walk than the parking at the Bellagio. The "W" does have both places beat for easy in and out though and still has not archived " THE ROOM" status for Vegas.
The rake reduction is nice and might help some, but until the feeder games arrive to support the mid-limit games I am not getting to much hope for higher limit in the room just yet.
One thing that I know would help is training the floor on CUSTOMER SERVICE AND ATTENTION.
We will all just have to wait to see how this works.

[disjunction]

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One other note. I've spoken to someone (who now works here in Vegas) who worked at FW when the new room was opening/Kathy left for V, and I was told that everything Kathy bought for the new FW room - the pagers, the tables swipe-in machines, all the other gadgets - NONE of them worked, and Foxwoods scrapped all her technological plans. Good chunk of $$$ down the tubes.

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Hmmm, what does it mean "doesn't work"? Most new gadgets need someone to take some time and figure out the ins and outs of them. Or as one guy once used to say to me, "As long as someone tells me all the voodoo that goes along with it I'll be fine".

Multiple gadgets that "don't work" may say more about the incoming people than the outgoing.

[pig4bill]

The table electronics seem to work just fine at MGM and TI.