I spent the weekend in Las Vegas because it just hasn’t been hot enough in St. Louis, so I thought a few days in a place where the daytime high was consistently over 110 degrees would be better.
In reality, I went to play poker against people I don’t know and who don’t know me. That’s become impossible in St. Louis, where the player pool has shrunk considerably and the only faces I see at the tables are the same old regulars.
I timed this trip to begin the day after the World Series Of Poker ended. I used to jump into the huge number of attendees in the days when I played tournaments, but since I gave that up several years ago, I see no reason to be in such a large crowd.
During the WSOP, the waiting lists for cash games — which I now play exclusively — were so long that if I tried to get in there at 10am, there were already forty or fifty people ahead of me on every list. According to friends who still make the WSOP trek, that remains a problem, and not just at the two adjacent casinos that host the events, the Horseshoe and Paris. Other poker rooms in town (Bellagio, Aria, Wynn, Golden Nugget, Caesar’s Palace, Venetian) hold their own tournament series and draw overflow crowds. That’s not a surprise considering many of the events attract thousands of entrants. In fact, this year’s WSOP Main Event set a record with over 10,000 people coughing up $10,000 each to play, leading to a first-place prize of a little over ten million dollars.
When I told a friend I was going out right after the WSOP ended, he said it was a terrible idea because he thought all the poker players would have left town. I assured him that would not be the case. There are games in Vegas every day of the year with no shortage of players — but much more manageable lists. Sure enough, I had no trouble finding seats in my preferred games without having to endure long waits.
I played most of my sessions at Encore, which I find quite comfortable and well run. It’s one of only two places (along with Aria) for good Pot Limit Omaha games, which I enjoy. But I did venture back to my old stomping grounds at Bellagio to play no-limit hold’em for the first time in years — and hated it for two reasons.
First, the games were full of young pros who all have the same poker knowledge base and play a strictly tight-aggressive strategy and are thus unlikely to make mathematical mistakes or just gamble and loosely push chips in the middle. They’re all trying to do this for a living, but that’s a much more difficult prospect than when the poker boom began and lots of recreational players dumped lots of money into the games. Ironically, that was twenty years ago, when most of these young pros hadn’t even started middle school.
Not only is their style of play boring, but so are they. Young guys in their twenties don’t have much in the way of social skills because they’ve trained themselves not to share anything, ever. Besides, they have yet to develop any life experience to draw from. This may partly explain why so many guys of that age can’t get women interested in them. They don’t sit stone-faced around a poker table for hours on end and then flip on a fun-guy personality switch once they leave the casino. Give me a talkative well-traveled middle-aged man or woman in the seat next to me and we’ll find plenty to discuss.
The second annoying thing about playing at Bellagio is a slot machine right outside the poker room which blares the song “Roll Out The Barrel” over and over again, loudly enough to be heard from every table. I asked one of the dealers if she ever gets used to it or can block it out. She told me she couldn’t and despite desperate pleas from some of her colleagues, management won’t unplug the machine or move it. That seems like a form of employee torture, but I guess it must bring in a large amount of money for the casino.
To my mind, the executive responsible for putting — and leaving — it in that spot should be literally handcuffed to the machine and have to endure the nauseating repetition of that song with no respite. I bet that after a mere two or three hours, he or she would feel worse than Malcolm McDowell with his eyes pried open in “A Clockwork Orange” and have the machine dismantled for parts.
Speaking of tearing things down, the day before I arrived in Vegas was the last day for The Mirage, which was the first themed resort on The Strip in the late 1980s. The man-made volcano out front was unique and astounding free entertainment for passersby that drew crowds of tourists every hour through the evenings. I stayed there often in the nineties when The Mirage had a huge poker room that quickly became the place to play — and an excellent sports book, too. That lasted until the Bellagio opened and took away so much of the poker business that Mirage management cut the room down to less than 10% of its previous square footage.
In the days before The Mirage closed — to be replaced in 2027 by a Hard Rock Guitar Hotel like the ones in Florida — locals told me it was packed to capacity. The reason? The casino still had $1.6 million in its progressive slots jackpots, and by Nevada Gaming Commission law, that money had to be disbursed before the doors were shut. People were lined up four and five deep at every machine for the last few days, hoping to win their share of the prize pool. I bet The Mirage made more money in that week than it has in a very long while.
I also ventured back to The Rio, where I spent way too much time when it was the home of the World Series Of Poker. On this trip, I was there solely to attend a recording session for Penn & Teller’s “Fool Us.” Because everyone in attendance had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, I can’t tell you anything about the experience yet, but I’ll share some details after the shows have aired.
I can tell you, however, that The Rio remains an absolute dump. I won’t be surprised that whenever Penn & Teller end their residency there, the whole place will be imploded, the rubble cleared away, and the land used for a domed stadium for an MLS soccer team.