The temporary poker room at IP during construction of the Linq project is currently enjoying Quad-a-Palooza.

In the weeks leading up to the World Series of Poker, grinders all over Vegas start making big plans. Even small-stakes guys like me and my friends want a piece of the action. But with the major online sites shuttered for US players, we must hunt for a way to qualify for a bracelet event.

WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart told reporters that Caesars properties would increase satellites leading up to the series.

Caesars Palace just launched its WSOP Warm-Up, running through May 20, with tournaments as low as $130 that have $20,000 guaranteed prize pools and $1,000 WSOP seats.

My friends and I decided to skip those tournaments for now — thinking we’d hit a few of the smaller Caesars properties to increase our chances of scoring a seat. These rooms wouldn’t be as packed with local grinders, we figured, and the games would be less volatile.

With the construction of the Caesars’ Linq project underway, the Imperial Palace poker room moved from the front of the casino, by which all the tourists would stumble, to a rather inconvenient spot up on the third floor.

“I don’t get it. They had such a great location,” said one of my poker buddies — an out-of-towner who takes most of his vacations to Vegas.

As we weaved our way through the slots and pit games, past a stretch of freshly hoisted dry wall toward the main elevators, a fire alarm was blaring, but no one seemed concerned.

“I would assume that they’re testing it because of the construction,” a bellhop assured us, “but don’t take my word for it. Be aware.”

We took our chances to get on one of the creaky elevators and survived the trip to the third floor, where some guy was hawking romance novels near a bank of slot machines roped off for tournament play. We eventually found the “new” IP poker room down the hall. The carpet was dark floral, the air musty Marlboro.

We spotted only two tables of 2-4FL with a half-kill.

It was 1:30 pm on a Wednesday, so we cut them some slack. “This is the busiest we’ve been in the last four days,” the poker room director tells us. Yikes.

Could you tell us how to win a $1,000 WSOP seat?

Oh that promo ended Monday, he said. So no seat, but there was a high hand jackpot that paid more than $1,000, and something called “Quad-A-Palooza,” with progressive payouts up to $599.

So we ducked out of IP and headed past the construction-site chain-link fences, through the particle dust and under the scaffolding, to Harrah’s, once the signature establishment of the Caesars empire, now home to a glass-encased poker room that’s something of a center-strip artifact.

Inside, with the likes of Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Stu Ungar glaring down at the felts from their bizarre technicolor portraits, we spotted two 1-2NL games running — standard stuff, with stacks between $50 and about $500.

Here they were giving away WSOP seats by raffle. For every hour at the table between midnight and 11:59 pm, every day through May 25, each player receives a ticket in a drawing for a $1,000 WSOP entry. At 6 pm the next day, one ticket is pulled. The winner must be present and he or she cannot exchange the buy-in for cash. No one player can win more than five seats. (A 6th prize to the same player would be distributed in cash, the 7th is forfeited.)

This year, there are seven WSOP events with a $1,000 buy-in, including a two-day tournament just before the main event.

“It’s a shot at winning a half-million bucks,” one dealer told us. “It’s a long shot, but it’s a shot.”

We decided our best shot was at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall & Saloon, where they have the cheapest live poker on the strip: .50/$1NL. Minimum $20 buy-in.

There until May 25, they’re offering a $1,000 seat to anyone who makes the high hand of the day, minimum quads or better, using both hole cards.

No seat was awarded the day before, so the prize rolled over, and there were 2 seats available.

Low risk. Low variance. Big potential reward. Let’s gamble.

The felt at Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon, possibly the cheapest way into the WSOP

My friend and I plopped down at one of the three booze-loosened tables.

I’ll just play pocket pairs, suited connectors, and anything that can make a high hand, I told myself.

So I opened my first pot in late position with KQo, which is none of that, and the drunk to my left promptly 3-bet. Sigh. I might need another 20 bucks.

I played a few more pairs and suited connectors and found myself stuck $100 in a couple hours.

So much for low risk.

My buddy won a few bucks, but alas, he didn’t win a WSOP seat either.

The entire day, only one hand qualified, which meant there was another rollover.

By the start of the series, there could be a pile of available spots.

Maybe we’ll head back before the WSOP starts on May 27 and give it another shot. We still have a couple weeks to sneak in. Otherwise, I might find myself grinding that slot tournament.

It certainly won’t be a quiet one.

“The poker room is not church,” Effel, the tournament director for the past 6 years, told poker media today. “You can talk in the poker room. We just feel that we need to set the tone to put the fun back into poker.”

A trimmed down WSOP TD Jack Effel promises to go easy on players who want to chat it up at the tables this year.

Table talk and celebration are allowed once again — and even encouraged, Effel and WSOP executive director Ty Stewart said.

“We’re going to relearn what it’s like to be at a poker table, understanding the verbal strategy,” Effel said.

Just don’t expose your cards, or talk when someone else has yet to act. Essentially, you can yap all you want if you’re closing the action.

This is something of a level, as one reporter pointed out: WSOP knows the ESPN cameras are on all the players who know the cameras are on them.

“We’ve rewritten the rules to say we want you to celebrate, just don’t get crazy,” Effel added, putting the kibosh on the 4-year-old “Hevad Khan rule.”

Players at a feature table are even required to announce their action.

At any given point between May 27 and July, there will be as many as 500 poker tables at the Rio. That’s the largest ever for a single event, Effel said.

This year’s WSOP offers 61 bracelets for events including a $1,500 “ante only” event, a $2,500 4-max event, a $3,000 heads-up NL/PLO event, and a $5,000 mix-max event. They’ve also added a couple quirky non-bracelet events, such as the $560 bracelet bounty, where players receive $500 for knocking out a bracelet winner, and a $560 (per player) doubles tournament, where players share a chip stack and alternate at each level.

They also announced the return of daily deep stack tournaments.

Stewart feels good about the prospect of a “second boom for poker,” even with Full Tilt player funds in limbo a year after Black Friday.

“This game is stronger than we all even hoped,” he said. “It has become truly global, and it is here to stay. It appears poker’s darkest days are behind us.”

A few other highlights from the conference call:

• With a series of satellite events and a $25,000 mega satellite, the directors expect to fill the 48-player $1 million One Drop charity tournament to reach capacity.
• Instead of the standard food comp, players this year will receive Caesars Total Reward credits for bracelet events based on the size of the buy-in.
• The main event final table has been pushed up to Oct. 28, instead of the following month, when it would have interfered with the presidential election.

At first glance, this series resembles most “tourist stakes” festivals in Las Vegas — two-and-a-half weeks of two tourneys a day, with buy-ins ranging from $150 to $550 and a $1,600 main event (starting May 1). But a closer look at the schedule reveals that 9 of the 30 events are something other than no-limit Texas hold’em. There are five Omaha events, two HORSE events, a stud event and a hi-lo variant of Chinese Poker. Even the WSOP doesn’t have that.

Matt Savage opted not to include any limit hold’em or pot-limit Words with Friends in the current MGM series line-up, but did include just about everything else.

And six of the hold’em events veer from standard full-ring multi-table freezeout structure — to include turbos, a double-stack event, bounties, an “all-in or fold” tournament (where those are your only two choices on every hand), and a mix-max, where the number of players at each table progressively shrinks (from 10 to 8 to 6 to 4…).

Savage says he  expects a healthy turnout of pros for the Chinese Poker ½ High, ½ 2-7 event.

The idea for this series, he said, was “to provide a variety of games that other series’ in Vegas don’t generally have. No-limit hold’em, while it’s popular, isn’t the only game.”

The Grand Challenge series is taking place in a temporary location on the casino floor,  next to the old lion habitat, while construction on the adjacent bar is underway.

For the first event, a $230 NLHE tournament with 3 day ones, there were more than 300 entrants. The top three finishers chopped for a $10k, $9k, and $9k payout.

Dan played the $150 Pot Limit Omaha with $100 rebuys last night. The Sunday evening event drew 37 players and saw 98 rebuys, for a first prize around $5k. Dan got knocked out just short of the money, with 32 players remaining. I wonder how many hands he played before realizing the odds can actually change when you don’t run it twice.

I’m personally interested in Wednesday’s 6-max NL Hold’em event — something I’ve played before online but never live. We’ll see if my online experience short-handed combined with my looser live cash-game style gives me the edge I anticipate. And if I make the money there, I may just take a shot at the all-in or fold event on Friday. Ever since I heard about it, I’ve been hashing out strategy with friends.

Sounds like it could be really fun or really quick.

Here’s a best-of list of links, tweets and general brooding from over the weekend:

The cold anniversary was, of course, trending on Twitter Twitter hashtag #BlackFriday … From Ben Lamb wondering if anyone would tweet about it to Dan Fleyshman posting this sad picture http://instagr.am/p/JcjU9BJT1C/

The legal landscape

Reminding people they really do represent the players (especially since Black Friday) the PPA urged them to continue to contact their political representatives. http://www.lvrj.com/business/poker-lobbying-group-marks-black-friday-anniversary-147424325.html

As legislators grapple with the future of online poker, Nevada officials want to host the first legal sites. http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/13127-black-friday-the-day-that-changed-online-poker

Poker affiliates reflected on lessons learned since being forced to admit that the whims of authorities are a legitimate risk for anyone doing business in a legally gray world. http://www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com/blog/black-friday-lessons-learned/

On the casino side, Frank Fahrenkopf, president and CEO of the American Gaming Association, pushed for amendments to the Wire Act and the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) that would “unambiguously eliminate illegal Internet gambling.” http://www.americangaming.org/newsroom/press-releases/statement-on-the-anniversary-of-black-friday

And FairPlay USA has Greg Raymer reminding you to sign their petition while former FBI Director Louis Freeh cites the anniversary of Black Friday as a call for federal action and continue the fine worl of the DOJ. http://fairplayusa.com/blog/fairplayusa%E2%80%99s-judge-louis-freeh-statement-black-friday-anniversary

Meanwhile, lawyers of all stripes took note, with a new class-action lawsuit filed against Full Tilt filed just before any anniversary parties. 
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/13/45602.htm

Thanks for the memories, DOJ

QuadJacks.com did a special anniversary live podcast, which included “original Black Friday audio.” Ah, the memories.
http://quadjacks.com/poker-radio/

Short-stacked Shamus gives a thorough write-up of the drama to that would befall so many in different ways. http://betting.betfair.com/poker/poker-news/black-friday-one-year-later-130412.html

Wicked Chops Insider talked with poker industry leaders about where they were when they heard the news for an oral history of that fateful day (worthy of free distribution). http://insider.wickedchopspoker.com/543/an-oral-history-of-black-friday/

Many pros, like Shane Schleger here, had to share their thoughts and perspective from a day they won’t forget. http://shaniaconline.blogspot.com/2012/04/black-friday-one-year-later.html

Like a moment frozen in time, here’s the original 2+2 Black Friday thread, which received more than 6,000 replies in the first 3 days: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/reuters-full-tilt-poker-pokerstars-absolute-poker-charged-illegal-gambling-1020606/#post26050483

The guys at pokerfuse.com produced a bomb-ass timeline, tracking all the major events since that dark day, including their own birth. http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/one-month-black-friday-timeline/

Michael Gentile, a former online pro, interviewed Poker Players Alliance board member Patrick Fleming to (re)assess the online poker legal landscape in the US. http://pokerfuse.com/features/in-depth/us-legal-landscape-one-year-after-black-friday/

Here’s another sharp timeline at PokerStrategy.com. http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/One-Year-Since-Black-Friday:-The-Complete-Timeline_58551/

And another by-the-minute timeline at PokerNews.com. http://www.pokernews.com/news/2012/04/the-black-friday-timeline-one-year-without-online-poker-12445.htm

Poker still has a future

A bunch of pros, like Matt Waxman, told PokerStrategy.com that this year’s WSOP Main Event should hold steady. “It’s like so prestigious and like world renowned, you know, so everybody’s gonna just make it out cause this is the one tournament that like if you’re the guy who plays the nightly home game for 100 bucks, you’re gonna splurge your 10k just so you can play in the main event,” he said. Like riiiight. http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/Daily-Rewind-Black-Friday-Anniversary,-New-Gambling-Film,-WSOP-2012-Thoughts_58570/

CalvinAyre.com looked at the companies “making noise” about bringing online poker back to the United States. http://calvinayre.com/2012/04/15/poker/how-to-make-it-in-america/

QuadJacks put out a new music video by Sonny Caine and Dennis Rybaczewski (DRybes) to inspire a little hope for the future.

And our own Dan Michalski summarizes it all as simply a “big, industry changing day” in All In – The Poker Movie, which is available April 24, 2012, on iTunes. http://mashable.com/2012/04/13/online-poker-black-friday/

Cantor Gaming will open a new poker room at the Palms, and hopefully get new felts for Pokerati's signature game.

Cantor Gaming confirmed recently that an 8-table poker room will be part of the Palms’ redesigned sportsbook (currently under construction) and say the new room will be state of the art in style and technology. Sources at Palms tell me that one of the tables will be equipped with hole card cams, a la Live at the Bike.

“We are honored that Palms has chosen us to manage their poker area,” Lee M. Amaitis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cantor Gaming said in a press release. “By situating poker within the sports book we can offer customers maximum entertainment and convenience.”

Because of the partnership, the current staff at Palms must re-apply for new jobs with Cantor if they want to stick around. A spokesman for Cantor did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking further details about the new poker room, and the cost of the project was not disclosed.

Late last year, the Las Vegas-based gaming company unveiled a new sports book at Venetian, the first phase of $30 million in renovations. Cantor has been taking over sportsbooks across Las Vegas — including the Venetian, Tropicana, Hard Rock, M Resort, and Cosmopolitan — but Palms will be the first location to open with a poker room as part of its design.

“Our decision to relocate the poker room to the new race and sports book was a natural one given the synergies that exist between poker players and sports bettors,” said Joseph A. Magliarditi, President of Palms.

“We are confident that a sleek new poker room will be a spectacular addition to our resort and one that offers poker fans the ultimate in poker playing experiences.”

Dan Michalski, who runs this site and has hosted a weekly half no-limit hold’em, half pot-limit Omaha game at the Palms for the past year, wouldn’t say much about the future of Pokerati’s relationship with the casino. (And he acts surprised when I can’t get a corporate casino flak to answer my questions!)

“Stay tuned,” Dan said in a text message.

So I guess that means there may only be a few more weeks to take his money in the Pokerati game — at least at the current past-its-prime Palms poker room.

Some of what I’ve picked up lately:

Karina Jett is the MGM’s new poker room ambassador, meaning she will promote the room and host the weekly $120 HORSE event at 7:15pm every Tuesday. Jett has hosted the HORSEament previously at the Palms and then M Resort before settling into her new gig at MGM. The inaugural running at MGM featured a drinks-flowing pre-party that saw Cyndy Violette, Gavin Smith, Layne Flack, Allen Kessler, and Erik Seidel.

DonkDown Radio founder Bryan Micon won the tournament last week, beating a pro-filled field of about 80 for a $2k score, along with besting several others in a last-longer bet that paid an added $4k. The next running, earlier this week, attracted a field of about 60 players.

Meanwhile, WPT Executive Tour Director Matt Savage is also on board with MGM, serving as tournament director for the upcoming Grand Challenge Tournament series. Savage apparently was looking for something else to do in Vegas now that the Epic events are off his calendar.

Occupy Aria?
Players take Ivey Room mixed game back to Bellagio

This hasn’t been confirmed yet, but according to at least one regular player in one of the bigger regular games in Vegas:

For everyone that plans on playing mixgames in Las Vegas…We are no longer playing at Aria… Come join us everyday at @BellagioPoker

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

Politics don’t allow us to be able to play at Aria now…Aria is a great place and has great staff and I love it and prefer Aria overall.

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

I Hate politics… So easier to move to Bellagio…Come join us everyday @BellagioPoker and get your picture for “playing with this guy”

— Mike Thorpe (@RealCrazyMike) March 21, 2012

FWIW I saw Jean Robert Belande (@BrokeLivingJRB) still playing in Ivey’s room with David Williams (@DWPoker) just last night, so there could be more to this schism. If it’s all political, as Crazy Mike says, that could explain why Barack Obama was in town yesterday.

Under New Management
@WynnPoker Classic draws heat

The Wynn has a new poker room director, Joe Vigurs, a former graveyard shift manager at Venetian. And true to form, poker players on 2+2 and Twitter welcomed him to the fray by getting panties in serious wads at the Wynn Classic, which wrapped up last week. Jimmy Fricke called the preliminary events “absolutely brutal” while Allen Kessler said fellow pros complained that the main event was “the worst run 5k ever.” Other complaints included skipped blind levels and a floor supervisor allowing David Levy to “buy the button” in a tournament when he moved tables. For all the reported wrinkles, however, several local tournament grinders at Wynn tell me they “thoroughly enjoyed” the structures.

O'Sheas, and it's "strip poker" room is closing April 30

Last Call
O’Sheas Closing to Make Room for Caesars Wheel

Time is running out to donk around with the drunks. O’Sheas, the 23-year-old center-strip hub of drunken poker, and drunken everything, is shutting down April 30 to make room for Caesars Entertainment’s new $500 million Linq project, expected to open next year.

The Irish-themed casino has been known as a “break-in” room for poker room staff across Vegas, and many of them work there part time. Caesars notified them earlier this year that these jobs would be eliminated, though they were offered work during the WSOP.

There was no “strip poker” Saturday, because St. Patrick’s Day crowds overwhelmingly packed the front of O’Sheas. But my friend Andrew Neeme (@andrewneeme) and I played a few hours of 2-6 spread limit and 1-2 no-limit hold’em in the four-table poker room just a few feet away from the beer pong section. We each collected a little holiday green, as most of the players drank far more beers than us.

Until it closes, O’Sheas will continue to offer daily tournaments and their standard 1/2NL and 2-6 spread limit cash games. The poker room at the Imperial Palace is also expected to close temporarily as the Linq construction gets underway. Part of the plan includes tearing down O’Sheas to make room for a 550-foot tall “observation wheel” called the Las Vegas High Roller.

Also-Rans around Town …

Silverton and Fitzgeralds recently closed their poker rooms. The former because they simply had no players, and the latter seems to fit with a rebranding of the downtown casino. The name is changing to the D, and a Fremont-facing bar will replace the rainbow marquee, which eventually will be headed to the nearby Neon Boneyard.

After we published, the Tropicana released the following joint statement from Fred Harmon, vice president of talent and image relations, and John Fort, director of gaming, via QuadJacks:

“We have seen a few false assumptions posted regarding Jamie Gold. The Jamie Gold Poker Room is alive and well! It appears Jamie not being at Tropicana Las Vegas everyday (sic) has sparked some assumptions that are just not true. Jamie is part of the Tropicana family and will be focusing on his seminars, including the one on March 24th, and bringing exciting poker events to the New Tropicana Las Vegas.”

Less than one month after the “Official Grand Opening of the Jamie Gold Poker Room,” the relationship between the Tropicana and the 2006 WSOP main event champion has apparently ended — more quickly than it began. Though no word yet from either side about what prompted the abrupt change of course, posters of Jamie Gold, hands to the sky, and videos of him daring players to “catch me bluffing” are gone.

(But you can still see on YouTube what the plans were supposed to be.)

The Feb. 17-19 launch-party weekend included a Sunday afternoon “second chance” tourney that got canceled when only two players registered, and Gold himself showed up an hour after cards were supposed to have gone in the air. But the 2/5NL game (with David Williams and other pros) that sprung up in the Jamie Gold room looked to be growing successfully — running regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays — as it was fast becoming known as the biggest 2/5NL games in Las Vegas, with reports of pots as big as $20,000.

Now the Gold promotional posters have been replaced by signs for a March Mania Mega Stack Poker Tournament, which starts today, March 15, and runs through March 25.

I stopped by the Tropicana room late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning to check out the 2/5NL game. For the past couple months, this was the game of Gold and friends.

At the desk, I spotted a stack of fliers promoting a seminar with Gold, the only remaining evidence of his affiliation with the room. Gold promised to reveal “poker secrets the pros don’t want you to know!” In black marker, someone had scribbled “Mar 17,” or Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day. Imagine my luck.

I called the poker room Thursday afternoon, to get the exact time.

“I’m so sorry,” a woman replied. “I’m taking them down right now. They should not have been put out. It was canceled.”

The casino just released the schedule for its next Deep Stack series, set to run May 24 to July 15.

There’s no DSE next month, however, meaning there will be only three this year. Instead, they will host the Spring Big Bounty Festival from April 12-22, also at Palazzo.

Since 2009, there have been four Deep Stacks a year inside the Venetian Poker Room, with events starting in January, April, May and October.

That changed in January and February, when players battled in this year’s first Deep Stack Extravaganza in the main casino area of the Palazzo.

With the Venetian being home to the largest poker room in Las Vegas, there’s no word on creating a permanent poker room inside the neighboring tower.

But the tournament shift to the Palazzo — because of already crowded Venetian poker room — appears to coincide with rumblings about expansion.

For at least a couple of years, there’s been talk about making the Venetian, currently 52 tables, even bigger. Already, a roped off area outside the main poker room handles the daily tournaments.

Now, word on The Strip is that work on Venetian’s poker room could start as early as August.

The plan supposedly calls for upwards of 90 tables, new chairs, bigger and better TVs, and tearing down the high-limit wall for better space.

Several attempts to reach casino officials about tournament and poker room changes were unsuccessful.

But it looks like Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson might start throwing some money at more than just Newt Gingrich.

You won’t get paid while attending the academy, but as far as I can tell you don’t have to pay either. Caesars promises to equip you with the skills to pitch cards and cut chips at RIO All Suites Hotel from May 27 to July 16, aka the 2012 World Series. A session in late April provides advanced lessons for dealing non-hold’em games.
I’m still waiting for a response on my application. If I get accepted, I hope to document the experience. And since Caesars stresses “good customer service skills,” we’ll do it with a smile.

The job ad also says “a neat professional appearance and good personal hygiene are essential.” That might narrow the competition in the poker community. But I know I’m ready to shave and shower before I shuffle up and deal.

The tourists have donated their Vegas dollars to the grinders over the weekend, and even the L.A. crowd has headed back to their movie studios and plastic surgeons.

This meant that for the final two days of my week-long experiment in playing Las Vegas daily tournaments, I would have to hit some of the bigger casinos — Caesars Palace and Bellagio.

The 10,000 starting stack at Caesars Palace's nightly tournament.

With a WSOP-circuit event being held at Caesars, I didn’t have trouble finding a comfortable-size field for their nightly 7pm tournament on a Monday. With a $110 entry fee, this event has a $5,000 guaranteed prize pool (Mon-Fri only). The staff and one local at my starting table who had already worked out the math said they would need at least 63 entrants to reach that figure. Caesars’s nightly tournaments sometimes start with even fewer players, offering a healthy overlay.

Of the buy-in, Caesars took $20 as a “maintenance fee” and $10 was for the staff toke.)

Grinders and well-known pros filled the room — the 2008 WSOP Main Event third-place finisher Dennis Phillips sat a few tables away playing a cash game and Jeff Madsen, the rapper who also won 2006 WSOP player of the year, was at the final table of the main event in the elevated area nearby. I didn’t recognize anyone at my table who should have given me trouble.

A Week of Whiffs?
I was due for a nice run, having missed the money in my first 5 tournaments. The 10,000 chip starting stack and 20-minute levels felt comfortable out of the gate. I’d have to beat out 59 others to earn the $1,914 first-place prize.

Four players limped in the first hand and many would continue to do the same. Later, when a loose and fishy player made a string raise, the dealer stopped him. In protest, the player delayed so long before playing his next hand preflop that someone called the clock without any previous action having been made. He tried this for a couple more hands, then gave up.

I couldn’t have scripted a more perfect lineup.

The cards, however, would prove to be my worst enemy. I held on for about three hours, but connected with too few boards. I was eliminated after raising KJ preflop, getting called by the blinds and calling off against the small blind’s KT on a KTQ flop. Another finish out of the money, but I remained determined to finish with a bang.

Bellagio’s 2p.m. event on Tuesday was a $125 buy-in that gave me a similar 10,000 chip starting stack. Of that entry fee, $97 goes into the prize pool, and the casino collects $28.

At 50/100, the blinds started a little higher than other events, but the 25-minute levels offered more play.

Before we got started, the tournament director zipped through a long list of rules, which included “no talking while heads up and no phone use while in a hand.”

Doyle Brunson sat behind the glass inside Bobby’s Room, betting in one hand more than the prize that this entire field is chasing.

The 54 players would fight for $1,781, and it was a peculiar battle, filled mostly with older tourists.

Shortly after the start, I was moved to a table loaded with calling stations. Some raised pots would see 6-way action preflop. But yet again, I struggled to make hands and take down  relatively big pots. With more than half the field eliminated, I busted after I was forced to move in with QJ and could not outdraw AK.

And it was over, 0 for 7. A week of whiffs.

If I could have taken one down or at least cash in a couple, that easily would have covered the $830 I spent. Cut another way, I paid $171 in tournament fees in one week, meaning more than 20 percent goes to the house.

It would certainly be a grind to exclusively play these tournaments, but there’s lots of cash out there. And I intend to get some of it.

I’m going to give a few of these another shot — Aria, Bellagio, Caesars and Stratosphere will definitely see me again — and check out some other regular events around Vegas. If you’re playing a daily or nightly tournament and you see me at your table, look out, because my luck’s about to change!

Rake Me

Here’s a breakdown of each tournament I played, and amount paid in entry fees and other charges:

Venetian: $175 buy-in for 10,000 chips, 20-minute levels, $20 goes to the house and $5 pays a “staff bonus.” ($25 total, or 14 percent)

Friday night’s 12,500-chip starting stack at The Orleans.

Ragin’ Cajun: Friday Nights at the Orleans

Those on the lower-stakes Vegas grind often rave about Friday night at The Orleans. Large field, good structure, big prize pool. A friend advised that I arrive early because the event fills up so quickly. I parked around back almost an hour before the 7pm start time, and after securing my $125 entry, sat at a bar near the food court with T.G.I. Fridays, Fuddruckers, Baskin Robbins, Sbarro, Subway — yeah, real Cajun cuisine.

On this night there would be 270 players, with first place paying about $8,000. The floor supervisor said re-entries were possible but improbable because of a long list of alternates. As we got underway, two locals spoke conspicuously about a mutual friend who was playing a $250k buy-in event in Australia (the Aussie Millions high-roller event, won by Phil Ivey).

Of The Orleans’s comparably tiny entry fee, $100 goes to the prize pool, $2 goes to tournament “players of the month,” $13 goes to the house and $10 goes to staff. The tournament can often last until mid morning, but my run in the event would be a quick one, as I never dragged a pot and busted 5 minutes before the first break.

Saturday afternoon’s 4,500 stack at Golden Nugget

Saturday Shorty at the Golden Nugget

You can validate parking at just about any casino downtown, but that validation is only good for 3 hours. Since I intended to take this thing down — the $65 Saturday No-Limit Hold’em event at the Golden Nugget — I parked in the free lot at El Cortez and made the short walk to Fremont Street. I suppose I could have chosen to valet, but then I’d miss the “experience” of strolling past showgirls in mink coats, checking out Mardi Gras bead souvenirs, snapping a picture of tiny Elvis or Pirates of the Caribbean Johnny Depp and basking in all that neon.

The Golden Nugget poker room sits in a casually lit atmosphere with an appropriately golden hue. I noticed a sign for a $100 event every Sunday at 9am. Wait, are there people in Las Vegas who actually wake up early enough to play that?

I plopped down $65 for the 3pm freezeout, where I ran into a local grinder who had crippled my stack the night before at Orleans when he flopped a flush against my third-nut flush draw. He was downtown to play the uncapped buy-in cash games, though, and not punish me for tournament missteps. The Nugget might be a small room, but its one of the few 1/2 games in Las Vegas with no max buy-in. Still, it wasn’t like people were buying in big just to bully. Most of the big stacks were playing less than $1,000 deep, grinders picking off tourists $100 at a time.

Turns out, Saturday’s $65 event really costs $105 if you want a legitimate shot at taking it down. The entry fee gets you just 4,500 in starting chips (not even 100 BB!), but anytime within the first hour, an additional $40 will get you 4,000 more. At my table, the lone player who chose not to add on would be the first player eliminated after the break.

The tournament’s turbo-like structure would prove much more difficult than the field — 20-minute levels, doubling blinds, with a small starting stack — but most of the players probably didn’t know the difference. In one hand, I watched an extremely nervous guy check-call an A-7-A-8-8 board while holding A8. I guess he was worried about his kicker more than being accused of soft-playing his opponent on the beige felt emblazoned with logos from the glory years of televised poker (Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker, WPT Boot Camp), much of which was shot here.

There was no tournament clock in sight, so we had no idea how much we were playing for. After surviving the first hour, I approached the tournament director to ask him how many people entered and what first place paid. There were 30 entrants, with 4 spots paying out and the top prize of $1,150. Of that entry fee, 3 percent went directly to the house and $5 from each entry went to the dealers.

I clung to my tiny stack as blinds escalated, but struggled to find spots to pick up chips, and eventually would exit in 13th place before heading back toward the El Cortez.

Sunday night’s 10,000 stack at Venetian

Dizzy Deep Stack Sunday

I called Mandalay Bay and inquired about their 5pm $100 bounty event. For every player you knock out, you receive $25. Sounded cool, and I’ve never played a bounty event, so I headed over. Unfortunately, with only two other players signed up, the tournament didn’t make.

With a limited list of Sunday night tournaments, I broke down and threw out my plan to avoid Venetian’s Deep Stack Extravaganza because I knew for sure there’d be action. (They run the Deep Stacks four times a year, with a few dozen tournaments each time, so it’s sort of like a “daily”.) And after my run in smaller events at Stratosphere, Orleans, and Golden Nugget, it seemed the right time to see how I could perform with the low-stakes sharks — so many of whom dressed the online poker nerd part.

Perhaps strangely, this go-round all Deep Stacks events are held on the casino floor at the Palazzo. The $175 7 pm event gets you 10,000 starting chips. Out of the entry fee, $20 goes to the house and $5 is for “staff bonus.” The 30-minute levels start with 25/50 blinds. A rebuy is allowed within the first hour-and-a-half. On this night, the tournament was relatively small — with just 87 entrants, and about a $4,000 first prize — but still more sizable on most fronts than all the other regular tournaments in Las Vegas.

The field didn’t seem as tough as I imagined, but in my first four attempts to raise preflop, I got 3-bet three times. So it definitely played differently than the Stratosphere. My previously “deep” stack shrunk to about eight big blinds, when I got it in with AK against A3 and JT. The king-high flop looked great, but the Q turn and A river delivered a crushing blow. Two hands later, with less than a big blind left, my pocket deuces got cracked to end my tournament dreams … at least for the night!

But shuffling past the tournament rope to exit, my 0-5 start didn’t feel all that bad. The competition was surprisingly soft, and I was OK with my play. But without anything to show for my roughly 12 hours of play, I grappled with shouldering the weight of the grind. Two more days left in this week-long experiment — Caesars Palace and Bellagio next — and I have confidence that, with a little help from the cards, I can make a score.

The Stratosphere’s quaint 10-table poker room sits in the back of the casino, past a row of slot machines, craps tables, another row of slot machines, down the ramp past Roxy’s Diner, near the escalators to the Top of the World restaurant — just before the Double Down Pit and Back Alley Bar. On Thursday, there was a sole 1-2NL table of action about 30 minutes before the nightly tournament.

You’d hardly know that this room has supposedly become the new Sahara when it comes to Las Vegas’ most popular small buy-in dailies — with the 7pm event drawing consistent fields of 50 players or more.

I approached the podium and purchased a seat for the event. The buy-in is $45 for 4,500 in chips, plus a $20 add-on that gives you 4,000 more chips, which you can purchase any time within the first hour. (There’s also an option for unlimited re-entry within that time frame.)  With 20-minute levels, that add-on is necessary, especially considering there are no automatic shufflers in the tournament tables.

The rake is taken out of the initial buy-in, $7 of which goes to the dealers and poker room staff and $10 of which goes to “Uncle Stratosphere,” according to shift manager Jennifer Mrkvicka.

“All of the add-on goes to the prize pool, darlin’,” she said. “We don’t touch any of that.”

I think she calls everyone darlin’.

The starting stack was green, black, grey and pink. Blinds started at 25/50. There were 69 entrants, eight of whom got paid. My table started 7-handed, a mix of tourists and locals and no apparent pros. Top prize was $1,221. Not bad if you could hang on.

The man to my left, a local in a knit cap and scarf, would not stop talking.

“I’m only a TDA card holder,” he announced.

Me: What’s TDA?

Poker Tournament Directors Association, obviously.

Mr. TDA would go on to double me up while holding 10-3, misread his hand for a straight and double another player up, then announce “re-raise” when in fact he was making the first raise.

He had a friend across the table.

“They call you Boomer?” I asked.

“That’s my poker name,” he replied.

Just before the first break, Mrkvicka announced that there would be pizza. And it was good.

Shortly after we ate, Boomer was eliminated, which pleased a few of my table mates.

My stack rose and fell for three hours, and I could play a hand or two, despite the quickly escalating blinds. But I couldn’t find spots to build a stack, and things got desperate on the first hand after the third break. I had only 4 big blinds, and I moved in with J9. The big blind called with pocket kings, and my hand did not improve. Finished in 16th place, not far from the money, but not quite close enough, either.

Next stop in my quest to find the best place to cut my tournament teeth is the Orleans, where I hear the 7pm $125 tournament is “juicy”, drawing upwards of 300 players every Friday.

I want to explore the level of competition, how much play I can get for my money and whether the payouts are worth the grind.

I’m going to play at least a week of dailies around Las Vegas. Mostly, I plan to play on the Strip. But I also want to hit at least one event downtown and check out the action at an off-strip casino or two. I’ll avoid the WSOP-circuit events in town and Venetian’s Deepstack Extravaganza Series, as to stay out of the path of sharks.

If I happen to get knocked out early, I’ll do some follow-up reporting on the pay structure.

My first event started at 7 p.m. Wednesday, a $125 buy-in at Aria. The blinds opened at 25/50, with 30 minute levels.

Folks in town told me it’s one of the better events for the money.

10,000 Starting chips in the daily tournament at Aria

Wednesday’s tourney found 80 entrants, with the top 9 making money. First place paid $2,677 after play wrapped up around 3 a.m. Mine ended about an hour in, after 7-4 crippled my A-K.

Twenty minutes before cards hit the air, I received my entry card: Table 5, Seat 9.

Doyle Brunson and Eli Elezra were playing 400-800 mix one table over, and my seat directly faced them. Could I focus on cards with The Godfather sitting inches away?

I set my Vitamin Water squeezed on the felt in front of my seat.

“Excuse me, sir. Are you here for the tournament?” a floorman asked.

Yeah.

“We’ve moved your table. It’s all the way on the other side of the room.”

OK. Nice view of the coffee bar, and a rainbow tower of green, black, blue and yellow chips that added up to 10,000.

Even this close to the rail at Aria, I won’t smell the cigarette smoke outside the room.
I figured I was at a great starting table after three players had open-limped the button, and one woman paying more attention to the noise in her headphones than the cards on the table let her stack bleed quickly by chasing gutshots.

I would get nowhere near the top, however, as I ran into a kid with what’s known as fancy play syndrome.

He began the near-knockout hand with the 10,000 starting stack. I had a few more.

The dance started with his casual 2.5x raise from the hijack seat. I tried to wrest control with a three-bet on the button, holding AcKh. His four-bet earned another raise from me. He thought momentarily and shoved. I called instantly.

He turned over 7c4c, and the flop looked good: AhAd5s.

He said, “nice hand.”

No, not yet.

Turn 2.

Dealer: “He still has outs.”

No. No.

River: 3.

No. No. No.

I was eliminated a few hands later when the same villain beat my 77 with AQ. With luck like that, I opted not to rebuy.

Tonight, I’m going to hop in the 7 pm, $45 tourney at Stratosphere, which some players are calling the new Sahara, because of the small buy-in. With a little luck, I’ll get past the second level.

Check my twitter feed @randompoker for updates from the felt.

A middle-aged local approached the Treasure Island poker room supervisor early Sunday evening, inquiring about how many hours he had played.

“I want to make my $50,” he said.

At the start of the year, the room announced its latest promotion on signs around the casino, flyers outside the room’s entrance, and business cards on the supervisor’s counter — “GET PAID TO PLAY POKER!”

The 8-table room at TI pays back players with money collected in the rake. For every 10 hours of play (up to 60 hours), a grinder can earn as much as $599 in extra cash each week. This good-for-players promotional trend is catching on around Vegas. Whether it’s called “rakeback” or advertised as an hourly rate, it pays close to a minimum-wage job.

A similar promotion started last month at the Tropicana offering players as much as $10 per hour for play between 11a and 7p. The Trop, which re-opened their new room on that infamous poker date of April 15, 2011, and recently re-coined it the “Jamie Gold Room”, has their $80-a-day rakeback as one of several promotions going in an effort to keep players in the seats at all hours.

Poker room operators say they want to keep the rakeback promotion going as long as they can. Many players love the idea of topping off their stack at the end of a long grind. But that can’t continue if the bulk of players simply auto-fold for 8 hours, hoping to collect their $80 payment each day. And if you swing by the Tropicana room regularly, you might see a few of the same faces doing just that.

Poker room supervisor Andy Cobb told me the other day that management altered their raffle ticket promotion to boost pots. He said the room had been losing money when too many people played uber-tight and the pots didn’t get big enough for the house to take a full $6 rake (half of which goes back to players).

Live Rakeback: the Fine Print

NOTE: All hourly benefits mentioned here are for cash games only, and are current as of press time.

Treasure Island: Earn $50 for 10 hours, $125 for 20 hours, $200 for 30 hours, $300 for 40 hours, $400 for 50 hours and $599 for 60 hours. A player’s hours are tracked between 12 a.m. Sunday and 11:59 p.m. Saturday each week. They can pick up their cash at 10 a.m. on Sundays, and have 30 days from the time it was earned to collect.

Tropicana: Payments received at cash out. You must play betwen 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. to earn rakeback, and you must play at least 3 hours to earn any extra cash. For the first 3 hours, you’ll get $15. At 4 hours, you earn $28, at 5 hours, you earn $45. Play 6 hours and collect $10 per hour.

Palms: Payments made Mondays at 11 a.m., with 24 hours allowed to collect. Those who play at least 13 hours but don’t make the top 10 are entered into a drawing, in which 5 people win $100 each.

Wynn: Beware of your time at the table and grab your cash whenever you hit 25 hours. You must collect your money by March 15.

As a former full-time player himself, Cobb says he relates with the grinders, and wants to keep the players happy.

“You need that extra equity of something when you’re playing 1/2 or 1/3,” Cobb said of the rakeback promotion. “If you’re trying to build a bankroll, it’s a big deal.”

Farther north on The Strip, Wynn is offering it’s Winter Rakeback Promotion through January 31. For every 25 hours of play, you can earn $50.

With 26 tables, Wynn’s poker room is the largest we know of that offers rakeback. There’s a $4 max rake, the lowest among the rooms offering such promotions, and they also offer tournament entries and cash prizes for those who play the most hours.

How they rake ‘em

TI: House takes $1 at $10, $2 at $20, $3 at $30, and $4 at $100. With the money returned to players, $1 is taken at $10 and $2 is taken at $30.

Trop: For every pot, the house gets $1 at $10, $2 at $30, and $3 at $50. Money paid to players is collected at $1 per flop, $2 at $20 and $3 at $40.

Palms: House takes 10 percent per pot up to $4, plus a $2 jackpot rake.

Wynn: $4 max rake, with $1 taken for every $10 up to $40 in 1/3 games. In 2/5 games, the house collects $1 at $10, $2 at $20, $3 at $50 and $4 at $80.

On Flamingo Road, the 6-table Palms poker room launched a promotion this month where players can earn $8 per hour and get paid weekly. But there’s a catch: the max one player can earn each week is $300 (lowered from the original cap of $599). And the room only pays out $3,000 weekly in rakeback. During the first week, they paid the 10 players who played the most hours.

(Full disclosure: The Palms poker room hosts a weekly Pokerati half hold’em and half Omaha hi game. Come work on your PLO and take a stab at me or my editor — preferably my editor.)

Every serious player wants to maximize his hours, and a little cushion certainly helps. I plan to hit them all, and see if I can’t bring in some $1,400 extra dollars a month while working on my ideal strategy for game-selection.

As a journalist who recently emigrated from the other side of the Mississippi River to divide his time writing and grinding in Las Vegas, the poker capital of the world, I hear a lot of buzz around town. Much of it is just noise, sometimes it’s early rumblings of actual news, and occasionally it’s just really good FYI for Vegas live-poker-room regs.

We hope to have a little bit of everything here for you. Some of the topics I’m looking to explore:

* Just about every casino has a daily tournament — some just a short-handed sit-n-go while others play like a mini-multitable bracelet event. Where can you get the most play for your buy-in? And what’s really going on with the juice?

* Different rooms have different rules. Some, like Tropicana’s Jamie Gold Room, are throwing many of the standards out the window. Which rooms have the strictest rules? Aria, for instance, has a rule against talking to gain information in a heads-up pot. Why?

* More and more casinos are offering rakeback-type promotions. The “get paid to play” trend sweeping through town varies from place to place. What rooms have the best deals? Is it possible to be a live rakeback grinder? What kind of players do these promos attract? What are the upcoming promotions to look out for?

* How should you go about finding the best action, or any action? Is it Venetian’s updated online list of cash games or Bellagio’s Twitter feed? What should you do to get a seat at the juiciest table in the house? Where should you be playing on a Friday night? Can you find a good game on a Monday?

Whether you play every day or visit Vegas once a year, I’m here to keep you informed about what’s happening in the games around town. Whether you’re a tournament grinder, cash game specialist, or maybe even just a live-poker bonus whore, we’ll scope out the action. We’re at the table right beside floor managers, dealers, locals and tourists, and we can’t help chatting it up.

Las Vegas is a 24-7 poker hot spot like no other — what happens here sets standards around the world —  and we want to help you maximize your time on the felt.

Bookmark Dave’s column here; and you can Twit-follow his ramble along the Vegas Strip @RandomPoker.