After spending the majority of the past 3 weeks in Detroit, Columbus, and Carlsbad attending weddings, I’m back in my one-bedroom apartment at the intersection of Flamingo and Maryland in Las Vegas. Maybe it’s just the annoyingly vast amounts of construction and “improvements” they’re doing on my building, but there seems to be higher than standard levels of particles and dust in the Vegas air. People are excited, poker players are selling pieces, and Phil Hellmuth moved into the Aria penthouse for 2 months. That electric feeling can mean only one thing… the World Series of Poker is almost here.

I’ve never sold on the open marketplace, so bear with me as I figure this process out. I’m not a high volume tournament player, but I agree with Phil Galfond when he says that strong cash game players can find success in tournaments if they take them seriously.

Poker rooms across town (well, those in Caesars-owned properties anyway) are ramping up their promotion efforts for the series, offering a plethora of ways to win a seat into various events. On top of that, you can step into one of many rooms to pick up a flier for their own mini-series which will run concurrently; events with smaller buy ins but still impressively sized fields and prizes can be found up and down the strip as well as downtown. WSOP time in Las Vegas is awesome. If you like poker, you simply need to see the sheer size of the production that takes place inside the Rio Convention Center. Rows and rows, hundreds of tables (in use, no less…). Strip poker rooms overflowing with players. So many hopefuls, so many fans of the game, all the superstars and several soon-to-be poker-famous players descending on one spot. And let’s not forget… so many fish!

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With the World Series around the corner and the Pokerati NLH/PLO on a Pre-SOP hiatus, I almost forgot to be thinking about my actual play. So what better way to begin insulating my bankroll than by listening to the latest episode of Cash Plays — featuring the biggest sucker outer in Epic Poker history, the one guy I consistently beat in the Pokerati game, and that other guy who I’m pretty sure is a pro!

audio download

Seriously, I know simply by thinking about poker skills and on-table situations (as opposed to poker news, poker laws, etc.) I’ll improve my game and presumably my results. For more serious felt work, they’ve increased the trial membership over at Stack’Em Coaching from three days to seven.

Mondays and Tuesdays are arguably the worst days of the week for poker, which is why I often take those days off.

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.

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I’m sure Jamie Gold and Las Vegas will eventually become friends. I for one have a whole new respect for the WSOP-champ in Residence @TropLVPoker after hearing his interview on Donkdown; and philosophically, he’s trying to bring some of the same things to the Tropicana that the Pokerati Game tries to bring to the Palms. But still …

source: @RobertGoldfarb

Really … $1k an hour? I mean that’s not quite Carrot Top money, and supposedly Gold’s already had five students pony up … but jeesh … you’d think at that rate they could at least afford a nicer sign!

Additional Resources

• [video] Eliot Spitzer hooker money
• [video] Wall Street Journal on $1,000/hr attorneys
• Richest comedians/Carrot Top net worth

This is Pokerati’s new Las Vegas poker room column, and I’m the hired hack on the beat.

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.

Hey, at least the Lions are winning.

We had high hopes coming into the 2011 football season but to see them run out to a beautiful 4-0 start is outstanding. And the Tigers are up too! As I write this they currently hold a 2-1 series advantage over the Yankees after stealing home field advantage in NYC. One more win and they advance to the next playoff round. Life is good these days for my hometown teams.

Little did I know that the hole would only grow bigger and deeper as the day went on, culminating with me somehow losing with KQ vs 55 after c-betting a K-6-4 flop. I booked a 4-figure loss and called it a day.

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Matt Savage

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OP-ED

My dedication to poker tournaments and the game itself is two decades old. Starting with my first foray into the role of tournament director in 1997 and through my founding of the Tournament Directors Association (TDA) with Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, and Dave Lamb in 2001, I have worked tirelessly to standardize tournament rules and to make poker a better game for everyone involved.

This is the reason that we host the website www.PokerTDA.com, open the TDA to all interested parties, and make myself available on Twitter and other social media outlets. My passion for poker only grows when I share it with others.

The rule is not new, and does not ban table talk by any means … A recreational player may not understand, nor even care to know all the rules, but professionals who make a living at the game should.

During the 2011 World Series of Poker “nearly live” telecast from the Rio, I became aware of comments from Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) through my own Twitter feed (@SavagePoker). He said that the TDA created a “new” rule that banned table talk. This certainly is not the case and in hindsight, it was learned that he had received an incorrect ruling at the table that had nothing to do with TDA rules. Since social media has limited words with which to sufficiently explain the rule and its longtime existence, this clarification seems necessary.

The TDA board, in conjunction with tournament directors and card room managers, has donated thousands of hours to standardize rules in the best interest of the game.  When well-known poker players like Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth choose to say on national television that “the TDA has it wrong” and “does not care about what the players want,” it becomes personal.

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Your body is an intricate and delicate system designed to sense threat, and biologically programmed to avoid it. Your nervous system is a vast information highway that runs every cellular process in the body. From breathing and your heartbeat to movement and thought, your nervous system affects every process of your body.

So what’s happening in your body during a hand?

Because of the unknown outcomes, the variability of chance, and the sheer financial risk, poker is stressful by design. Let me be clear about what I mean. Let’s define stress as a physical, emotional or chemical factor that causes bodily or mental tension and let’s avoid judgment of whether stress is good or bad. Stress simply exists and we live in relation to it.

So during a hand, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or experience at the table, a body responds to stress exactly the same. Stress is a threat and regardless of the size, shape, cause or intensity the body reacts with a Fight or Flight response.

Originally intended to protect you, the fight or flight response causes a release of hormones that:

• Increase your heart rate
• Increase your blood glucose (blood sugar)
• Put you in a “ready” state

Ever have the feeling that you need caffeine, sugar and other stimulants to keep you on your toes? You’re simply prolonging the “high” your body has already initiated.

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I sparred a bit on Twitter with @TurboPokerOnlin about his belief that record fields in WSOP 1k’s would be a “major” story … and eventually conceded that it might-would probably come in at #9. (NOTE to self: Do a “WSOP Top Ten Stories” post.)

But what I didn’t expect as a top story that now is .. the non-bracelet daily “deepstacks” at the Rio — specifically the $235 2pm event. Say what you will about the value in playing in a tournament with 20 percent rake … this event has more people talking about it, multiple times a week, every week, consistently, probably moreso than any other at the WSOP. It started off with a few hundred players each day (nice), and soon began drawing more than 600 (kinda wow) … and then 800 (for sure wow) and then just a few days ago (OMG!) 1,100 — a record field size for such a non-bracelet event at the WSOP. The suits, we can suspect, are practically speechlessly giddy.

There’s an old axiom in poker room operations that “action breeds action.” To some extent, the whole World Series is testament to the concept … and these Venetian Deep Stacks Knockoffs show it in microcosm. No wonder Caesars eventually began catering to “smaller” customers wanting a low-cost taste of the WSOP while playing for more than just satellite tokens.

When all is said and done, more than a football stadium worth of people will have dropped a couple hundred bucks into mini-WSOP events that are becoming less and less mini … whether that be in spite of, or because of, all the similar such tourneys — Venetian Deep Stacks, Caesars Palace MegaStacks, the Golden Nugget Grand Series, Binion’s Somethingorother Classic, the WynnSOP Whatever … I think I’m even missing a few others — that came before what’s currently going on at the Rio.

Action breeds action. At the WSOP and all over Vegas … Click below for more detailed numbers about how the Rio’s 2p $235, 6p $185, and 10p $135 have grown by the day:

(Special thanks to Heath @WSOPIntern for the data help. Can you do 3-D graphs?)

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One of my personal faves, @VanessaRousso, will be hosting a 1-day crash course for the WSOP main event, with strategy discussion specifically geared for this one unique and special tournament. She says she’ll show you how to apply advanced game theory and winning secrets to huge-field deepstack events … as well as instruction on how recent changes to tournament structure affect strategy and play.

It takes place at Aria Casino on July 7, during Day 1A of the WSOP main event. Read below for more information if you want to go. Of all the boot camps out there, I think this one will probably be the best because Vanessa’s a girl, and everyone knows girls are smarter than boys. Tee-hee.

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It’s PLO week on Poker after Dark, and thus the first new televised poker I’ve been excited to watch (on first run) in forever. Though I’m sure someone had to play a 4-card hand on ESPN in 2004, I can’t remember any PLO on TV since learning the definition of a “wrap” … and certainly not since the Pokerati game began introducing low-stakes players in Vegas to PLO (with run-it-twice!) a year-an-a-half ago.

(L to R) Adams, Antonius, Ivey, Dwan, Hastings, Galfond

Hard to believe televising a short-handed cash game session of the second most popular poker game in the world — the one that has produced the biggest online pots in history — would prove “revolutionary” … but really, it is kinda historic; and that says something about the limits of creative innovation in the online poker infomercial biz.

But kudos to PAD for at least taking a peak outside the ’06-’09 box to embrace variance. Though I wouldn’t contend pot-limit Omaha and four-color decks are what will reinvigorate poker on TV … for a semi-regular PLO player who doesn’t necessarily dream of playing the game for $100k buy-ins but just wants to beat my friends once a week at 1/2, hearing about a different sector of hand possibilities almost feels fresh … and it’s always good-fun to see extra cards on the table:

Stumbled across this vid on Youtube — the time-lapse construction of the welcome desk @AviatorCasino in Delano, Cali. I can 100 percent say that Aviator is my favorite poker room in California’s Central Valley … (where Bakersfield is the big town some 30 miles away, but is also just a $15 flight from Vegas on Allegiant! $40 after taxes, but still … airplanes!)

That’s the whole theme of the Aviator Casino … airplanes, airports, and pai gow. That’s why at least some non-poker people see this creation of an info station at a California poker room as less about tourney registration but not too much less because it is still “functional art”:

More about this awesome little poker room — the coolest I’ve ever seen in the area — at TheAviatorCasino.com.

Online baller and live-action unballer Shaun Deeb apparently has heard about my prowess at Zynga Texas Hold’em… where I’ve been killing the 5/10 game on their Las Vegas server. Yep, after giving up on Tilt and Stars back in ’08, I’m back on the online poker horse; and now Deeb apparently thinks he can turn me into a real player. Or maybe a playa?

Clearly I’ve got skillz … But I’m still headed to Deeb’s boot camp this weekend … because as anyone who’s played 1/2 with me recently in 2008-11 can attest, my live-action game might-could benefit from a little tweaking.

Gotta do something so I can hang at the real tables (without needing multiple rebuys) right? Check out the details at LivePokerTraining.com. (Scroll down to get to the goods.)

As the first ever live event for the world’s biggest online poker site (Stars wanna challenge the assertion?) gets underway … we are seeing the super-hyper-turbo nature of free poker play translated to a two-flight weekend at Zynga PokerCon.

There were 45 players left (from the first flight of 250) with blinds at 1,000/2,000. They started with 2,000 chips each, so that translates to … bear with me, doing math here … 18 percent of the field left, 5.5 big blinds for the average stack.

UPDATE (12 minutes later): Blinds just went up. Average stack is now 2.75 BB.
UPDATE (3 minutes later): We are in the money. 27 players remain.
UPDATE (1 minute later): Blinds are up to 3,000/6,000. 3.2 BB for the average.

Though I can hear Matt Savage and Allen Kessler cringing on the inside from wherever they are, the one guarantee with such a faster-than-charity structure is lots of exciting all-in hands. So in some ways reminds me of a WPT broadcast from a few years ago.

CORRECTION: See what happens when you assume? Turns out Matt Savage created this blind structure!

Click the image above to enlarge the blind and payout structures … they play each flight down to 3 … and then sit four others who qualified for ITM seats on Zynga Poker.