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)

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.

Huff, Dan, Jess, BJ, and even Stapleton (with the return of the Tight Laydown?):

The Poker Beat: October 24, 2010

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• Poker Hall of Fame inductees Harrington and Seidel, age-minimum debates, and comparisons to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
• Anonymous tables at Ladbrokes
• Crespo’s Illinois online poker lawsuit — significant or frivolous?
• More on WSOP-C’s new power and purpose?
• WPT-Festa al Lago FT, Randall Flowers, and the Jess & BJ Show
• Phil Ivey is gay? Craps + multi-phallus fellatio promises at the Wynn

• The biggest money of the week was on the line at the Festa al Lago, the latest stop of Season 9 of the World Poker Tour. There were some heavy-hitting young guns that reached this final table, including Andy Frankenberger, who was coming off of a victory at the Legends of Poker. Randall Flowers managed to add “youngest two-time WPT winner” to an already impressive resume at the tender age of 22. Flowers, who banked $831,500 for his win, was also the youngest to win a WPT title, which he did in Barcelona before he even turned 21. [World Poker Tour]

• The $1,500 World Series of Poker Circuit at Horseshoe Hammond Main Event wrapped up early Monday morning, with the appropriately named Kurt Jewell snagging the circuit ring and $242,909. Amongst the notables at this final table were William Reynolds, who took third, and Bryan Devonshire taking seventh. The $10,000 Regional Championship, which will air on Versus, will get underway Monday. [WSOP]

• There are many different options for the members of the November Nine as they prepare for the WSOP final table. They could follow the major poker tours and play other big buy-in events, take a trip to clear their minds, or hire a coach to fine-tune their skills. Or, as in the case of Filippo Candio, they could get in amongst the grinders and play a $230 prelim event, in this case Event #1 at the Caesars Classic. Candio brought his A-Game in this one, reaching the final table in the 232 player field before falling just short in 3rd place, banking a cool$4,726. (The attached story is in Italian, so if you don’t have a knowledge of the language it might be time to crack out the Google translator, or maybe go old school and try Babelfish). [Tuttosport]

• Maybe Candio started a trend, as he wasn’t the only November Niner doing well in prelims. With the World Poker Finals Main Event (the next stop on the WPT) fast approaching, John Dolan made a deep run in a $1,500 event, eventually making a three-way deal and taking second place for $45,000. In a twist that might be more appropriate for Soccerati, ESPN Soccer commentator Adrian Healey took third place for $40,000. [Foxwoods Live]

• In the online world, Sorel Mizzi started things off early with a win in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up for $149,737.10. The biggest money of the day online was to be had in the $1.5 million guarantee, with “Bodog Ari” Engel making the final table and finishing seventh for $32,856; “ramondemon” won $246,424 for taking that one down. On the FullTilt side of things, “EatMyBluff8″ was the big winner in their $750,000 guarantee, winning $135,939.

• And just in time for Halloween, we have a tale from beyond the grave. The late, great Dean Martin made the final table in a recent Borgata $1,000 event. Although I always thought Atlantic City was more a Sinatra town. Oh well. [Cardplayer]

This Week:

Ty Stewart — new WSOP stuff, Poker Hall of Fame, more WSOPE bracelet debate.
Matt Savage — WPT-Bellagio/Festa al Lago.
Matt Affleck — more WPT-Bellagio/Festa, Washington State, 15th place at WSOP.
Trishelle Canatella — beauty quiz + poker.

Watch the show, and readmore here.

Episode 22
SpartanFox is back in the host seat with Tyresias to talk about the first three days of WPT-Festa al Lago, Full Tilt’s mobile Rush Poker app, Deliverance Poker unsuing Full Tilt, and Scott Montgomery’s getting robbed at Bellagio … on this week’s edition of the Rabbit Hunt.

But this new venture from a couple of Poker Beat cohorts on the tournament coverage frontlines could actually do it for me, as I can’t think of a more morning-friendly way to find out all I need to know about WPT-Bellagio/Festa as it nears the money bubble. It’s like Regis & Kelly for poker junkies in a G4 generation.

Topics of the day include Allen Kessler, Phil Ivey, Annette Obrestad, and Matt Affleck … but really, it’s way more fun that that.

With all due respect to Montgomery’s 5th place WSOP main-event finish and his donkament bracelet this summer, he’s clearly no Greg Raymer. Montgomery declined his assailant’s implied invitation to brawl for money, and instead simply handed him $2,000 in cash (mo chips?) … yeow, what does it say about the economy when Bellagio doesn’t have armed shoe-shine guys on duty?

From the Cake Poker blog:

Montgomery was at Bellagio to play in a Festa al Lago preliminary event and went to the bathroom on a break from the tournament. As he described it on his Twitter account, “Got mugged today at Bellagio. Black guy pulled a knife on me in the restroom. I gave him the $2k in my wallet and he left.”

“I called security, but they took like 15 mins so they didn’t catch him. They are useless twits. Didn’t even ask me to look at camera footage,” Montgomery continued. “Security pretty much just said oh well, life sucks, have a nice day. I’m pretty annoyed.”

Bellagio Poker ≈ Binion’s Self Park?

Though two instances (that we heard about) over the span of nearly 6 years hardly constitute a trend, you just don’t expect certain kinds of violence in luxe resorts with multiple guards outside the parking garage looking for casually waving through possible Al Qaeda terrorists. I mean what is center-Strip, not dark-alley downtown Vegas or daytime Berlin!

But it was indeed at Bellagio — during the 5-diamond — where armed robbers discovered not all bracelet-winning poker players were easy marks. In that situation, December 2004, Greg Raymer, poker’s newest big world champ, fought off two attackers with guns. According to reports, they got away, too (as security let them pass) … however, were caught some five months later in California, and brought back to Las Vegas for trial. (I believe sentenced to something like 3 years, not sure though …)

Pokerati PSA: Remember, next time you’re being attacked in the Bellagio or anywhere in Vegas really, you can tweet for help @LVMPD, hashtag #911.

Day 2a eliminations

Day 2a of the Main Event saw the return of over 2,400 players filling the Amazon and Pavilion rooms at the Rio in Las Vegas, with the field playing four full levels. As can be expected during the Main Event, the eliminations happened at an accelerated pace. Among the notables who won’t return to the Rio with chips on Monday: Mike Sexton, John Hennigan, Tiffany Michelle, Antonio Esfandiari, Eli Elezra, Liz Lieu, Dennis Phillips, Greg Mueller, Sara Underwood, Dutch Boyd, Daniel Alaei, Ted Forrest, Carlos Mortensen and “Miami John” Cernuto, who didn’t return Friday afternoon due to illness and was blinded off.

Day 2a survivors

With play concluding halfway through level nine, a field of 1,200 will enjoy their weekend before returning to join the day 2b survivors as the field will be in the same tournament area for the first time on day 3 at 12pm Monday. The day 2a leader is Boulos Estafanous of Darien, Florida with 340,100 in chips. Other notables with a healthy chip stack include Johnny Chan (281,600), Tony Korfman (275,100), Patrik Antonius (258,600), Sammy Farha (226,500), Annie Duke (176,600), Padraig Parkinson (153,100), Joe Cada (122,400), Chris Moneymaker (104,000), Kathy Liebert (87,000), Scotty Nguyen (67,800), and Matt Savage (54,400). The full list of chip counts can be found at wsop.com, a partial table draw will also be linked here and on my Twitter account.

Saturday at 12pm, over 2,700 players make their way to the Rio for day 2b of the Main Event with half the field expected to be out the door by the time play concludes. Follow the action over at WSOP.com.

WPT Press Conference Saturday

Matt Savage takes advantage of his days off to hold a press conference at 11am at the Bellagio regarding the upcoming season of the WPT. The press conference will also be streamed over the Internet at Ustream.TV here. The first US event of WPT Season IX is the Bellagio Cup VI Main Event, starting Sunday.

But since that story went to press, Chauhan has put up even more impressive results — most recently standing by the side of newly crowned WPT World Champion David Williams. In fact, three of the Top 16 finishers were Chauhan clients, two of whom made it to the final table. (Hellmuth went out on the TV bubble.) Away from poker, he gets credit (at least a small percentage, based on coaching deals we’ve learned about) for helping rising MMA star Muhammed “King Mo” Lawal take the Strikeforce light heavyweight title from Gegard Mousasi, who was a 3-to-1 favorite in the match.

That all kinda blows my theory that the key to Williams’ re-found success had everything to do with his new hair. Check out the video snippet below of a bushy-fro’d Williams stepping outside the Fontana room for some mantra and affirmation exercises before taking his seat at the final table:

Wow, that’s all there is to it? Didn’t realize winning at anything, let alone life, was so easy. Seems like if you could turn that into an iPhone app Sammy might really be able to help people. Chauhan, however, is not without his haters (just ask Google). But poker players know you can only get super-lucky so many times.

ALT HED: Mind over Variance

Check out his site at MindsetVT.com.

[ED NOTE: Video removed because of autoplay]

Here’s how the final six players will be situated when play resumes around 4:30pm PT:

Seat 1. John O’Shea – 1,200,000
Seat 2. Billy Baxter – 2,440,000
Seat 3. Eric Baldwin – 4,490,000
Seat 4. David Williams – 4,700,000
Seat 5. David Benyamine – 4,705,000
Seat 6. Shawn Buchanan – 1,965,000

Follow the live updates with BJ Nemeth, Jess Welman and the rest of the WPT Live Updates crew here.

Meanwhile at the WPT World Championship, Heather Sue Mercer started Day 4 second in chips (1,364,000) with 35 players remaining. The only woman to win a non-ladies WPT event was Van Nguyen’s win at the sorta-open 2008 WPT Invitational. Among other notables remaining when play resumes at noon PT: Shawn Buchanan (1,841,000), Billy Baxter (887,500), Faraz Jaka (856,000), Phil Hellmuth (806,500), David Benyamine (731,000) Carlos Mortensen (586,000) and JJ Liu (495,000). Follow the live updates over at the the World Poker Tour site.

UPDATE: Mercer out in 20th

Meanwhile, the PokerStars.it EPT San Remo event drew a field of 1,240 entrants paying €5,000, just 24 remain when play resumes Tuesday for day 5. The current chip leader is Allan Bække (3,483,000), winner of the most recent EPT event in Austria, looking to be the first to win a second EPT main event. The other recognizable name to the casual poker enthusiast is Liv Boeree (1,337,000) First prize is a cool €1,250,000, and you can watch live streaming coverage of the final two days (volcano permitting) will be available at www.pokerstars.tv starting at 6am ET or you can follow the live updates over at PokerNews.

Also … in an April 1st treat (ha ha listeners), BJ steps outside his usual fact-stat box to sub for Joe Stapleton and deliver the Tight Laydown. What-the … manager mixing it up in preparation for the World Cup. Tune in next week as Gary pretends to be Huff by wearing a tie on the air and I reveal myself to be Isildur1 and/or The Insider outs himself as @AsianSpa!

The Poker Beat
4/1/10

So it goes for the upcoming Bellagio 5-Diamond event in April — which features a ridiculous 17 rebuy tournaments as its preliminary events. Seriously, someone has lost it here, right? We’ll see if we can’t get a comment from Tourney Director Jack McClelland on what’s the thought process behind this. Because right now, the best we can deduce arbitrarily surmise is that maybe it would be contractually better for him to get fired as opposed to resigning?

Some players were so incensed by this rebuy-crazy sked, supposedly, that they began circulating a petition to change the schedule back to its original set-up — a scheduling revolt supposedly led by Scott Clements. And in it, they proposed an alternative that seemed to make more sense. However, according to 2+2, the Bellagio has said thanks-but-no-thanks to the suggestion — leaving some players already talking about skipping this series, and a few media types excited about the pending collapse.

It’s starting to occur to us that a lot of poker players out there might have a keen interest to bet some international football gamesin the coming months. Bear with us, and we’ll see if we don’t know anyone who can help that cause.

ALT HED: Phil Ivey, the Ronaldinho of Poker?

Meanwhile, Nick Geber, formerly the multimedia guru at Bluff and a Sirius Radio soccer analyst, is back in public action … just in time for the World Cup — over at The Ref’s a Wanker.

on PokerRoad

The Poker Beat
Huff, Nemeth, Michalski
1/07/10

BTW, a little breaking-ish news on this episode — and perhaps an indication of the perceived threat of the NAPT-Venetian, which just so happens to coincide with the LAPC, the usual early-year destination for the LA-LV poker masses … anyone who buys into the $10k WPT-LAPC main event at the Commerce before February 19 now will receive a seat in the televised $200k WPT Invitational. Neato!

Fans of Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio will be happy to hear there is an equivalent in the Aria poker room and it has already been put to use. Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, David Benyamine, Tom “durrrr” Dwan, and Patrik Antonius were all spotted playing in the secluded VIP lounge on Thursday evening, the day after the casino opened. While the room is semi-private, ogling railbirds can get a peek at their favorite high-stakes players through the glass front door. According to one of the employees at Aria, Phil Ivey is currently in talks to loan his name to the room in the same fashion that Bobby Baldwin did at the Bellagio, so news of big games being played in “Phil’s Room” could be on the horizon.

Two questions come to mind:

1. Is there enough room for two “Big Games” in this town?
2. Big-name players supporting poker rooms or poker rooms supporting big-name players?
3. What’s MGM/Mirage’s vision for poker across its competing properties?
4. When are they gonna put this highest-stakes shit on 24-hour webcam?

OK, that’s four. But hey, CityCenter is big … and so far, just a few days old, it raises more questions about Las Vegas’ future than it answers.