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.

Those who’ve read Lost Vegas may recognize the “Redneck Riviera” off to the left … westbound on Trop a few lights away from the Strip. Pauly called this fortress of blight and putridity home for two months during the 2005 WSOP. It’s also near where I began tailing this fine imported automobile with a driver clearly driven by poker:

click to zoom in.

I wanted to follow close enough to grab a shot of the plate with the school bus rolling past the Adult Superstore — caption contest maybe? — but traffic sped up and I missed the shot … and before the Clark County school kids would pass the next porn outlet, Pocket 8s+Broadway would turn into the Orleans … leaving many to wonder about the role of education poker in bridging the rich-poor gap as seen in Las Vegas neighborhoods surrounding the Rio.

click to enlarge

The Gold Coast poker room is apparently no longer … The flat-screens were dark, and tables had been replaced by video-poker and slot machines. And according to the sign they intend to turn the previously post-boom-downsized poker room into a slots and video poker tournament area. Not that anyone misses one of the least raucous, nittiest $2/$4 limit games in town … and I don’t think you can say much about this being a trend of poker continuing to recede or anything like that, but it may say something about smaller rooms being unable to justify their existence when small-stakes players gravitate to the bigger rooms in town.

As the sign says, all Gold Coast player(s) are being shipped over to The Orleans, which seems to be re-emerging as the big-little off-Strip room that locals like for the sake of convenient parking if nothing else. (Their Friday-night tourney continues to set field-size records, consistently drawing 100+.)

Las Vegas, NV: The Orleans Hotel & Casino will host the 2009 Orleans Poker Open from May 9th – 19th.  The 2009 Orleans Open is highlighted by two Championship Events, the $540 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship on Saturday, May 16th and the $540 No Limit Hold’em Championship on Sunday, May 17th.

The starting chip amounts shown below include the 2,500 extra chips for the $10 Staff Bonus.  All 12:00 noon events have 45 minute blind levels, 7:00PM events have 20 minute blind levels. Satellites begin on Saturday, Mat 9th at 5:00pm. 

Players can book special hotel room rates by calling 702-365-7111 and mention Offer Code: POK2009.  The Orleans regular tournament schedule is suspended during the Orleans Open and will resume on Monday, May 18 at 12:00PM.   For more information contact the Orleans Poker Room at 702-365-7150.

Orleans Open Schedule of Events:

Saturday, May 9
12:00 Noon – $220 No Limit Hold’em, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Sunday, May 10
12:00 Noon – $220 Omaha Hi-Lo, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Monday, May 11
12:00 Noon – $220 No Limit Hold’em, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Tuesday, May 12
12:00 Noon – $220 Omaha Hi-Lo, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Wednesday, May 13
12:00 Noon – $330 No Limit Hold’em, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Thursday, May 14
12:00 Noon – $330 Omaha Hi-Lo, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Friday, May 15
12:00 Noon – $330 No Limit Hold’em, 10,000 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Saturday, May 16
12:00 Noon – $540 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship, 12,500 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Sunday, May 17
12:00 Noon – $540 No Limit Hold’em Championship, 12,500 starting chips
7:00 PM -$110 No Limit Hold’em, 7,500 starting chips

Orleans Hotel & Casino
4500 W. Tropicana Ave.,
Las Vegas, Nevada 89103
888-365-7111

Gold Medal
The Venetian

Great regular tourneys, Deep Stack Extravaganzas, plenty of all-but-the-highest-stakes action, bottled Fiji water, and maybe the escalator that dumps off drunkenly clad party girls coming out of Tao right in front of The V’s poker room make it far and away the favorite of this website’s readers/players/dealers.

official site / TPA

The separate tournament room really is cool, if not the best in town, and the comfortable multi-tiered cash game area never seems short of action appealing to the masses of big little-stakes players. Great freerolls for regular cash players, too.

official site / TPA

Still home to the biggest games in Vegas (in terms of buy-ins), thereby drawing the most pros and the players who want to challenge/sit near them. Everything Bellagio is always luxe, of course, and their regular $500 and $1k tourneys makes the chance to play for baller money an in-town constant.

official site / TPA

Honorable Mention
Binion’s

It’s the only poker room where I’ve personally witnessed a fellow player spitting on the floor, and maybe that’s part of its charm. Not the best blind structures, but the bang-for-your-buck buy-ins, generally large field sizes, and frequency of starting times (no matter when you show up, there’s bound to be a tourney starting soon) make their events delightfully challenging. Regular HORSE and Omaha tournaments, too.

official site / TPA

Second Tier
still in the Top 25 percent with reliably good action and comforts
The Wynn, The Orleans, Red Rock, MGM, The Mirage, Hard Rock, The Rio

Also-Rans
at least a few readers really dig these places for some reason or another
Mandalay Bay, Golden Nugget, Treasure Island, Planet Hollywood, Hooters

She had just come from the Orleans … which seems to be smartly capitalizing on the influx of poker players in town.

OK, that may apply to everywhere in V-town this month. But the Orleans, for all its relative Vegas nothingness, knows its poker. And its offering games that cater to the people who want to play big tourneys for hundreds of dollars, as opposed to thousands. Felicia and Glenn had just played an Omaha event with 600 players, many of whom were “second tier” pros. (Tom McEvoy, for example.)

To make the action even more appealing, the Orleans has supposedly cut the juice on tournament buy-ins in half. And they are running hour-long (or maybe 50 minutes?) blind levels. And they are giving you more starting chips than usual.