Also … the Caesars Megabeat Jackpot hits at Planet Hollywood for $672k, paying off not just quad Queens < Queen-high straight flush, but also spreading a cool $2k around to 219 players in eight different poker rooms across Nevada. (Woot! It’s a casino party!) … But (sigh) what’s the point, really, when even Jerry Yang’s WSOP bracelet can end up on the auction block in an effort to pay off the IRS? With Dave boldly (and wrongly) folding pocket kings, good thing at least one of us finally took down a tournament FTW. Sure, it was just a little $45 tourney at the Stratosphere, but hey, don’t tell that to the 50 semi-grizzled players I bettered!
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.
One of the new things with this latest World Series of Poker (as significant as ESPN’s live coverage, imho) was the introduction of sports-book bets on WSOP outcomes. Think about how much effort went in to making that possible — first, changing the law such that Nevada sports books could expand their offerings to include non-athletic contests … then running specific bets through Nevada Gaming regulators … all so non-Caesars casinos could spread action on the WSOP? That’s not exactly the kinda thing done on a whim … especially when the introduction of “live” TV coverage adds a whole new element of necessary oversight for GCB enforcement.
The Wynn seems to be wanting to take the lead on spreading such non-athletic “exotics”, with Race and Sports Book Director Johnny Avello establishing himself as the go-to guru for entertainment-based wagers — having set for-entertainment-only odds (with remarkable accuracy) for the Oscars, beauty pageants, Dancing with the Stars … even fashion at the British Royal Wedding, and the breed of dog to win the Westminster Dog Show.
Read below for more official word on Wynn Las Vegas/Encore’s WSOP offerings:
Maybe this is old news and the press release is buried somewhere in the slush pile … but it seems the WSOP has found a way to allow even more gambling, officially, on World Series tournaments. Last week the Nevada Gaming Control Board approved five separate, specific prop bets related to the WSOP. That means now any sports book in Nevada can set their own lines and take action on:
Players from one of two groups of 13 to last longest
Will at least one player from a box of 3 make the money
Will a woman finish in the top 40
Will at least one of a group of 7 men last longer than all women
Age of the winner
Kinda a strange bunch of props imho … but hey, they do seem to support Rule #2 of Poker Life, which is, of course, “Never Stop Gambling.”
Should be interesting to see what kinda action Caesars wants to wrap around these newly approved fully legal prop bets … and what additional props show up in future lines.
All this became possible, btw, in January of this year, when Nevada Gaming approved and adopted amendments to Regulation 22, allowing the state’s casinos to offer wagers on events other than just horse races, greyhound races, and athletic events. So now, you can bet in Nevada on the outcome of non-sporting events such as The Academy Awards or American Idol … or whether or not one man out of a group of seven can outlast all women in a $1,500 no-limit hold’em tournament.
UPDATE: @OskarGarcia was all over this one last week, and noted that the Wynn became the first ever Nevada casino to offer non-sporting bets in their sports book with the above wager options on the WSOP. He also talks to a regulator who says this new practice should have big implications for betting on the November Nine.
This week we cover another step toward online gambling regulation in the United States, as the announcement came that Poker Stars and Wynn Resorts have reached an agreement to work together! Also, updates on the upcoming iGaming Super Show and the latest from eCOGRA.
It really is amazing what the people of Texas have built in Oklahoma. Not only is WinStar now the third-largest casino in the world*, but also Choctaw (the “other” casino for Dallas people) is undergoing an expansion that will make it the 17th largest in the world.
* Third is my number, btw, based on Business Week data, despite WinStar’s claim that they are just 5th.
At 110,000 square feet, the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Okla., will have the same amount of gaming space as Wynn Las Vegas, and slightly more than Wynn Macao.
The poker room at the Wynn offers up two daily tournaments at 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM. The 2:00 PM tournament has a $120 buy-in ($100+20) for 4,000 chips and 30 minutes blind rounds. There is an optional $100/4,000 chip re-buy during the first three levels. The 7:00 PM daily event is a $160 buy-in ($140+20), no re-buys, no add-on, with 10,000 starting chips and 30 minute blind levels. For more information contact the Wynn Poker Room at 702-770-7654.
The Wynn Las Vegas Poker Room is hosting $50,000 worth of Free-Roll Tournaments coming up in April.  To gain entry to one of the four weekly $12,500 Free-Roll Tournaments players must log at least 12 hours of live poker during the qualifying periods. You can earn extra starting chips by playing more hours in the poker room, 12 to 16 hours of Live play start with 4,000 in chips, 16 to 20 hours get 5,000 in chips and 20 hours or more start with a 6,000 chip stack. For more information call the Wynn Poker Room at 702-770-7654 or visit wynnpoker.com.
Tournament Dates & Qualifying Periods
Monday, April 6th at 12:00pm – Qualify between March 30 – April 5
Monday, April 13th at 12:00pm – Qualify between April 6 – April 12
Monday, April 20th at 12:00pm – Qualify between April 13 – April 19
Monday, April 27 at 12:00pm – Qualify between April 20 – April 26
Sure, this is a cheap hedline we really could run daily — at least until it’s no longer true — but there were some very specific rumors circulating around the internet and the Wynn that Paul ‘Eskimo’ Clark had been robbed and killed. While death is never seldom a laughing matter, at least one cold, heartless journo may or may not have gotten juiced up about the conspiracy theory possibilities It had to be Vinnie Vinh! Or Russ Hamilton! Where’s Layne Flack!?! and abandoned a night at the tables before it really even started to investigate.
We found little … other than that he is still alive and kickin’ hustlin’ for backers in Reno.
I hadn’t played at the Wynn in nearly a year … but did so last night, and much to my delight they got rid of their confusing $3 chips in the $1/$3 NL game. They now use the more standard $1 and $5 denominations.
Not sure when the change happened — presumably in 2008 — but I’ll be staying there for the next couple days, and not having to brush up on my base-3 mathematics makes the game that much more enjoyable.
(Played last night there for 2.5 hours … buy-in: $200, cash out: $268. Not bad, but I left a couple orbits too late, as my stacks were over $500 when I got that leaving feeling.)
That’s about all we know. No pics yet or anything, but supposedly the Wynn Macau (pictured) will be opening its new poker room on Nov. 6. It will have eight tables … all No-Limit Hold’em. Apparently NLH is the only game in town, mostly because it is the only poker game that’s legal in Macau.
No word on whether or not they plan to use confusing å…ƒ3 (three yuan) chips.
There are 50 poker rooms in Las Vegas, so we thought you might appreciate the assistance of fellow degenerates in narrowing down the possibilities of where to play when you come to town. The votes have been tallied … and four places stood out above the rest … In what may or may not become a recurring tradition around these parts, Pokeratizens say the Best Poker Rooms in Vegas are:
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.
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.
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.
Jade in Las Vegas writes in to let us know there’s also good summertime action at the Wynn:
Hi Dan:
I’m the PR Manager overseeing our poker outreach. We currently have some exciting things going on in our poker room…..
• $100K Free Roll tournament on July 1-2. To qualify for this tournament all you need is 50 hours of live play and the last 10 seats at the final table get $10K
• Daily (Monday-Friday) No Limit Hold’Em Tournaments- beginning at 2p. $100/$20 buy-in and one optional $100 re-buy before Level 4
• Through July 16 we are offering a great room deal for poker players-$199 (Sunday through Thursday) and $239 (Friday-Saturday)
This is more of a rooms thing but it pertains to poker but…we display our wait list on a channel in the guest rooms so a guest can phone the poker room to sign up and watch the list from their room and come down when it is their turn to play. Pretty cool, right?
Please let me know if you would like more information on any of the above points.
Thanks!
Jade
Thanks for the info Jade. I’m sure some of our readers will take you up on the offer(s). And indeed — being able to see the wait list in your room is pretty cool. I’ve stayed at the Wynn once before, and you guys had the most comfortable bed ever. Like literally. It kept me away from the WSOP for two days because I didn’t want to leave it. Of course I did, once, to play some poker. But that didn’t go so well for me because, you know I played like garbage those $3 chips were so friggin’ confusing!
Just clicked over to the WPT website to see if there was any word yet about the Season 7 sked (there isn’t) and what tourneys if any have been axed/rescheduled.
However, I did notice one interesting thing — that Abraham Gray is the leader for “Highest Cash Percentage” [WPT profile]… finishing in the WPT money 57.14 percent of the time. Nice job. You may recall, however, that Not-So-Honest Abe was the dude reportedly arrested in October 2006 by the Nevada Gaming Commission at the Wynn poker tables for allegedly marking cards.
I use all those disclaimers because I don’t know whatever became of his case, and haven’t yet figured out how to check the status of NGC-wrought charges. But still …
That’s about all we know. No pics yet or anything, but supposedly the 
Gold Medal
Silver Medal
Bronze Medal