Las Vegas Live MTT Reccomendations

Thinking about playing my first live MTT in Vegas.

I live here, so I don't mind waiting for a good tourney.

I won't be doing this with a "bank roll" so to speak, as I'm not sure if I'm ready to start playing live on the regular... I can probably "spend"/"invest" a few hundred dollars in live poker.

In other words, I could probably swing a few $100 BI, but I'd prefer to play in the $20-$60 range; so I can afford to learn/lose, and still have funds enter more tourneys. But, I'm wondering if there are any tourneys where a BI at this level is worthwhile or not.

Not really interested in cash games, because it seems I'm not very good at them (online anyway.)

But please, casino and tournament recommendations? I can provide more info if it will help.

Thanks!

Watch for who is coming to invade the casinos/Vegas. Like in January "World of Concrete" and "SHOT Show" are going down. You can figure on a bunch of out of towner's looking to get wet in some tourney action. Go to the casinos they are staying at (mid-priced reasonable regular Joe accommodations) -

Mirage comes to mind as being very soft at this time. Played a couple tourney's there and it was mostly a bunch of concrete guys from out of town. Cashed both of them.

The key here is your selection. Playing regularly scheduled nightly tournaments with the tourists should do you well for now. As you build your bankroll set some aside to take a shot at the bigger tournaments that pop up (maybe even touring events like wsop, WPT, HPT). Not saying plopping down $10,000 for the Main Event, but dabble in some qualifiers maybe.

The rake for buy-ins under $100 is usually pretty bad. I prefer the $125's at the Aria and the $150's at the Venetian.

Anything under $100 usually has a bad structure with 10-20 minute levels and short starting stacks. They are a shove-fest by level 3.

Save up - take a crack at the Aria or Caesar's $125.
Use www.allvegaspoker.com to browse the right one for you.

The Orleans runs good tourneys with lower buy ins

it is a locals favorite.

Most of the other cheaper tourneys have terrible structures, especially the bigger casinos.

you might check out Binions too

the stratosphere runs a semi ok late night tourney with cheaper buy in....VERY soft field....but the rake is kinda steep

My recommendation would definitely be The Orleans for what you are shooting for....only downside it doesn't get very many casual tourist players....it gets more of a "local regulars" scene....they're not all great players, but they all have a decent understanding of the game. vs. some of the strip casinos will have a lot of tourists in the games....

dakota-xx said:

The rake for buy-ins under $100 is usually pretty bad. I prefer the $125's at the Aria and the $150's at the Venetian.

Click to expand...

Both are very good tournaments. The Daily Deepstack at Caesar's is pretty good too. If you're not staying South on the Strip and you Prefer N.Strip AKA downtown they have the 7pm nightly @ Binions (soft play & easy money). Also, if you go in the summer June-July WSOP season The Grand Casino in Golden Nugget opens their poker room they have a good daily (100 or $150-can't remember,lol) @ noon. It's deepstacked, soft, easy money & you get to play all day.

Actually, I believe that the Grand Poker room opens in May when the 1st event begins.

used to like the venetian, but not now- with ole sheldo campaigning against online gaming

if you don't like the over $100 buy ins... i think the luxor has an under $100 buy in also.

dakota-xx said:

The rake for buy-ins under $100 is usually pretty bad. I prefer the $125's at the Aria and the $150's at the Venetian.

Click to expand...

Now you know what kind of players you'll have to face at the Aria and Venetian - RUN AWAY

Although brings up an interesting question - would you rather face crappy players in a crappy structure or good players in a good structure?

MediaBLITZ said:

Now you know what kind of players you'll have to face at the Aria and Venetian - RUN AWAY

Although brings up an interesting question - would you rather face crappy players in a crappy structure or good players in a good structure?

Click to expand...

There are enough crappy players in the good structures to make that a no brainer

Thanks for all the feedback, guys and gals.

Good to know about poor structuring of low limits. Like, the Binions that Jacki and Melody recommended -- $60BI, $500gtd, 6k chips, blinds up every 15... that seems like a decent starter... but, 15 minute levels probably don't allow for much action - the way, for instance, the Aria $125 gives you 30 min at every level... I wonder if the "no-ante" format of the Binon's tourney makes that trade-off worthwhile.

Dakota, I trolled your rail thread from last you were in Vegas, and that spurred me to look at Aria and Venetian. Although these are higher BIs than I'd like to start at, it seems that you get more value playing these... they say there's a better avg prize pool at The Venetian... to you have any pros/cons about these two spots?

Also, Blitz, your advice of choosing tourneys during tourists influxes is great... maybe there's a holiday/family niche to be capitalized on in the next two weeks...

I had looked at Ceasr's on LV Poker reviews, and a lot of negative things were said about the room itself... did this matter to any of you who've played there? And, Melody, the DS at Ceasr's starts at 7p, right? 12,000 chips, but 12 minute levels...

The Stratosphere doesn't seem too bad either - and pizza during the first break!

Man, lots of options to consider here...

The Venetian and Aria both definitely offer good tourneys at the $100+ buy in level....if you're comfortable playing those stakes you get a lot more "play" for your money. The quality of player is also much better there, so there is that to consider. The Venetian is hands down my favorite place to play in vegas.

I don't like Caesar's poker room. For many reasons. Their chip colors are horrible for instance the $500 and $5,000 are both purple, just slightly different shades and the always make you put your big chip on top of your stack which makes it really easy to accidentally bet $5,000 (like half your starting stack). Every single time I've played there I've seen this happen to at least 1 player at my table.

Caesar's will not help facilitate a chop, which is horrible customer service, IMO. They won't pause the game or pause the clock while players are trying to decide whether to chop, they won't calculate any chops for you and if you DO decide to chop they don't adjust the prize structure for you, meaning that you have to TRUST all the other players that you chop with that they'll actually give you what you agreed on and you have no recourse if they do not honor the verbal agreement, Caesar's has a completely hands off policy for chops.

Their rake is kinda high too.

I just don't like Caesar's.

Don't forget to check out the structures of The Orleans while you're researching. A lot of bang for your buck in lower buy ins.

The1AceJack said:

Dakota, I trolled your rail thread from last you were in Vegas, and that spurred me to look at Aria and Venetian. Although these are higher BIs than I'd like to start at, it seems that you get more value playing these... they say there's a better avg prize pool at The Venetian... to you have any pros/cons about these two spots?

Click to expand...

I prefer the Aria tournaments. I really like the tournament staff there (some nice ones at Venetian too tho). There seem to be more recreational players at the Aria. It is a slightly lower buy-in which should appeal to you.

And Sheldon Adelson owns the Venetian - so should be a no brainer to choose the Aria.

I only play at the Venetian when they have their Deep Stack events running - otherwise I would always choose the Aria.

missjacki said:

Don't forget to check out the structures of The Orleans while you're researching. A lot of bang for your buck in lower buy ins.

Click to expand...

Orleans has a lot of different tourney options -- it looks like the $50 afternoon or Monday night games might be a good place to get started, if I don't mind playing 20 minute blinds... and, I know I'd opt for the $20 add-on -- would be a fool not to.

I think I like Orleans more than Binion's... I think Orleans or The Stratosphere might be a good first time tourney for me... Aria is tempting for the value, but I feel like I might stress the higher BI... #ThingsToConsider

Wondering if maybe I should start off in $1/$2 ring games... I don't like playing ring games online, because I tend to fair better in MTTs... but, if I'm looking to try live play out, and hopefully make some money, could ring games be a better starting point?


PS. Thanks for the quality notes on why not to play Caesar's, too.

The1AceJack said:

Good to know about poor structuring of low limits. Like, the Binions that Jacki and Melody recommended -- $60BI, $500gtd, 6k chips, blinds up every 15... that seems like a decent starter... but, 15 minute levels probably don't allow for much action - the way, for instance, the Aria $125 gives you 30 min at every level... I wonder if the "no-ante" format of the Binon's tourney makes that trade-off worthwhile..

Click to expand...

hard to say on this.... I generally prefer ante tourneys because so many casual players don't adjust to the antes...even players who are somewhat fluent in the game but only think in terms of "# of BBs" instead of "M" will fail to adjust when the antes are introduced....they do slow the game down a bit though....and if you've already only got 15 or 20 min blinds....slowing down is a bummer.

still....for me...I prefer antes

missjacki said:

hard to say on this.... I generally prefer ante tourneys because so many casual players don't adjust to the antes...even players who are somewhat fluent in the game but only think in terms of "# of BBs" instead of "M" will fail to adjust when the antes are introduced....they do slow the game down a bit though....and if you've already only got 15 or 20 min blinds....slowing down is a bummer.

still....for me...I prefer antes

Click to expand...

Me too - it is amazing how many players don't adjust for the antes.

I started playing live about a month ago. I've actually managed to come out way ahead so far, but it started out a bit rocky. This is how you can win:
1. stay calm, be well rested (SERIOUSLY), be confident, and be very attentive to the table. You won't be reading players, that's dumb and this isn't rounders. there will no oreos. But players tell stories with their betting patterns and trends. Often times players even show hands, and there is seriously valuable information to be had if you are paying attention. So please, pay close attention
2. Be EXTREMELY aggressive. Often times in MTT's you'll see limping, pots with 4-5 players, in the middle stages of a tournament when the blinds are on the fringe of being relatively high. Use the All in move to your advantage. There is a lot of fold equity playing live, if they call you, cool, lets flip and somebody is going to have a huge stack and a substantial advantage the rest of the way
3. Live players vastly overvalue hands like Ax suited and conversely, they VASTLY underestimate pocket pairs. I can't tell you how many times I snap guys off with 77 and when their AJ doesn't hit they can't figure out how they lost.
4. Also, be confident, because your table image can influence whether you get action or not. How you dress will also subconsciously effect your opinions, so think about it.
5. Don't consume alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, etc. Like I said, you want a clear state of mind.
6. I recommend you don't look at your hand until the action is on you, and also try to be concise about your actions. Just yesterday I was at the final table of a tournament. The button open shoved with A9 and a foreigner jokingly said "hard call" and flipped 62 on the table. He was trying to fold but we all heard call, so he went out 5th because the floor ruled his action was a call. always state "RAISE" if you want to do that.
7. if somebody throws in one oversized chip that indicates a call not a raise, don't make the mistake that I made my first time
8. really just play your game, be aggressive and put people in cages. Make people fold better and make them call with worse, that's what good players do. If you play online, the transition to live is going to be strange but rewarding.

Thanks for the advice Karozi... do you play ring games live, too? Or just MTT?

And... I'm still learning, so if I sound like a complete n00b, please forgive me... I haven't read any articles about "M" and I don't know how this correlates to adjusting your play for antes... all I've really read about antes is, in the SB, you might call with a slightly larger range, just because your pot odds are so good...

So, any link/insight on this would be sweet

the quick and dirty on M is that it is a calculation of the cost per orbit instead of just the BBs....so your M automatically adjusts to whether or not there are antes in play, and how expensive they are, for not all antes are created equal...some antes are much more costly than others in terms of total cost per orbit.

so instead of "shove or fold" poker at 15BB you might go into shove or fold mode at M=5.

I'll search for a link to post here, if I can find one

Okay, Jacki, pretty sure I follow what you mean... but, if you do have a full article on the subject, I'd like to read it.

The $125 buy-in at Binion's on Saturday and Sunday is very good value. I'd rather play this than two $60 buy-in tournaments.

What do you like about the $125 at Binions? I was looking at their lower BI tourneys - and was going to try the Aria if I went for a $100+ BI.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Poker Palace. It's a crappy casino, but it's so much fun! They have a $20 re-buy tourney every night at 6:30. I think the $20 gets you 5k in chips, and rebuys are $5/1k and you can rebuy up to your starting stack. Addon is $10 but I don't remember how much that gets you, it's enough to be worth the extra money for me. It usually takes 2-3 hours, but Fri and Sat nights it can go 4-5 hours with all the extra players.

I'm also from Vegas, and Poker Palace was the first place I played poker, my aunt was teaching me the rules right before the tourney started. There's a bunch of characters there who play horribly, it's pretty entertaining. They also have $1 BJ.

This is the site I use to find tournaments.
http://www.allvegaspoker.com/tournaments.php

I also play limit poker, and I really like to play limit at South Point, I haven't played a tourney there yet though. The limit game is 3/6 with a half kill point which means if one player wins at showdown 2 hands in a row, the next round is played 4/8 and the kill player has to post the blind. They do some other fun promos too like high hand jackpots. I've played a lot of random places, so let me know if you have questions about any place in particular.

I also have played at the Stratosphere quite a bit. The dealers are nice, the poker room is in a relatively quiet part of the casino, and you get quite a few tourists. I would say it's 2/3 tourists that are just there to have fun and a 1/3 regulars. Tourists that are serious poker players want to go play in bigger, nicer casinos, so it's the real fishy tourists at the Stratosphere. Those are usually 2-3 tables

The Golden Nugget also has decent tournaments that usually have 2-3 tables. A lot of locals play there, including many local dealers. Don't worry though, it doesn't improve the play much.