VegasRex’s Choice For Best Poker Room In Las Vegas

3355 Las Vegas Blvd. South
Las Vegas, NV 89109
(877) 857-1861

Official Venetian Poker Room Website

Comments:

I finally got a chance to drop by the Venetian for a regular cash game today.

I arrived way off-peak, 10:00am Saturday morning to be exact, and only 3 tables were in use at that time. This was good for me, as there was no wait.

Two tables were running 4/8 Limit, and one table was running 2/5 No Limit. I bought into the No Limit game, and had a seat making me the 9th player.

My visit further reinforced my initial pre-review. I believe that at this point in time, the Venetian Poker Room itself is the nicest Poker Room in Las Vegas. Very spacious, everything is intuitively laid out, large tables, comfortable, and elegant. It is very much like the Bellagio Poker Room … only better. It is every bit as luxurious, but the tables are much, much farther apart. Plasma screens ring the walls, and the restroom is a 30 second walk directly across from the podium.

You can actually get a menu, and they will bring food right to you at the table! Wow.

A luxurious poker room where you can be waited on hand and foot. What more do you want?

Oh, and ROLLING CHAIRS!!!! I’m sorry, some people don’t care about the rolling office chair setup, but IMHO it makes it so much easier to get in and out of a table, move over a little when the fat guy sits next to you, and get a little relaxing side to side rocking action going while you are waiting out a hand. Some people like throne chairs. They look nice, but I’ll take the office-type chairs anyday. And the office chairs at the Venetian look good too. No, they didn’t get $99 chairs from Office Depot, they got nice looking ones.

I walked to the podium, and a woman cheerfully asked me if she could help me. I asked her what games were going, she told me, I picked my game, and she summoned a floor person to seat me.

The floor person took me to my seat, and offered to get my chips. I handed him my buy-in, got situated in my seat, and 90 seconds later he handed me a rack with my chips in it.

Every 10 minutes a very pleasant waitress would come to the table, and go around asking each player individually if he/she needed anything. They didn’t seem to hate their jobs, or hate the players. No attitude at all. Every single one of them was cheerful.

The rotating dealers ranged from very friendly, personable, and humorous, to extremely businesslike and mechanical. Either way, they all knew the game, there were no misdeals, and none of them were annoying. They had no problem figuring out who the winner was, they knew who was next to act, what the bet was, etc. There were no dealers fresh out of school here. They knew EXACTLY what was happening with rainmain-like focus during every hand.

IHMO, this is the best room in the nation as of this writing.

But it isn’t all magic and fairy dust ….

Now, for the bad part, that isn’t completely the management’s fault … but could possibly be improved.

There was a very clearly drunk guy playing in the #1 spot. And I don’t mean “call a cab because I can’t drive” drunk. It was a hipster wannabe 20-something “I’ve been drinking for 24 hours straight and I now have testicles the size of bowling balls and can whip Johnny Chan’s ass” drunk.

He wasn’t just annoying, he was seriously disruptive to the game. He kept throwing his “tip” chip AT the dealer, which often ended up somewhere across the room. The tip chip was always a $1 chip no matter the size of the pot, so I guess firing it to him/her like a bullet made it seem worth more than it was. He demanded to see mucked cards after a hands were over, insisted he had a “right” to see them, and had a 15 minute debate with the floor person as he tried to convince him that “the official rules of poker” entitled any player to see mucked cards once a hand was over. When we all interjected and told him that no such rule existed, he informed us that none of us knew the rules to the game of poker, which was ironic since he bought back in at least 3 times during the game after busting his $500 buy-in. Unfortunately, none of these loses were to me. I had arguably one of the worst sessions ever … finally going out completely with Trip Kings over 2’s for a Full House against Quad 2’s (Pocket Kings flopped K-2-2, would you fold?).

Back to MTV brat, not content to be just verbally annoying, he then proceeded to physically threaten a player seated across from him, and I had to interject to keep a physical confrontation from ensuing (something I have not had to do since High School). Then he stood up and declared that we all sucked when we folded to an Ace high bluff (what the fuck am I supposed to do with 8-3o looking at a $40 raise?). He made Mike Matasow look like Emily Post.

The floor man and security came over countless times, and he was given at least 5 warnings in the 2 hours that I played, but was never asked to leave. This ain’t Guido’s Basement Card Room in Bensonhurst for crying out loud … it’s the Venetian. I’m all for having a good time, cutting loose, and free speech, but when you start throwing chips at the dealer and threatening fellow players with bodily harm because they won’t show you their mucks, it’s time to go sleep off the 37 cocktails.

Sometimes I yearn for the old Las Vegas where this guy would have had a “tip” shoved up his ass in the back room by Bugsy Siegel himself.

So, to summarize my trip to the Venetian:

1) The poker room is great …. probably the best.
2) The room staff is friendly … probably the friendliest.
3) The servers are friendly …. also, probably the friendliest.
4) The dealers rank up there with the best in town.
5) My cards sucked more than Madonna in a broken down limo in Harlem
6) There was one trashed shit surfer who was allowed to be a complete wipe for some inexplicable reason …. but at least he generously donated cash to people who actually had good hands hold up.

4 out of 6 ain’t bad.

Update: The Venetian now has a very plush waiting area complete with magazines and a television. No more standing at the rail while waiting for your game. Sink back into the plush couch, and relax until your game is ready. Every high-end Poker Room should have a waiting area like this.