Bellagio (Las Vegas, NV)
Why can't a billion dollar casino put cup holders on or in their poker tables?
Epic bump,
Not a fan of Bellagio poker, the staff is horrid. Dealers good. Food almost impossible. Selection bad.
It's the only place in Vegas to play LHE of any meaningful stakes. That's the only reason I have gone there.
I'd bet that come WSOP the games will be back to 20 and 40, even if just temporarily.
I do agree that they'll probably go back to the $20-$40 structure by the time the WSOP comes around, but not for the reason you give. I also have no inside information on this and could certainly be wrong.
I would be shocked if Bellagio went back to 20-40 and 40-80.
Management didn't make this change casually. They talked to their regular players about it in advance and had their support.
Today I was shocked. The Bellagio is running 20-40 and 40-80 again.
It just changed today? I was just talking to someone who had been to Vegas recently and said they were running 30-60.
Before this change back, had they been running 15-30, or anything lower than 30-60?
Yes, they were running 15-30.
Good change imo. The 15-30 didn’t run much and when it did it was shaky and just held together by people waiting for 30-60. The 30-60 folks can play 40. I think way more likely they will have both 20 and 40 at same time and if not the 20 be stronger than the 30 bc it has a bigger player base so more likely to have multiple games.
Casino AZ was struggling with having a 20 and a 40 and one would start and then the other would start and break the first and just make a lot of hurt feelings. They went to 30 game but no 15 and it has helped a game go more frequently but I am afraid it will kill the feeder as jumping from 8/16 to 30/60 is huge and the LHE ecosystem will be dead soon in AZ :(
And as I told Bellagio top poker management back in January, the structure change from 2 chips, 4 chips to 2 chips, 3 chips would upset the balance of luck and skill and damage the games. The response I got (at that time) was that they would watch it and see what happens. I guess they had watched enough and now wisely made the switch back.
I do think the games were damaged, and perhaps damaged by a lot. Hopefully, the games will, probably slowly, build back up. They also need, in my opinion, to offer lower limit hold 'em games with a reduced rake to help develop feeder games to the middle limit games. But I doubt very much that this will happen.
And as I told Bellagio top poker management back in January, the structure change from 2 chips, 4 chips to 2 chips, 3 chips would upset the balance of luck and skill and damage the games. The response I got (at that time) was that they would watch it and see what happens. I guess they had watched enough and now wisely made the switch back.I do think the games were damaged, and
I was in The Bellagio Poker Room yesterday and they had two $20-$40s and a $40-$80 going, and all three games were full. So even though this is a small sample size, I guess it's possible that there are some players who just didn't like the two chip/three chip structure and weren't playing. But now with the two chip/four chip structure they came back. Time will tell, but perhaps these games will recover faster than I thought was possible.
By the way, poker room managers need to understand that what appears to be small changes in game structure can often have a significant impact on what happens to their games. So to this end, I'll again recommend my cardrooms book where much of this stuff is addressed, and I think every poker room manager should read it:
Today, I learned of a new Bellagio policy.
Dealers are no longer allowed to hand shuffle without permission from a floor person. They also aren't allowed to reach into the hand shuffle machine and fix a deck which has become stuck.
Basically, anytime the automatic shuffler doesn't work perfectly, it will be necessary to call the floor over to get permission to do whatever is necessary. So, even the most obvious fixes to easy problems are going to cause a delay before the next hand is dealt.
This is not a policy created by poker room management. For some reason, it's coming from casino management. I heard there was some incident at Aria which has caused this.
Does anyone know what happened at Aria? Or has something else caused this policy to be enacted?
That's a terrible change. Hopefully it will be so noticeably bad that it will be changed back quickly.
New limits for 1/3 and 2/5. Much needed, will be extremely interesting to see how the games change.
About time. Maybe next they'll do something about their awful staff.
Yes floor is notoriously bad sadly.
I've had pretty good experiences with the floor on the high limit side, especially if you accept that they're going to give the locals preferential treatment.
One anecdotal example: During WSOP a few years back, during which the room is at peak chaos, I had called in and I was running late so I was going to get removed from the list for being on it for too long. I call and ask them to roll me and the floor goes out of the way to ask me how long I think I will be and instead rolled me to like 1/3 down the list. Keep in mind the lists are like 40+ deep. Hadn't even tipped the floor yet.
New limits for 1/3 and 2/5. Much needed, will be extremely interesting to see how the games change.
I wonder why they did this. They have, I believe, more $1-$3 games and $2-$5 games than any other Las Vegas poker room. If something works, why fix it?
