I just got back from my first trip to Las Vegas since 2016, and I noticed that things have changed since then - and mostly not for the good.
Until this trip, I have never seen tight, grindy NLHE games consistently at the lowest casino stakes. I regularly ran into players who appeared to be relatively skilled locals playing tight, exploitative poker at the 1-3 $300 max NLHE game that has become the standard low stakes offering in Vegas.
Are the drunk partiers and the fish gone? No, definitely not. But the "1-3 grinders" only seemed to show up in certain places I played: Aria, Bellagio, Caesars. They were much less common in Bally's, Planet Hollywood, and Venetian, and the ratios of bad to good players at these rooms was (in my very limited experience) higher.
I talked about this with @Payback quite a bit during our stay, and the only substantial difference we could come up with was the jackpot drop. All rooms dropped the standard 10% up to $5 rake, but the rooms with better games had an additional $2 jackpot drop while the grindy rooms did not. This additional rake is ridiculous: none of these rooms offer high hand jackpots or bad beats. Instead, the drops go to pay for player comps and freerolls for the players who play the most hours - local regs.
My theory is this: because it's already tough enough to beat the rake at 1-3NL, the smart local grinders know that the additional $2 per pot puts them at a bigger disadvantage, and they avoid these games in spite of the rewards offered (food and freerolls). Stronger tourist players also know this and probably also avoid the games with higher rake. So in those games, you're left with a better overall pool of players - weaker players, gamblers, and partiers - none of whom know or care about the impact of higher rake on the game.
This is exactly the point Daniel Negreanu was making in his infamous "more rake is better" post, and while I thought it made some sense at the time, I believe I've actually seen it in practice this past week.
Thoughts?
Until this trip, I have never seen tight, grindy NLHE games consistently at the lowest casino stakes. I regularly ran into players who appeared to be relatively skilled locals playing tight, exploitative poker at the 1-3 $300 max NLHE game that has become the standard low stakes offering in Vegas.
Are the drunk partiers and the fish gone? No, definitely not. But the "1-3 grinders" only seemed to show up in certain places I played: Aria, Bellagio, Caesars. They were much less common in Bally's, Planet Hollywood, and Venetian, and the ratios of bad to good players at these rooms was (in my very limited experience) higher.
I talked about this with @Payback quite a bit during our stay, and the only substantial difference we could come up with was the jackpot drop. All rooms dropped the standard 10% up to $5 rake, but the rooms with better games had an additional $2 jackpot drop while the grindy rooms did not. This additional rake is ridiculous: none of these rooms offer high hand jackpots or bad beats. Instead, the drops go to pay for player comps and freerolls for the players who play the most hours - local regs.
My theory is this: because it's already tough enough to beat the rake at 1-3NL, the smart local grinders know that the additional $2 per pot puts them at a bigger disadvantage, and they avoid these games in spite of the rewards offered (food and freerolls). Stronger tourist players also know this and probably also avoid the games with higher rake. So in those games, you're left with a better overall pool of players - weaker players, gamblers, and partiers - none of whom know or care about the impact of higher rake on the game.
This is exactly the point Daniel Negreanu was making in his infamous "more rake is better" post, and while I thought it made some sense at the time, I believe I've actually seen it in practice this past week.
Thoughts?
