This thread is for general discussion/chat about the Stratosphere Poker Room.

Hi Im coming over to vegas in November and staying at the Stratosphere can anyone tell me if they have any poker tournaments there ?

Love the site

Many Thanks

Percy

Since this thread is such a sad little one, I'll offer a comment and a question.

The strat was the first room that I ever played poker in. Don't remember much about the day, except telling my wife that we should "try poker" instead of always playing table games. For some reason, we decided to go to the strat.

Played 2-4 a little, and a lady ended up going all in for her last 4 bucks on the turn. I called with an inside straight draw and flush draw, and ended up turning a royal flush. This must have been like one of the first 10 hands of poker that I EVER played!!

The dealer called the floor over (I had no idea what that even meant back then), and the floor said, "Let me check to see what the jackpot for a royal is." He came back and said it was a little over $2,000, but there had to be 20 bucks in the pot. He looked over and said, "it looks like it's about 15 right now, so you don't qualify." As the dealer was counting the pot, I splashed it with about 30 chips and said, "How about now?". Of course, they reconstructed the hand and betting to determine that there was 18 in there, but there were 2 in the rake and one in the JPdrop. I asked if those chips counted and the floor told me that they didn't.

Disappointing! And, I got yelled at for splashing that pot. I asked if they had a hat or anything else they could give me and the floor said no.

Since then I've had another royal (at Excalibur about 2 weeks ago), which makes me pretty lucky, I guess.

Now the question I have: Anyone know the blind structure/competition level of the tournies they have? The ol' lady is out of town and I have some time off of work, so I was thinking of hitting the midnight one one of these weeknights.

reason enough not to play there, sheesh.

You're a lucky man to get two RF, I thought you were only supposed to get one in a lifetime and I'm still waiting for mine.

What was the payout/jackpot at the Excalibur?

Well, the big payout was that I managed to get all $140 of my stack in with 2 callers. The Excalibur has a wheel spin for quads+, and I spun 40 bucks, but gave it to the dealer.

At the Excalibur, had KJc and limped from MP. Flopped the royal. BB bets 45 bucks. I call. button calls. Turn comes (I have no idea what it was, but don't think it was clubs). BB bets 75. I look at my stack, and after the call, I have about 43 on top, so I push. Button calls!!!! BB calls!!!! LOL!!!!

Don't know what the river was, but BB had KJo (for broadway), and SB had 98c, for the next possible highest flush after mine. I tripled up (plus the six limpers' money) and spun for 40 bucks. The guy next to me said, "I've been playing for 40 years and never got a royal yet."

Now I've had 2, so I expect to average 1 per year for the rest of my life, lol.

I played there once while I was in vegas for my stay I cant remember the exact blind structure but it was very much a crap shoot..... But there was some very poor play by me mainly. But I still went on to win it for $850 and was then pretty much press ganged into giving the dealers %10................ Never played there again for the rest of the stay.

I played the 8 pm tourney 2 weeks ago. I actually thought the structure was better than most low limit tourneys. Had 60 runners, most of which were not very good. Built my starting stack by 3x by the first break, and then ran into a few coolers that saw me exit around 30th place. The room seemed somewhat unorganized though. It was my first time there and thought it was a decent tourney.

gonna be out there 7/8-7/12... Gonna be at the Sahara to see the Amazing Johnathan 10:00 show... Pretty close to the strat... then the midnight tourney. Good turn-out for this one? Doesn't sound like a bad tourney. But on Sunday/Monday? Usually this time of week everybody's back home disappointed.

_________________
Play at the tables, not on your couch.

CardPlayer magazine (Vol. 20/No. 13, cover date July 10) landed in my mailbox a couple of days ago, and I just now got around to flipping through it. I did a double take on page 122, and had to triple check to be sure I've read it correctly: "The Stratosphere's six-table poker room offers the lowest limits on the Strip, spreading $0.25-$1 at the Tower Table, along with $1-$2, $2-$4..."

I've enjoyed spending plenty of hours playing at the Strat in the past, though not very recently, and I'm enough of a goofball that I might actually want to try a live micro-limit $0.25-$1 game, but I never imagined any brick and mortar casino would want to spread one. Anyone know what's up with this? Is this some kind of bizarre misprint, or a clever marketing gimmick of some kind, or is management up there smoking crack now, or what?I only played at the cash table as the tournament people busted out and moved over, but for the relatively small size of the room, they generally have had a decent turnout for this late game on weekdays in the past, due to the very low buy-in cost, along with the large size of the somewhat isolated hotel and the youngish demographics of the their guests, I believe. Sunday and Monday tended to be busier than the following days. But it's now been a good six months since I've gone in there, so my observation could be out of date.