heading to vegas in late aug for my birthday, and booked 4 nights, Fri-Tue. Wondering if how the action has been at the Flamingo of late. Every other time I have been there, the play has been pretty weak. For some reason, I love that casino and the overall location.

My recent trip at Flamingo had extremely weak competition. I too love that place!

I played a recent session on graveyard shift here and there were major problems with dealer quality. I got the impression that many dealers were new (probably hired for the series) and while most had pleasant personalities the crew made lots of procedural errors and many didn't seem familiar with basic poker rules and terminology. One dealer habitually flashed cards as she dealt, another was totally perplexed when the table wanted to call the clock on a stalling player, a third initially refused to turn over a hand that was exposed to almost half the table before it was folded preflop (after long hesitation she turned it over after the players convinced her that she was supposed to turn it face up).

A problem that was uniform among the dealers was matching up stacks during all-ins. This is a bigger issue at the Flamingo than elsewhere because the poker room uses chips from a variety of eras, composed of different materials and of varying thickness. Stacks that are mostly composed of 1 variety of chip are not the same height as stacks composed mainly of another variety. Both experienced and break-in dealers matched up, and I don't recall one dealer counting out the checks. When I doubled through an opponent I made a point of clearly cutting and counting out my chips so that no error would be made... after doing this and announcing the amount the dealer immediately grabbed my cut chips, gathered them all into a single stack, and then matched them up to my opponent's stack.

I don't know if anyone involved with the Flamingo poker room reads AVP, but if anyone with clout does they would be well served to evaluate staff on and remind staff of basic dealer protocol.

I haven't played there since end of WSOP but had played there during and prior to it more than a fair share. I stopped playing that room due to similar concerns...dealer quality. For a Vegas poker room, simply too many dealer mistakes that effect the game. The dealers don't apologize or anything for the mistakes and even give you an attitude for the rest of the down when you call them out on the mistake. This attitude is not only tolerated by the floor but it seems like several of the floors (I have several specific people in mind) have the same "I don't care" attitude.

One of the floors and several dealers clearly don't like their jobs there and disagree with something management is doing because they rant about Flamingo poker room all the time. There is one person I have repeatedly heard say, "What are they gonna do, fire me? Go ahead. I wish they did," several times. With these attitudes, I got worried that it might end up costing me another big pot so I just stopped playing there. It's a shame too b/c they have a great location and I used to stop by for that $2 burger and fries once in a while too.

All of my experiences have been during the evening and graveyard shifts.

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I have played there quite often and have to admit the dealers are not the best, some a bit past their peak actually.
My favorite dealer is a guy named Pervies, he's quite entertaining PLUS he knows what he's doing.

Like with most things in life, a few bad apples spoil the whole experience. The dealer mentioned above is good and there are other good dealers there as well who take their jobs seriously and do their best to make sure everyone has a good time. Unfortunately, the handful of bad dealers and uninterested floor can ruin your night pretty quickly with some bad decisions and actions.

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My wife and I will be staying at the Flamingo this week Thursday through Monday. Looks like all the latest post are pretty unfavorable for the poker room. Has anyone played there in the last couple of weeks? If so, are the dealers/floor still this bad? I'd rather not waste my time playing somewhere where the these kinds of problems are the norm. Too many other good spots.

I'm planning on playing at Harrahs properties almost exclusively this trip except for a stop at Aria to check it out. Should I just skip the poker room in my hotel and head down the street?

I haven't played there in over a month, but the best advice I can give is to avoid playing there on dayshift during the Aces cracked hours. Lots of retirees show up to collect hours for the freerolls during this time and the games aren't very good. Also, the hotel smells so horrible that I would try to spend as little time on the casino floor as possible.

Give it a shot, Ive always liked playing here. Nothing special, but profitable and I like the feel of the casino. The smell is indeed strong, but youll get used to it. If you dont like perfumes in casinos, this place has it and Venetian is even worse.

I played here for 3 hours one day last week for the first time in months. I hated it. Whole casino stinks of decades worth of smokers, covered up by my gramma's perfumy purse. The low ceilings of the poker room hold the currently swirling smoke just overhead rather than disbursing it.

But the worst thing is: the ridiculously marked cards. The red deck especially at my table was really marked up (presumably by the shuffemaster) and bringing it to dealer's attention only got a "They're all like that" reply. Well, no they aren't. Once I saw the Ace diamonds was particularly identifiable, I could easily recognize it in the hands of others, and from seat 1, I had a great view. So was 6diamonds, Qspades and others. I always grabbed my cards when given to me, and quickly placed a chip right in center ring of the logos on my cards, but others didn't, or even seem to care, or notice the scratches anyway, which clues you in to the level of awareness of the Flamingo clientele. So I continued to play.

I stopped playing the IP for this reason. I just can't be the only one who notices, can I??? Or do you guys just keep your mouths shut?