Nutzz,

Good luck and have fun!

Dave

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The opinions in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Poker Atlas, AVP or PokerTrip Enterprises.

Dap,

Thanks bro.

Thanks for all your comments. With my first ever visit to Vegas quickly approaching, I am left with a few dumb newbie questions, so please don’t laugh:

1/ It seems most tournaments begin registration 2 hours before the cards fly. Do the tourney’s normally fill up early or can I show up 10 minutes before game time?

2/ The blind structures provided by this site doesn’t indicate when (or how frequent) the breaks are. Any idea?

3/ Is it customary to tip the dealer during the tourney, or wait until only if you finish in-the-money at the end?

4/ Bounty: I’ve never played a game with “Bounty” before. Does this mean the house pays anyone who knocks out a player a token award? Does the bounty get deducted from the main pot?

5/ What’s the difference between “Rebuy” and “Re-entry”

6/ If I ever make it into the money, is there any time where its customary to “chop”? If so, what’s the proper protocol?

7/ I’m staying at the Wynn, but from what I can see, it appears Venetian has the best overall blind structures for deeper stack games between $100-$200. Is there a better option that I missed ?

Thanks for your help

If you don't know the answer, then no question is dumb.



I can speak only for the tournaments that I've entered recently in Vegas, at the Mirage, which I think is a bit below your target, but I think it's true for most daily tournaments. If rooms have the dealers, they'll open up tournament tables as needed as they get entries. If the tables all fill up, they will usually still take entries, typically through the first break, and you'll take the place of players who bust out.



In smaller tournaments, you'll see breaks every hour or so. In larger buy ins or larger fields, you may go two hours between breaks.



Only if you finish in the money.



Bounties are taken from the prize pool. If a tournament offers bounties, there is that much less to be spread among the top, in-the-money finishers.



A rebuy means that if you bust out, you can purchase a rebuy right then and there and continue play. Rebuys are often less than the entry fee. A re-entry means that you must get up when you bust out, and if you want to pay a full entry fee, you can, and are assigned a random seat (or put on a waiting list for the next seat).



I'd say different rooms have different customs. More often than not, it's right around the final table, and the conversation begins when a random remaining player interjects the one-word query "Chop?" into the conversation. Whether anything goes down then or later depends on the response of the remaining players.

Note that there is one etiquette protocol that I have seen violated: If a player does not want to chop, no one should put pressure on that player to do so nor belittle the decision in any way.



I'm sure several TDs would tout their rooms, but the V's games seem to hold that consensus.

_________________
- Low-limit limit poker @ Artichoke Joe's ($6/$12) & 101 Casino ($4/$8 w/ 1/2 kill)
- Poker blog, good writing, OK poker: http://chuck.martin.name/poker/
- Tweets from the felt: twitter.com/chuckspoker

Wow, twriter thanks for all your quick responses!

Just happened to check AVP right after you posted your inquiries. Most anyone else here would do the same if their timing was similar--and some still might chime to clarify what some rooms' specific practices are (or to correct any mistakes I made).

_________________
- Low-limit limit poker @ Artichoke Joe's ($6/$12) & 101 Casino ($4/$8 w/ 1/2 kill)
- Poker blog, good writing, OK poker: http://chuck.martin.name/poker/
- Tweets from the felt: twitter.com/chuckspoker

Looks like Wynn has initiated a daily $125/15 Buy-IN

Not only will I stay at Wynn for 4 nights, but I will gamble exclusively at their casino.

Cheers and nicely done!

nutz99, the Wynn tournament is a good structure game, but it doesn't always get a good turnout of players. By all means play there but whilst you're in LV and wanting to play some good tournaments it would be silly to miss out playing at least one of the tournaments at Venetian or Aria to experience a similar game with a much higher number of players.

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Yippeee! I've cashed

what he said. The wynn only draws big numbers to their tournament series events whatever they call it, the wynn classic or something, however the Aria and the Venetian pull in big fields on the regular because of their reputation.

im not sure what days you will be staying in vegas, but if you are there on a saturday I would recommend the Noon tournament at the Venetian. its a $300 buy in, start with 12k chips with 40 minute blind levels starting with 25/50. in my opinion it is one of the best reoccurring weekly tournaments on the strip. The buy in really helps weed out the touristy gamblers. The players in this game know how to play and it is not a crapshoot.

if you are there on the first saturday of the month it turns into a $500 buyin with 15k starting stack and same structure as the $300 one. it also only has a 13% dealer/house cut, so $435 goes to the prize pool. the $300 buyin has 16% cut so only $252 makes it into the prize pool. but still these are much better value than the $125 tournaments where 20% is cut out for the casino/staff.


last time i played in the $300 there was a little over 100 runners, and the $500 I played in once and it had a little over 60.