Other Information
The cash games listed above are the regularly spread games in this room. Others games and stakes are sometimes played based on player interest.

The M Resort and Casino grand opened with great fanfare on March 1st, 2009, and includes a 12 table poker room that is extremely well designed, aesthetically pleasing, and action driven. The resort is approximately 10 miles South of Mandalay Bay, the southernmost megaresort on the Las Vegas Strip, thus catering itself to upper middle class/upper class locals and tourists looking for an off Strip luxury driven resort. The poker room is located only a few feet from the parking garage entrance, restrooms, and sports book, this poker venue was obviously designed with the poker players’ wants in mind. Offering 12 tables, all with autoshufflers and equipped with the Genesis Gaming Bravo System (which tracks player comps electronically), the room is high on technology and is setup to compete nicely with the best mid size local’s rooms in Vegas.

Aesthetically, the room is extremely well designed and laid out, replete with modern adornments such as flat screen televisions and abstract art. The room has many positives and a few negatives worth discussing. First, the positives. The tables are nicely designed with light colored felt, faux alligator skin armrests, and proper Genesis Bravo and ShuffleMaster placement. The location of the room, adjacent to the sports book, restrooms, and parking garage entrance is genius, and is even more ideally situated then the Wynn, which I did not think was possible. The room is separated into two distinct areas. The first room is 9 tables and is designed to house the majority of the games expected to be spread (2/4LHE, 1/2NLHE, 4/8LHE, etc). The second room, housing the remaining 3 tables, is designed for higher limit games (including 2/5NLHE). The M Resort is the first local’s driven poker room to offer a separate area for higher limit players (though rare in local’s casinos, this design is common in better Strip poker venues).

Other items worth mentioning are the players’ cards, which at the time of this review’s writing, could not be generated in the poker room itself. The cards used in the poker room to track players’ hours and comps is the same card used throughout the rest of the resort for slot and pit tracking. The room has a long rail alongside slot machines and a main thoroughfare that leads to the rest of the casino from the parking garage, which lends itself to smoke floating into the room from the outside (the room itself is a non-smoking environment). The room is unable to page patrons to the poke room once their seat opens beyond a short range beyond the poker room entrance; though we were told on opening night that this will be addressed through a special text messaging service that will be implemented shortly. Over time, we expect all of these issues to be addressed and resolved, as the room’s staff becomes more acclimated to their location.

Overall, this reviewer was quite impressed with the M Resort’s poker room effort. The location of the room is superb, and coupled with the aesthetical adornments; make this room one of the local’s best choices for a higher end poker fix. Though the room could use some minor tweaks with regard to table layout, communication system, and smoke avoidance, the overall room quality is very high, and deserving of a 5 out of 5 rating.