The poker lounge is located right off the main casino floor and right down the hall from the parking garage. There is a nice restaurant called pink tacos beside the room as well as a Starbucks located next door. The floor at the Hard Rock are excellent. All staff at the Hard Rock Poker Room seems to be a tight bunch. They are a very friendly bunch.

The games that were spread at the Hard Rock Poker Lounge were $1/$2 nl and $2/$5 nl. The $1-$2 had a buyin of $100/$300 and the $2 -$5 had a buyin of $200/$2,000. What I did notice is that they could only spread a $2-$5 game from Thursday to Sunday in the afternoons to early morning, which is ok because that’s when the Hard Rock gets the majority of traffic. The $1 – $2 spread 1 table in the early mornings and they would have a floor playing as a prop player to get the game going.  I don’t even play $1 – $2 so i didn’t really play at the Hard Rock until the weekend before I went out to the club.

While playing at the Hard Rock Poker Lounge I played $2 – $5 with Jamie Gold. The game was fantastic as everyone had well over 3k in front of them at one point. No clue why Jamie Gold was playing such low limits.  Most of the time i played  $2 – $5 the game was insanely soft. I would buyin for the 2k max and most players had 300 to 500 in front of them.

I did have one major complaint with the poker room. The floor did not really have a solid foundation when it came to a few specific rulings. It seemed to me that the floor basically took the majority of the player’s word when making a ruling. Maybe it was just the one floor I dealt with but that was my general consensus. Most smaller poker rooms generally make “friendly” rullings to appease the majority of the players (to get them to come back).  Stuff like this wouldn’t ever happen if you go to 1 of the 4 top poker rooms in Vegas (Bellagio, Venetian, Caesars, and Wynn).

That being said, the staff at the Hard Rock Lounge were extremely nice to the players. If you had the players they would spread whatever game and whatever limit you wanted. The staff at the poker lounge even walked us in to the Hard Rock club (Body English) on Halloween. It was pretty much the casinos busiest time of the year.

If the Hard Rock ran a $2 – $5 game around the clock every day i pretty much wouldn’t have left the casino. I did extremely well while playing there and the staff made my stay at the Hard Rock a great overall experience.

Oh and I bumped into Daniel Negraunu while playing at the Hard Rock. Apparently he was giving lessons to a contest winner. Here is a pic of me and Negraunu. I played a lot this summer at the WSOP and didn’t stop one pro for a picture. Heck I even played with Phil Galfond and Jamie gold. I guess I just consider these guys to be regular people.

Cheers,

Errol

Later on in the week I played some 2/5 with 5 deep stacked players. One of them included the ever so animated Alan Boston (7 Card Stud player). I recognized him from being on poker after dark. What a table this was. Alan probably went through a few buyins (unwilling to lay his hand down after missing many draws).

He told me that he would be disappointed if he didn’t make the 7 card stud 10k buy in. I saw him at the Rio during the event and he said he was playing solid however was card dead for most of the event. He also mentioned that he got into an accident with his Ferrari before the event started. I made a few buyins at the cash game with Boston and got some great insight into the world of sports betting. Alan told the table to put money on game 1 of the nba finals and the series. So I took his advice and bet the Celtics for both bets. So far I already cashed in on game 1 and am waiting to cash my 1.7 to 1 ticket if the Celtics when the series.

Cheers,

Errol