Sunday, February 19, 2012

Tropicana update

I was at the Tropicana today to see some friends who were involved in the weekend festivities celebrating the official designation of the Trop poker room as the Jamie Gold Poker Room.


I played in a cash game for a few hours. I was surprised to learn that they have had some rule changes. When Gold started playing there on salary, they instituted special rules for his games. Those rules have now been extended to all $1/2 no-limit hold'em games played in the room.

These include:

1. Straddle for any amount from any position. Action starts to the left of wherever the straddle is. I don't know how they resolve it if more than one person wants to straddle, as I never saw that come up.

2. If all betting is complete because players are all-in, they can agree to run the board (or whatever remains of it to be put out) twice. I assume three or four times is also OK, though I didn't ask that specifically.

3. Players are more free than usual to discuss their hands during play, though it's not clear to me exactly how far they have moved the boundary on this point.

4. No chopping the blinds. (I think this was actually not a Gold rule, but was put in place to address the lack of action when they started the pay-players-by-the-hour promotion. However it originated, it is now the standard.)

If today was any indication, these rule changes make for some wild games. Sitting down in the first one was like being yanked off my feet by a tornado. A couple of very aggressive players were trading off straddling every hand for $15 or more, then following that up with a big raise over any callers. Players frequently were all-in before the flop with hands that in a normal $1/2 game would have gotten no more than one standard raise.

My guess is that if they keep these rules in place for the long haul, the Trop poker room will develop a deserved reputation that its $1/2 NLHE game, while nominally the same as is spread in all of the other 50+ rooms in town, is actually an entirely different animal. If you decide to try it out, bring a lot of cash for rebuys, and prepare for maybe the highest variance you've ever encountered.

Another change: One of the dealers there, Shannon, heads up a "dealer's-choice" game on many weekends. They will now be standardizing that to every Monday night. That makes a lot of sense, since that tends to be a quiet night for other poker. It also won't conflict with the Sunday night mixer at Imperial Palace or the Tuesday night HORSE tournament at M Resort or the Wednesday night HORSE tournament at Green Valley Ranch or the two weekend HORSE tournaments at Orleans. In other words, mixed game enthusiasts can now find their favorite form of poker on a regular, scheduled basis almost every day of the week now.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sweet is Jamie still there? Does he jokmly play 2/5?

One more q - what is max bi at 1/2
Ty

sevencard2003 said...

is it true they raised the payout to $12 an hour and u can pick ur hours now?

Bob@3RP said...

Is it just me or does all of that sound horrible?

grrouchie said...

Interesting. I've been meaning to check out the poker room but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Not sure I have the funds currently to play in this type of an environment so I'll have to put it off a little while longer.

I will be eyeing it up for WSOP time though as rules like that could bring in quite interesting games that time of year.

Rob said...

I played in that crazy 1/2 NL game a few months ago for an hour or so. It is wild and crazy and insane and somehow I managed to break even.

I don't know what it is, but I wouldn't really call it poker. Too helter-skelter for my mundane tastes. Don't expect to ever play in it again.

But Jamie seened like a nice enough guy, based on the hour I played with him. And the money I lost to some other player I won back from him.

hfrog355 said...

This sounds insane. Can't wait.

Is there a cap to the buy-in? Seems like a usual 100bb cap would be a little restrictive on a game like this.

Anonymous said...

kinda sounds like a game I played in over the weekend. A player who was stuck $1200 said the following...."some people like to play roulette on the casino floor and some people,like myself, like to play roulette at the poker table.