Player's Stories

Reviewing Las Vegas Poker Rooms - Palms Casino
By Gone West

GET YOUR FIFTEEN MINUTES AT THE PALMS!

Look there's Britney! Make way for Brad and Jennifer! We are after all at the Palms Casino this time around. You know the Palms where MTV' Real World Vegas was filmed and all the cool people go to hang out. Recently, CNN.com posted an article declaring the Palms the hippest place in Vegas. The coolest of the cool stay here and occasionally perform for small crowds. Even the owners are hip. The Palms is owned and operated by the Maloof family, the same family who owns the Sacramento Kings and numerous other successful business interests. Often, you see or read about the various Maloof boys' exploits as single conquistadors living the good life. Oh Yeah, the Palms does have a poker room too. If you can put down your autograph book for a second, then the Palms is more than happy to deal a few cards in your direction.

ACTION - The Palms is a small eight-table poker room jammed into the casino almost as an afterthought to the overall design. This room is strictly a low limit haven. The biggest game in the room is normally just $4-8 Hold-em. They also are taking advantage of the new poker interests with the increasingly popular $2-4 Hold-em game that seems to fill up wherever anyone deals it. Normally, you will not find any Omaha games dealt in this room. During one session, I did sit in a $6-12 Hold-em game, but apparently that is not a regular game.

However, an interesting attraction to the Palms poker room is that about twice week, Wednesday and Friday nights, the Palms offers the only seven card stud Hi/Lo game in Vegas. For those of you who enjoy stud or Hi/Lo games, this is nice addition to the local scenery. I have not sat in the game but it appears to be very popular and fills easily throughout the night.

For those who have not been to the Palms you have to mentally prepare yourself for the scene if you are over the age of thirty. You see the Palms is where it is at for the young and easily influenced. The famous Rain Nightclub and Ghost Bar are here and that attracts legions of black-clad patrons desperate to be a part of the in-crowd. Why anyone would stand in line for three hours to pay for a $10 martini is beyond me. But this is the country where one of its most important states did just elect a man who played a Cyborg in a couple of movies to be the Governor. I guess the porn queen did not poll well enough!

In order to enjoy your session at the Palms, you have to be prepared for large crowds and young players who are beginners. You will hear more references to the movie, Rounders, than the Travel Channel out of these players. That should tell you a lot about the mix of players. There are some regular stiffs in the place and this makes for an interesting evening as the good time beginners bust regulars up with 8-3 offsuit and then order another beer.

Overall, I give the Action at the Palms a pair of Eights. You may see these middle pairs a lot, but playing them makes sense only under certain situations.

SERVICE QUALITY - The Palms poker room is run quite efficiently. No one seems hurried or flustered. The desk to sign up is right up front and the games are filled and moved along quite well. You do not have to mill around the room waiting to get into a game. They can call your name over the loudspeaker and it can be heard just about everywhere. The Dealers are very efficient and very patient to new players who make numerous mistakes of etiquette and play. I do think that since the room is rather small it becomes easier to manage all around. But, the staff really has a grip on the situation and handles the regulars with the new players quite well.

To my amazement, I was shocked to find myself quite disappointed with the cocktail waitresses. During each session, I witnessed some type of altercation between player and waitress over trivial stuff. I also talked to a few regulars who claimed that besides being slow, the waitresses were normally quite testy. I guess I was a little surprised because I just did not think that the players in these mix-ups were asking for anything out of line or out of the ordinary. I have witnessed far worse acting players in other rooms than these people. Yet, the waitresses were really quick with the snide remark or escalation of the matter. I can attribute some of this to the casino's normal crowd. Cocktailing is a tough gig and I am sure it does not help that there are literally hundreds of drunken twenty-five year olds giving these ladies a hard time in ways only a twenty-five year old drunken guy at a Bachelor party can only do. However, there really is no excuse for the kind of retorts I witnessed, especially, when everything else seems to run so smoothly.

I still have to give the Service at the Palms a pair of Jacks. Raise it up, but the waitresses make me fold when the over card comes.

COMPS - The poker room requires you to have a Player's card in order to accumulate comps. Once again, the formula for receiving these comps can only be deciphered by NASA. I will never understand the need for Einstein level equations to tally a comp. What is wrong with $1.00 an hour or something to that effect? After a few trips to the room, I asked them to tell me how much I had on my card. The very polite floor person informed me that I only had $5.60. Again, I am not quite sure why a comps system needs to go down to the nickel like this. Also, this amount seemed a little low in relation to the hours I had logged over a few weeks. I definitely have accumulated more for the same amount of hours in other rooms.

I give the comps system a pair of sevens, to be played only under the right conditions.

MISCELLANEOUS -I have to say that the Palms does do a nice job spicing up their little poker room with extras. They have the high hand jackpots for every game. What they are and for how much are readily displayed all over the room. You hit a nine high straight flush and you know exactly what that is worth. I again warn readers that you make sure to know what the rules for hitting these are. All jackpot rules in Las Vegas are more complicated than a recall ballot in California.

Another nice touch at the Palms is the free cash giveaways. During the Sunday and Monday night Football games, the Poker room gives away cash every time someone scores. If you are logged with your Player's card, your name is in the computer and it randomly selects a person each time a score occurs. A person can win up to $500 for just sitting in the game. The normal win is about $75. Also, if the person is not around after a few minutes, then they choose another name. So, someone always wins.

I have to give these ideas a rating of Pocket Aces. The Palms really understands what type of player they are getting in their room and have set up their extras to make the scene fun for everyone. Nice touch!

JOKER - I have to admit that I am a person who is very anti-crowds. Therefore, the Palms makes me very nervous after a short period of time. The casino is just so popular right now that people are everywhere, especially on the weekends when the club scene is cranked up to full volume. This claustrophobia is exacerbated by the very small dimensions of the poker room. I liken it to playing cards in a submarine. It seems as if the poker room was added to the casino as an afterthought when some extra space appeared in the design. I will say that all the other special areas in the casino seem to be equally cramped. I guess this adds to the hip and modern motif of the place.

Another problem is that the poker room sits right next to a set of bathrooms. One thing that large crowds of young people having too good a time bring with them is NOISE. There are only so many shrieks from large gaggles of girls one person can take. It has everything to do with decibels and not gender. In fact, I moved after the two women next to me move for the same reason.

I have to give this section a 7-3 off-suit. The tight fit and the noise are just too much for this Midwesterner to handle.

My overall view of the Palms is of a pair of Tens. There is not much wrong with this Pair, there are just better cards to have pre-flop. I play the Palms when I am over there for other reasons, like going to the movies or having dinner. The nice thing about the Palms poker room is that it is just trying to be fun for its patrons. It is not trying to attract professionals or high limit players. Trust me, no one is in there was making a living. In fact, I have played several times over there and I have yet to see a set of headphones. I did wish I had some earplugs though. The Palms casino is drawing enormous crowds, especially on the weekend. The draw on their poker is not paying the electric bill. One trip on a Saturday night will tell you all you need to know. Yet, the room still does a nice job. The games are full and organized. Some casinos just toss their small rooms in the back and dream of the day when they can put some slots in its place. The Palms takes it seriously and that is why the games are still pretty good for low-limit. They are not looking to become the next stop on the World Poker Tour. They just want you to sit down and play in case Christina Aguilera strolls by with her entourage. I hear that the Kings and Lakers are staying at the Palms when they play their Exhibition game in Vegas this month. Go play some $4-8 Hold-em and see if Shaq stops by!