Stratosphere

I hope to visit many different rooms during my off hours and report on them here. There are surely better forums for you to visit for a comprehensive review, and I might stop by and add my two cents on them as well, but my main interest is just to see as much poker as possible this summer and learn/observe what seems to work well (and not so well). Since I was arriving on the strip well after midnight and I've been on a dealing schedule that included several allnighters the past few weeks, I decided to save a holiday weekend night's rent and just play a little through the morning and check in on Sunday. Since I am on foot still, my choices were pretty much limited to the north end of the strip and I'd never been to the Stratosphere, so it seemed like a decent target of opportunity.

The poker room is hidden in a cramped corner near the sports book. It is quite small, only six tables, and I learned sometime during the morning that it is managed from the table games pit rather than the sports book or having its own autonomy. When I arrived the final table from a midnight tournament was still in action and two cash tables each had a couple of empty seats. I quickly recognized a friend from the dealer school and was glad to see that she was regularly employed. She was pushed to a break, but was kept quite busy with lots of brush duties and I decided that a simple "Hi" was sufficient at this time. I was pretty hungry, so I toured the main casino area and cafe/restaurants to see if I could find a wifi hotspot (no luck) and had a little breakfast before sitting in a game. When I got back, the tourney was done and both tables were full, so I watched a little. One was 1/2 NL with a $100 min/$300 max buy-in and the average stacks had near the max. The other table looked to be a limit game, full of white chips, but the betting proved otherwise. I saw a couple of very small pots and pot-sized river bets, so I thought it might be pot limit, but when a seat opened, I noticed that the plaque said 1/1 NL. I took the seat immediately and pulled out five twenties and the dealer looked at my strangely. The table captain quickly chimed, "your not from around here, are ya?". I was instructed that it was a $40 min/$40 max buy-in and I thought this was pretty curious as half of the table had well over a hundred in white chips in front of them. But I wasn't going to let that deter me, adjusted my cash offering, and the dealer sold me a couple of stacks from his tray.

More about my play will come in another post. I want to focus this one on the room review. In short, this probably won't be a room that I return too. The small game and weak play is a bit enticing, and the standard $4/hand rake plus one for jackpots is reasonable, but the game was very, very slow. Two of the three graveyard dealers were clearly not very experienced and I let many, many miscounts and small errors go without comment when I was not involved in the hand. I know it must be tough dealing through those hours in a dismal little room, but I expect more and there was not much consistency or floor presence. One dealer was using a moving button without enforcing misssed blinds for players that got up from their seat. Another used the missed-blind lammers but didn't move the blinds or button, so there was often just a single blind. I saw a new player dealt in a hand between the button and the already posted blinds. And more often than not, players attempted illegal raises or string bets and were not corrected. I hate dealers who table captain during their off-hours play, so I kept quiet most of the time, only standing up for a bet if I was involved. One dealer really did try her best to keep the game moving, but it was agonizingly slow anyways. They had a $55+5 rebuy tournament scheduled for the morning, but with only 14 players, I passed on it.

I will go back to the Stratosphere someday for a sky high meal or to take in the rides, but unless I hear about a complete revamp of the poker room, it is doubtful I will go there to play. And I won't be walking in dressed in black and whites asking for an auditon either.