Yesterday, we talked about casino complimentaries that any poker player can get in most Las Vegas poker rooms if they know what to look for and how to ask. Today, we discuss what the casinos return in comps to high-limit poker players.
If you want to get a peek at the center of the high-limit poker universe, just go to the poker room at Bellagio and have someone point you to Bobby's Room. This is the luxurious security-guarded, glass-enclosed, two-table pit where a who's who of poker superstars play against one another. Through the windows, railbirds gawk at and drool over pots the size of a year's pay.
However, in a man-bites-dog switch of roles, the casino, too, drools over the pots. It's well-known that casinos, whether they rake a little cut out of each poker pot, as in the low-limit games, or, as in this case, rent space at the tables, earn less money hosting poker than any other game of chance. So when Gus Hansen, for example, wins $60,000 from Jennifer Harman, Phil Ivey, Barry Greenstein, Todd Brunson, and Johnny Chan, the house only earns $10 per half hour per player in Bobby's Room. Bellagio, thus, takes a negligible cut of the world's largest poker action.
Which is why, in a nutshell, poker players, small and big, rank somewhere near the bottom of the barrel when it comes to reaping the benefits from the huge giveaway of goodies by casinos throughout the land.
We asked a few experts about it and here's what they had to say.
David Matthews, a long-time poker player and the winner of the 2006 Ultimate Blackjack Tour: "Casino complimentaries are different for poker than for the table games and gambling machines. No free rooms, no nice dinners, no seats at shows, no limos from the airport. Not even for the biggest players. Forget about it. But you might get a sandwich."
Blair Rodman, who's been frequenting Las Vegas cash games and tournaments for 25 years: "Poker players aren't, when you come right down to it, casino customers. Even with all the new poker rooms opening up in the past few years, they're still loss leaders for the casinos, same as ninety-nine-cent shrimp cocktails and five-dollar steaks."
Steve Cyr, proprietor of H Six, a high-roller hosting company: "I won't even talk to poker players. Casinos don't make any money from poker players, which means I don't make any money from poker players, which means I have nothing to offer poker players in return."
We inquired further. We asked a long-time poker room manager. We talked to a couple of big players. "What about the vaunted high-rolling poker players, the superstars who hang out in Bobby's Room, are seen constantly on the TV poker shows, and always seem to be playing at final tables of tournaments? Do they get any special considerations?"
Here's a summary of the answers: Limits don't have anything to do with the level of comps.
The casino rakes its $3-$4 per pot of the low-limit games, and its $100-$140 per hour from the high-limit games. That's all. The high-limit games are good for cachet, but not much more. Unless a big player has a separate deal with the casino, such as Daniel Negreanu, who was the high-paid poker ambassador at the Wynn recently, the big players get just as little as the little players.
For example, the MGM Grand’s "Poker Room Comp Policy" on the casino's Web site states that players logged into time-collection poker games, who pay by the half-hour instead of by the pot, receive comp values per hour that are only slightly higher than for those at low limits. When MGM charges $6 per half-hour per player at one of its high-limit tables, the comp value is $1.20, only 20 cents higher than a raked game. The comp value does go up to $2 an hour, but that's for a game that charges $10 per half-hour for space -- where the limits are in the thousands.
As for tournaments, such as the $10,000-buy-in World Series of Poker that just concluded at the Rio, comps are often worse than in the cash games. During
