Off and on, poker rooms in Las Vegas do offer "lessons." Why the quote marks? Because the level of instruction involved varies quite a bit from place to place. But here's the good news: The only things you really need to understand to get into a game are the rules specific to hold 'em and how the betting structure works (antes, blinds, and raises), and every room that purports to give lessons does that. Once you're in the game, getting out with your hide is another story, and there are some links to our new poker books at the end of this answer that will help you with that. Meanwhile, we canvassed the rooms, asking which of them give hold 'em lessons, and we came up with the following list:
Bally’s (10 a.m. daily); Binion’s (10 a.m. daily); Boulder Station (2 p.m. daily, dark Weds.); Circus Circus (Mon.-Fri., 10 a.m.); Excalibur (11 a.m. daily and recommended by other Strip poker rooms that don’t offer lessons); Fitzgeralds (Sat. and Sun., 11 a.m.); Golden Nugget (10 a.m. daily); Luxor (2 p.m. daily); Mandalay Bay (Mon.-Thur., 2 p.m.); MGM Grand (10:30 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily); Monte Carlo (11 a.m. daily; also recommended); Poker Palace (5 p.m.); Rio (9 a.m. to noon, on request); Texas Station (10 a.m. and 7 p.m. daily); Treasure Island (10:30 a.m. daily).
In addition to those poker rooms listed above that offer scheduled classes, the following casinos said that they will happily offer some one (or more)-on-one instruction if the room is quiet and there’s a spare dealer: Aria; Mirage; Palace Station; Red Rock; Riviera; Sam’s Town; Suncoast; Venetian; and Wynn.
Our two new poker titles, Annie Duke's Decide to Play Great Poker and The Raiser's Edge by Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Lee Nelson, et al., have been vying for first and second place on the Amazon.com best-seller list for poker books; for a beginner, Kill Phil is a very good place to start.
