How many Vegas casinos have poker rooms. And are any of them safe for an inexperienced player?
[Editor's Note: This answer is provided by Blair Rodman, semi-retired poker pro and author of our book Kill Phil.]
Seventeen Las Vegas casinos host poker rooms: Aria, Bellagio, Boulder Station, Caesars, Golden Nugget, Green Valley Ranch, Horseshoe, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand, Orleans, Red Rock, Santa Fe, Skyline, South Point, Venetian/Palazzo, Westgate, and Wynn/Encore.
Now, when you say “safe,” I’m assuming you're not worried about your physical safety, in particular. If you are, take the usual sensible precautions and you should have no problem.
Instead, assuming you're asking about being safe from cheating, or ganged up on by teams of professionals, or just being seated with a bunch of expert sharks against whom you have little chance, that's actually not much different than your physical safety. If this were the 1950s, those would be concerns in almost any casino poker game, as “snatch games,” where the house dealer surreptitiously raked up to half the pot, were common, as well as outright cheating. (In fact, in the 1800s, poker was widely known as “the cheating game”.)
These days, the casino card room environment is much different. The rake is posted and adhered to and outright cheating, in the unlikely event there is any, would be confined to the biggest games, where the risks are worthwhile for the cheaters.
In terms of your inexperience, you’ll want to stick to the lowest-limit and buy-in games, generally populated by recreational players looking to have some fun. If you do some study on the basics of poker strategy, you’ll likely be competitive and be able to relax and enjoy the experience, which is a good goal.
The one thing I sometimes see in smaller games, which isn’t exactly cheating, but isn't good for poker, in my opinion, is known as “soft-playing.” This refers to friends not playing hard against each other. For example, if the early action drives all the players out of the pot excepts the friends, they’ll check it down to the river and sometimes the winner will toss some chips to the loser. It’s not a big deal unless they aggressively push other players out of the pot before going into “check-down” mode. That's unethical, but unfortunately, it isn’t strictly policed. So it should be reported to management.
To summarize, if you stick to the bigger cardrooms, smallest games, and go in with the idea that you probably won't win a bunch of money, but rather accept that the money you might lose is the cost of your entertainment, similar to the mindset that should be adopted by recreational sports bettors, you should be fine.
