Bally's

Hours, Tables, Location
Open 24/7.

10 tables.

In the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, across the street from Bellagio.

Games and Info
The room gives poker lessons daily at 9:30 am.

Limit hold 'em: They also claim to have 6/12 and 10/20, but there were no games running, and no interest list, on the Sunday evening I was there.
 * $2/$4 with a full kill
 * $3/$6
 * $4/$8

No-limit hold 'em:
 * $100-$200 buyin, $1/$2 blinds.
 * $200-$500 buyin, $2/$5 blinds.

7-Stud: They have signs that claim they spread 7-Stud, but there was no game or list on Sunday, and the manager said they don't really have any interested players, so they don't spread it. Their signs also claim they spread Pineapple, but the manager also said the same thing: no interest.

Posting: New players are not required to post.

Shuffling: All tables have standard Shufflemaster machines.

Wait Time
With so few tables, wait times can be highly variable, from 0 minutes to 30 minutes or more, depending on limit and demand.

They have a really nice computerized board system managed by the brush which combines listings for the tables here and those at Paris Las Vegas. You can sign up here at Bally's for tables at Paris, and vice versa; more importantly, you can see what games are running at the other casino and decide if you want to walk the three minutes it'll take you to get to the other casino's poker room (Paris and Bally's are connected). The computerized board also tracks if there is interest in a game that isn't running yet; when enough interest is shown, they can open a table for it.

Tournaments and Jackpots

 * Mon-Fri 11am: NLHE $50+$5 tournament, 1x$5 ao. Limited to 50 players.
 * They claim to have $100+$10 sit-n-gos but there were no tables and not even an interest list when I was there on a Sunday evening.
 * They now have high hand jackpots for quads or straight flushes.

Atmosphere
The Bally's poker "room" is not so much a room as a weird little open area that's behind the box office near the front door, right next to a bar, and sort of in the middle of the table games area of the casino. It looks like an area that they would normally have put some bar tables in, or thrown in some video poker, but instead put in 10 poker tables. It's not a separate room in any sense, indeed, there really isn't any physical divider between the poker and the blackjack. The desk for the brush is right up front and acts as a sort of "gate" for the area.

The fact that you're kind of in the middle of the casino does lead to a louder level of noise than would be pleasant, but it's bearable. The dealers seem reasonably competent, though I did see a number of mistakes (not announcing the kill, for instance, or missing a player's raise).

There seems to be a larger tourist-to-regular ratio here than in the more well-established rooms. It seems the players here are more likely to be hotel guests than Vegas locals. One fun aspect of playing at Ballys is that because there are no walls between the poker tables and the casino floor, you get a lot of table game gamblers stopping to watch the action. I have seen people enticed to give poker a try. The floor seems to try to keep the games nearest the table games in action. It's always funny to see a crowd gathered around watching the 2/4 game.

There are no chip runners, so you buy chips and cashout from the brush. So, no long lines at the cashier. Dealers keep their own tips.

Smoking: Non-smoking, but since it's next to the bar and really kind of in the middle of the casino, there's considerable smoke drift from the nearby table games and bar.

Tables and Chairs: Standard Vegas 10-player tables with a commit line, and worn but serviceable felt. Standard fixed-leg metal padded chairs. Cup holders are those "slide it under the padding" kind, not built-in.

Service and Comps
There's only one waitress for the whole room, but since there's only 10 tables (and usually only 6 are in use), and since the bar is literally only fifteen feet away, she does a good job and service is relatively prompt and cheerful. The sodas served here are quite large, and when I asked for cherries in my Diet Coke, the bartender put in about a dozen cherries!

I don't know if they have any sort of "player's card" or comps for poker play.

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Links

 * Official Bally's Las Vegas Website

Visited by wiki authors
Visited by MarkT in Mar 2006.