My friend just got back from Las Vegas, where he spent most of his time at the slots and blackjack tables. He said he thought about playing Texas Hold-Em, and the cheapest buy-in he saw was $40. However, two things stopped him from playing: 1) He was afraid he’d get eaten alive; and 2) [and I’m quoting my friend here verbatim] “There was a sign that said something about you had to pay the buy-in again at the top of every hour.”
So my questions are many:
[ul]
[li]What is the cheapest buy-in for Texas Hold-Em at Vegas Strip casinos? Are there any, say, $20 buy-in tables?[/li][li]How many players play per game?[/li][li]Is it winner-take-all (minus the casino’s cut, of course), or is there a payout structure for 2nd, 3rd, etc. place?[/li][li]When you buy in for, say, $50, are you given $50 in chips, or are you given, say, $10,000, only in worthless chips?[/li][li]What’s the deal with this re-buy-in that my friend thinks he saw?[/li][/ul]
There are two ways to play poker in a casino: cash games and tournaments.
In a cash game:
A lot of limit tables, some no-limit.
Betting limits stay the same for a particular table. A $2/$4 table, for example, has bets of $2 before the flop and on the flop, $4 on the turn and the river.
You buy chips that represent actual money. Unless you’re playing high-limits, you’ll get multiple stacks of $1 chips. At any time you can get up and leave the table, and turn your chips back into money at the cashier.
If you need more chips between hands, you can buy more.
$20 is a little small to buy in at a $2/$4 table (the smallest typical limit), but not unheard of.
The casino takes a percentage out of each pot as a rake. There will sometimes be an additional rake to support high-hand or bad-beat jackpots. Tipping the dealer a chip or two when you win a pot is also customary.
Casinos like to keep tables full – 10 or 11 players.
Disclaimer: I don’t have personal experience of no-limit cash games. I gather that the numbers that describe a no-limit cash table are not the size of the blinds, but rather the minimum and maximum buy-ins.
In a tournament:
Almost always no-limit.
Some are scheduled for particular times (and are typically big). Some are “sit-and-go” – as soon as they have one table full of players ready to play, they start.
You pay your entry fee and get a standard number of starting chips. These chips don’t represent money, they’re just betting units.
Blinds and minimum bets increase regularly – every 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or whatever. This forces action.
You play until you’re out of chips or you win the whole thing. Place high enough and you win a percentage of the prize pool. “High enough” could be top five out of 30 or so, top 10 or 20 out of 130 or so, or the top 1 or 2 out of ten.
Some tournaments offer re-buys and add-ons. Basically if you get crippled or eliminated early you can pay an additional fee to buy another fixed number of chips. If the tournament allows re-buys, this will be announced in advance as part of the tournament format. Typically all re-buys must be done within the first hour of the tournament.
As people get eliminated, players will be moved from one table to another to keep the numbers even and the tables relatively full.
The casino takes part of everybody’s entry fee as its profit. The rest goes in the prize pool.
As long as your friend knows how to not play stupidly, he’s not going to get “eaten alive” at your average $2/$4 limit table in Vegas. Even a $20 or $40 tournament isn’t really that bad, because the worst that happens is you go out early and lose your entry fee. Even if the tournament allows re-buys, you’re not required to use them if you don’t want to.
Also, the last time I was in Vegas (last year I think) they had a lot of cheap tables. (those $1 & $2 blinds add up for the house too) They were for learning so you couldn’t get wiped out. The unfortunate thing about those tables is that they always get to the showdown. If you sit down at that kind of table, just play the cards and not the other players.
I haven’t played in Vegas, but I have spent a considerable amount of time playing at the local card club, and I have to agree with FlightlessBird’s statement about how to play at the low limit tables. Because it’s ‘only $2’, you can’t bet enough to force anyone out who might be on a draw.
Play your good hands, throw out your bad ones, don’t be suprised if you have to fold 20 hands in a row, and don’t get overly shocked when the guy with a 2-5 of spades calls your top two pair and hits two spades to make a flush on the river.
And don’t expect to win money. At the lowest limit tables, the house’s rake is so high (10% at the local card club, $4 max), that it’s very hard to finish ahead unless you catch a run of exceptional cards and your opponents miss all of their draws.
I have never seen that before, and I play a lot in Vegas. I could see why they would want it, though, but it’s not a real big deal as you could leave at any time.
Cheapest buy-in I’ve seen is whatever is in your hand at the time. I saw a guy who was waiting for the no limit table to start (this was at 3 am, on a Tuesday) so limited action) so he played $1-2 Limit. He had in his hands, about $7, maybe 8. By the time the no limit table opened, he had made his $100 buy-in for that table. You usually see buy-ins for no limit tables and tournaments.
Casinos like to keep the tables full, so 10-11 (which is a bit too much for me, takes too long). I’ve seen 4 person tables (too small for me, too).
Payouts for winners in tournaments depends on the tournaments. The last WSOP had (what?) 64 payouts? My little sister won a tournament and there were only 2 payouts out of 64 (or so).
Buy-ins depend on the tournament. Most tournaments give you chips equivalent to mythical number. A good number of tournaments give you the amount you bought in for, like this tournament I was in in Ireland. Imagine my shock when they told me. I was playing like it was fake money. Imo, that’s strong play, but funny when you don’t know why.
I’m sure people will disagree with me, but I think re-buys are total weak sauce. I’ve been in tournaments, like the one I took third in Ireland, where they announced the re-buy, and all these people started throwing out cash. In the end, I suppose it worked out for me, b/c third place ended paying way more than estimated. However, I lost to a guy who maxed out the re-buys when he was a chip leader right before the re-buy limit.
Your sister won a WSOP event? Open a MPSIMS thread and tell us all about it!
[quote=mazinger_z5) I’m sure people will disagree with me, but I think re-buys are total weak sauce.[/QUOTE]
No disagreement from me. I don’t like rebuys at all. If there’s a limited number of rebuys per persone they’re a little more tolerable but my style of play doesn’t lend itself well to the “I can rebuy as much as I want so all in every hand it is” player.
I guess I should have been more specific in my OP and made it clear that I’m talking about No-Limit tournament or sit-n-go games. Can I buy into a sit-n-go for, say, $20, or is my friend’s $40 table about the low minimum?
Also, can you just walk into a casino, find a tournament, say “I want to play,” and plop down your money and play? Or are there qualifiers and all that?
When you get to the casino there will be available a listing of any tournaments and other events that the casino is running. Cardplayer magazine also includes tournament schedules for a number of card rooms. I’m sure that somewhere in town there will be $20 tournaments running (be aware that there will be an additional entry fee on top of the buy-in, so a $20 tournament will likely cost more like $25).
Qualifiers are generally reserved for larger events. No casino is going to run a qualifier for a $20 tournament, but that same $20 may buy you an entry into a qualifier for a $200 or $2000 tournament.
“Sit ‘n’ Go” means (from an online perspective anyway) a single table tournament. When you say “sit ‘n’ go” is that what you mean or do you mean “cash game,” in which players are free to enter and leave the game as they please (space permitting)? A cash game is going to have a minimum buy-in, which is often some multiple of the big blind.
One thing worth mentioning is that a lot of the casino poker areas I saw when I was last in Vegas were VERY full. Basically they had folks waiting in the wings to play and were calling their names as the tables freed up. This may not be true everywhere, and I am sure it varies by time of day, but I got the impression its not unusual to have to wait a while before you get a seat at a table.
I played a one table s&g at the Borgata in AC recently (it was the only one I have seen in AC). It was a $75 buy in ($60 to the pot, $15 to the house). I forgot what the blinds started at, but it was quite high. The payout structure was $500 for first, 100 for second. It is not like playing an s&g online.
