Colorado casinos stack up with Sin City

By Mark Lasser

Once upon a time, if you wanted to play “real” poker, you had a choice of Atlantic City or Las Vegas. The New Jersey casinos had a reputation of being unfriendly and inconveniently located, since they aren’t near a major airport. Vegas had two styles: friendly and affordable downtown, and the glitzy strip.

Then states’ gambling laws started changing. We got Indian casinos, riverboat casinos, bigger card rooms in California, New Orleans, Mississippi, Connecticut and huge developments in Macau near Hong Kong. As all this developed, Las Vegas got bigger, brasher and very expensive.

Last month I visited the new Aria mega-hotel/casino in the City Center project of Las Vegas to see the newest poker room on The Strip. After a few hours I got a feel for the place and started making a mental list of the pros and cons of poker in Colorado vs. Vegas.

Setting: I have to say, Colorado wins here easily. The mountain settings of Cripple Creek, Central City and Black Hawk are beautiful. Long ago, when the Vegas strip was surrounded by expansive desert and mountains, it was nice, but now it’s just suburban sprawl as far as the eye can see. The City Center complex is a particular eyesore. It looks like a collection of haphazard glass and steel office buildings surrounded by driveways. We work in office buildings, why would we want to stay and play in them?

The physical poker room: The poker rooms at Bellagio, Wynn, Venetian and Aria are designed for the players. Great chairs and tables, high ceilings, heavy chips, cool drapery and custom carpets.

Drink service: You never realize how nice it is to have self-service coffee and soft drinks until you spend $10 tipping cocktail servers for small glasses of Coke and bad coffee. Did I mention the water in Nevada tastes like industrial run-off? If you’re boozing, it’s a draw.

Food: This is harder to evaluate objectively. For fine dining, Vegas is incredible. High-end ($$$$) restaurants abound, offering the latest from celebrity chefs. Of course, if you’re looking for a hot dog, it will set you back $9 at the Aria. At $1/hour comp, it takes a long day to earn a hot dog. The buffet? How about $36 for Friday or Saturday dinner where dishes are labeled with grease pencil on the sneeze guard and gourmet offerings include refried beans and rice. I take Colorado over Vegas for really good day-to-day food and Vegas over Colorado for splurges.

Quality of dealers: Close to a tie here, but I’m going with Colorado. Both have a range of quality. In my Aria tournament, the dealer misread a hand and pushed a split pot to my opponent before I caught her. Rather than apologize, she explained she had dealt the counterfeiting river to save me. Colorado dealers are very friendly to the regulars.

Quality of players and games: Vegas players are much tighter in general, especially at higher limits. They also play more games, including kill pot variations, Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha H/L, Stud H/L and, of course, very high limit Hold’em. There was a $1,000-$3,000 game during my stay. Also saw Sam Farha playing at the Bellagio.

Having many different tournaments to choose from is also a great feature of Vegas. During my trip there were regularly scheduled events in almost every card room as well as a World Series of Poker at Caesars, a World Poker Tour event at the Bellagio and a deep stacks, 30-minute round Hold’em event at the Aria. I played the Aria event and chopped with three others when we were close to even and the blinds had us playing more for luck than skill.

Do you have a favorite card room, dealer, casino or dining option? Let me know and we’ll share it with the Colorado poker community.

Mark B. Lasser is Denver writer and international poker player. He regularly plays in Colorado, Arizona, California, Missouri and Nevada. His work has appeared in Bikini Magazine, Blue Travel and Warp. Readers can send questions and comments to him at ColoradoPokerMark@comcast.net.