Las Vegas is known for its poker. If you’re a tournament player, you’re in luck playing in Las Vegas. Nearly every Vegas poker room offers daily tournaments, sometimes 3-4 tournaments per day. Not every tournament is worth playing in. Some are too cheap or have such unfavorable blind structures that there’s really no point in playing. After playing in Las Vegas for years, I can safely say these are the best poker tournaments in Las Vegas:
Venetian Deep Stack Tournaments
Venetian has a Deep Stack Tournament series 3-4 times every year. This is a great opportunity to make a lot of money playing poker if you’re skilled. They attract thousands of players throughout a 2-week period. Tournaments range from $300-$500 for the daily tournaments and then generally around $1,500 for the main event. During the Deep Stack Tournaments, there is some great cash game action going on at Venetian.
Aria Daily Tournaments
If you’re looking for profitable daily tournaments, it’s hard to beat Aria’s poker room. They have 1:00 and 7:00 PM tournaments with a $125 buy-in. The 1:00 tournament usually has a field of 90-100 players and the 7:00 has a field of 45-75 players depending on the night. The blind structure for these tournaments is perfect and is favorable to the skilled players. You start with $10,000 in chips and the blinds increase every 30 minutes. Compared to most daily tournaments, that’s a perfect structure. You can expect first place to pay $2,300+ in these tournaments. And the coolest part is we have celebrities regularly play in the evening tournament on the weekends. I’ve played with Jose Canseco, Norm MacDonald (he even won it one night), etc.
MGM Grand Daily Tournaments
If the Aria buy-in of $125 is a bit steep for you, try out the MGM poker room. It’s not a bad tournament, either the 11:00 AM or 7:00 PM. The buy-in is $80 ($125 on Friday and Saturday) and usually attracted 25-30 players. The prize pool isn’t huge by any means but you can make a few bucks playing in this tournament regularly. It’s a good secondary tournament for those will a smaller bankroll. You can build your way up through this tournament and move onto higher buy-in tournaments once your bankroll affords it. Each player receives $6,000 in chips and blinds increase every 20 minutes. The tournament usually lasts about 5 hours or so.
World Series of Poker
You can’t discuss poker tournaments in Las Vegas without mentioning the World Series of Poker. This legendary series of poker tournaments is played annually at the Rio All-Suites Hotel (just off the Strip) and has been played there ever since 2004. Prior to that, the WSOP was hosted at Binion’s downtown on Fremont Street. The WSOP features events ranging from a $1,000 buy-in to a $1 million buy-in. Of course, the most coveted World Series of Poker bracelet is competed for in the $10,000 buy-in Main Event.
Additional Las Vegas Tournaments of Note
Many other casinos have decent daily poker tournaments. Treasure Island has a few $55 daily tournaments. This isn’t comparable to, say, Aria’s tournaments in terms of profitability but the players are so bad a solid poker player could make some decent money. The Orleans has multiple daily tournaments, including a H.O.R.S.E tournament. The Orleans poker room is one of the most underrated in Vegas and they are located about a mile west of the south end of the Strip.
Schedule of Daily/Weekly Poker Tournaments in Vegas
Usse the Bravo Poker Live app for an awesome current list of poker tourneys while you are in Vegas. All Vegas Poker also has a good updated list that can be sorted. Please post if you know of other good tournaments.
