I just spent a week at the Bellagio on a family vacation. The hotel is beautiful and huge which means that everything is far away. I understand the soon to open Wynn is more inimate. The Bellagio poker room is still undergoing renovations but the poker "area" is just fine. While I was there the number of tables doubled due to an upcoming tornament. At night the waiting list was long so I opted to play at 5 am. This allowed me to spend the rest of the day and evening with my family. At that hour there were 3 or 4 low limit tables going with no waiting.

As a complete novice, I intended to get my feet wet at the Imperial Palace but when I got a look at the IP's poker room it looked pretty tacky with worn tables so I headed back the the Bellagio. Early in the morning the tables had several locals playing, some waiting for spots on the no limit tables. I asked one of these guys why they were beating up on the tourists and he said, "The tourists like to be beaten up." I said, "Well, I'm just here to learn". At 4/8 it took a buy-in of $200 to be able to play comfortably. The first time I was in a big blind, the dealer asked "Option?", I said, "What's that?" Happily I didn't make any big mistakes after that except I almost forgot to to turn over my second card when I had 4 sevens up against two boats. I would have really mucked-up if I tossed the second card. After several sessions, I ended up about $50 plus after coffee expenses, much to the amusement of my wife who won over $500 playing 3 card pseudo poker.