We flew in Friday afternoon and farted around at typical casino games before an early dinner. After a bit of banter, we decided to try the Luxor because they have the lowest limit poker on the strip and one of our players was very apprehensive about playing.

Luxor
$2/$4 Limit
Friday evening & night

The "room" at the Luxor is more of a railed off area with tables fairly close together. I didn't feel cramped but this room definitely didn't have the roominess of the room at the Aladdin. At any rate, two of us sat down at $2/$4 table because there was no wait (the guy that wanted the $1/$2 game chickened out on us). We played for about four hours and I'd classify the game as loose passive. In general, I'd say people were playing
too many hands because we typically had five or six players see the flop but not many made it to the showdown. This was low limit after all but there weren't a large number of wild draws taking down strong hands.

The dealers at the Luxor seemed OK. One was a bit testy but it could have been an act. He was giving it to a college kid pretty much the whole time.

The cocktail service was adequate; if I needed a drink, a waitress always seemed to wander by within a short period of time.

Aladdin
$2/$4 Limit
Saturday - all day
A real "room". As described in the editor's review, this ornately tiled room looks like it used to be a slot room. There are still a few $5 slot machines along the wall but there aren't many. The room is airy and light. My only complaint concerns the number of TV's. I as playing during the NFL semi-final weekend and there were only about 4 seats at each table that could see the single big screen TV. Sadly, I never had one of those seats so I kept having to turn around when the other players would holler about some play that just happened in the football game. I guess I should have been there to play poker instead of watch TV. :)

As for the competition, when my buddy and I got there Saturday morning, the management was giving us the hard sell for a single table NL winner-take-all tournament. Our skills weren't quite up to those standards so we passed and played in a ring game instead.

Early Saturday, the game was even looser than the one I played in at the Luxor the night before. A couple times 8 or 9 players saw the flop. I swear one player close to me saw every flop. He usually gave it up at the turn but he did win a few pots by hitting wild draws. Oh well, he had a big stack after collecting a $599 bonus for quad Q's.

Oh how time changes the game, however. By early afternoon, our table was full of younger, tight aggressive players. Rarely did more than two or three players see the flop and most pots were won without a showdown. This type of play went on for hours with the ten of us just grinding away. My buddy and I started getting bored because we just
weren't getting anything playable and when we did get a hand that was playable for one bet, someone would raise ahead of us and we had to muck. We finally wore out and went to dinner.

When we got back for more play, the complexion of the room had changed. There were many more NL games going on than limit. In fact, we might have been playing at the only $2/$4 limit game in the room. We played for a couple hours with only 7 players. The game was getting really stale and we were about to leave when the table filled up and we had new people to tell stories to.

As I suspect is the case at many rooms, the later in the day you get, the more drunk people get. We had one guy that had turned into a full blown maniac by the time we left. This guy called for pocket A's every hand, claimed to get one every time and cheered the flop incessantly. His constant raising wouldn't have been so bad except
that I wasn't getting anything and this guy was two seats to my left so I had to act before him preflop, every hand. I wasn't real comfortable limping with any medium strength hand for one bet.
I would have used him to do my betting for me but I never got a hand worthy of such handling. Needless to say, I didn't play many hands.

The dealers at the Aladdin were fairly quiet and competent, except for one dealer that I swear was taking too much rake from the pot. I'm new to keeping track of bets but when I've counted 12 small bets and there's $3 already in the rake stack, something seems wrong.

The high hand jackpots are a nice touch. I didn't collect one so the extra rake annoyed me by the end but my buddy made $114 with quad 7's. In fact, our table collected 5 high hand jackpots during the day for quads. Sadly for the guy that made quad Q's in the evening, the bonus for a hand reverts to $20 once it's been paid. The dealer told us the bonuses are reset at 3am every day. Another nice touch was the cookies that showed up around 4pm. If you're there, keep an eye out for them. Once the announcement is made that they are available, they disappear within minutes. The
cocktail service at the Aladdin deserves special commendation. The room wasn't crowded most of the day but it seemed as though the waitress was by every 5 minutes taking drink orders. Maybe that's how the maniac got so hammered!?

Monte Carlo
$2/$4 Limit
Sunday morning

We were staying at the Monte Carlo but I was reluctant to play this room because of the "caters to tight locals" characterization here on AVP. On Sunday morning at least, this couldn't have been further from the truth. There was an older lady that seemed to be a local because the staff all knew her but she was anything but tight. When I was there, I'd describe the game as a loose passive, friendly game. I'll confess that I was disappointed when I raised under the gun with Q's and had six callers but overall, the game experience was entertaining. FYI, no, the Q's
didn't hold up.

The ambiance of the room is very "den like". Dark wood panelling on the walls with large paintings of poker games. The downside is that some of the tables are very close to the wall. I had a hard time getting in and out of my seat and felt pinned in the corner. At least there were TV's in every corner so I could watch one other than the one right above my head.

The dealers were very friendly and contributed to the relaxed atmosphere of the game. The Monte Carlo also uses automatic shufflers so the game moved a bit faster than the hand shuffled game at the Aladdin.

Cocktail service was OK but not outstanding. I ran dry a few times and had to wait longer than I would have liked but it's not like there was no cocktail service.

If you made it this far, you are very patient indeed. I hope the information is helpful for your trip.