Started off at the Sahara for $2/4 limit Hold‘em April 4th. I had read that this room was fairly tight and that it was frequently played by local dealers. I found this assessment right on the money. At one point the first night I was there, the manager called over to a table that they needed some help, so one of the players got up from his game, went into the other room, then came out with his dealer shirt on and began to work. The players are definitely very tight and passive. Rarely were there family pots, with mostly 5-6 seeing the flop and 2-4 betting on the river. To show how conservative the players were, on one hand after I had folded, there were no pairs showing on the board after the river and a bet to the player on my right. He called, then flipped over an Ace high flush. I couldn’t believe he didn’t raise with the solid nuts. There is also a lot of checking which makes the players easy to read. Because the room was so tight, I ended up winning with some hands that normally I would fold before the flop. I was there three different nights, so this must be the norm. As far as the management, they were friendly but very disorganized. Drinks were frequent (at least on a weeknight) and the waitresses attentive. On a humorous note, I was there at the same time as someone who previous posted on this site and who commented on the good looking women players during a tournament being held at the same time I was playing limit. What was more entertaining was watching all the men in the room practically break their necks turning to watch her when she occasionally got up from the table. She had nearly every man in the room right where she wanted: looking at her instead of concentrating on her play. Overall, you can make money playing low limit at the Sahara but you have to grind it out over time. You may win three $40 pots instead of one $120 pot. On the plus side, you won’t ever get sucked out by some maniac.

I also tried Bally’s as a change of pace because I read on this site that this room was frequented by a lot of loose players throwing money around. Maybe it was because I played between 4 and 6 in the afternoon in the middle of the week, but it certainly was not as loose/aggressive as I had read. There were two players who admitted when they sat down that they had never played before, but other than that, most played strong hands and folded when they didn’t have anything. There were usually only 2-4 players betting on the river. It was definitely a tighter game than what I expected, but my experience at Bally’s was probably unusual due to the time of day that I went.