This Week in Vegas – Mixing it Up at The Orleans

Images: Orleans Poker Room

This week in Las Vegas, mixed games are on the menu at The Orleans, while The Wynn ghosts us all for a good reason. The Venetian isn’t resting on its laurels, bringing more DeepStack action to the felt, and we’ve got a retro tip for your time off the felt that will give you all the WSOP 1980s feels in the world. 

Playing The Board

The Venetian’s DeepStack Championship may be off the menu after a successful stint, but it has been replaced on a nightly basis by the decent-value $200 NLHE Bounty event, which charges 20% juice.

This might look high initially, but it is about the going rate for a lower buy-in nightly event rather than a series, and is well worth the squeeze, with a break every four levels instead of five in plenty of other poker rooms. It pays 12.5% of the field too, so whether you’re missing the WSOP or just starting to build a bankroll, it’s worth your time. 

Back at The Venetian this week, the DeepStack Showdown features $1.1m in guarantees, with the ‘Main Event’ $600-entry NLHE event offering a massive $150,000 guarantee. It takes place between August 5-9, so you’ll need to run, not walk, to take part this week. You can check out the full schedule of events here. 

Let’s look at the events on offer in Vegas this week and when you need to be in your seat.

Grow Your Games at The Orleans This Week 

If you’ve never played mixed games before, this is the week to start. With Golden Nugget not releasing any information about new tournament schedules after moving into their new home at the Rush Tower, and the Venetian between series, the time is right to head to The Orleans.

Frequently on our list of fan favorites, this week’s mixed games on offer include T.O.E., which we’d encourage you to dip your toes in.

The Orleans’ mixed-game events have decent guarantees, including $4,000 for the latest one, which costs just $150 to play. The registration fee is $30, so a pretty reasonable 20%, and you only really need to watch out if you bust and there’s a queue to join as an alternate, because you’ll go behind that list if you want to re-enter.

Other than that, a great opportunity to try your luck in different formats, and if you’re after a Bad Beat Jackpot on the side, then they’ve paid out $141,000 this week alone, with the poor soul who ran quad nines into quad jacks collecting over $75,000. 

The Orleans are pretty good at keeping their players up to date with all the fun on X.

Around the Rooms

To say things are quiet at The Wynn is a bit like saying Vegas can get a little warm in the summer, but this week, there is at least a very good reason for them keeping their powder dry. The Wynn Signature Series returns on August 17 and runs through September 7, so watch out for a full preview of that in next week’s column. It features 41 events, including mixed games, NLHE, seniors, and PLO – more on them all in seven days’ time.

The Monday-Friday $150-entry NLHE event at the Bellagio is decent value, but watch out for the starting-stack conundrum.

The $150 entry gets you 10,000 chips, but a ‘staff gratuity’ add-on of $17 doubles you to 20,000.

Paying $167 for 20,000 rather than $150 for 10,000 is obviously insane value, but make sure you’re aware and have the funds. You’d hate to miss out on the added value and would look stupider than a four-bet shove with seven-deuce off. 

South Point continues to maintain its player-friendly focus, and its $120 Omaha 8-or-Better tourney is fast becoming as popular as its NLHE offerings. Last night’s evening tournament saw 33 entries and awarded a top prize of $1,140, which, if you’re playing between events at The Orleans, could be a nice mixed game saver for your series bankroll. 

One to Swerve 

For much of the year, the ARIA is the place to be for high-stakes tournaments broadcast from the PokerGO Studio. The setup is sick, and if you can satellite in, you can make a name for yourself when you take your shot. But between tournament series, you might as well pitch up at Nacho Daddy and wager the maître d’ that you can fit more tacos in your mouth than them. 

This week, Las Vegas Locally reported that, “ARIA had more staff than players on the main casino floor this afternoon: 21 tables open. 27 dealers. 11 floor people. 19 gamblers.”

While Joey Ingram rightly pointed out that Tuesday afternoons during the summer outside WSOP season are probably the slowest part of ARIA’s week, the point still stands that you will find cheaper buy-ins and better games elsewhere at this time. And no, you won’t beat our record of eight tacos. Hey, it gave us quite a smile.

Off the Felt

Assuming you’ve done your refried beans at Nacho Daddy, we’re going off-felt and out of the restaurant quarter in Vegas this week to tell you about The Neon Museum. You can walk around the outdoor boneyard packed with iconic neon casino signs of yesteryear that have been restored and are displayed as if you’ve just been cast in Zombieland 3.

It’s not cheap at $25 during the day and $35 at night for standard entry, but well worth doing once to put you in the mood of Stu Ungar at Binion’s before you shuffle up and deal.

Las Vegas is congratulating Lucas Jumalon, the 22-year-old who turned his runaway chip lead into a wire-to-wire World Series of Poker Main Event win and $10,000,000. Are you likely to see him pitch up in The Orleans Mixed Game series? Hell, no. But are you getting value he won’t be? Absolutely.

Han Feng’s feather boa cost more than your entry into a Venetian DeepStack Showdown event this weekend, and he’s never getting any profit on that thing this side of Christmas. 

Run like God in the gambling capital of the world this week… and be sure to tip your dealer.