I just spent a week playing poker in Las Vegas. What a great time. I stayed at the Orleans Casino, off the strip. They provide a beautiful room at a reasonable price - around $50 a night with the poker player's rate.
It used to be that the Orleans spread a $1-5 stud game and had two stud tournaments a week: a Stud8 and a Stud high event. Not anymore. I had to go elsewhere for my stud fix.
I'm sorry to report that the state of stud in Las Vegas is not very good. There's a game at the Bellagio some of the time - a $20/40 game which had a long waiting list. And you might find a low limit game at the Mirage, the Excalibar or Sam's Town - though they weren't spreading it when I called. The only place that I actually found a live game of stud was at the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas.
Ah, the El Cortez. It was a great room once upon a time, with five games going nearly all the time, a busy clientele, and a perky attitude. I didn't play there in the 70s during its best days. But I've heard stories. It was one of the early rooms with poker. And it was well run by Ross (the boss) Ferraro.
I stumbled into more as a lark than as part of a plan to find a stud game. I was visiting the gambling museum located on 450 Fremont Street (a nice respite from playing poker - and for only $2.50). I was done in about an hour and decided to walk around. I saw the dated El Cortez sign and decided to see if they had anything going on - having recalled that they occasionally spread some poker. What I saw was, at first at least, disappointing.
The casino now is, to be frank, somewhat depressing. It's in a neighborhood where I felt uncomfortable walking around at night - a block or two away from the walkway that turns into the "Fremont Street Experience" after dark. It's somewhat dark interior, lessthan- clean rugs, and somewhat seedy regular clientele are a bit off putting to those who feel more comfortable in the glitzy and glamorous strip casinos. It's not up to the level of ambiance of other downtown locales such as the Golden Nugget or even Binions.
I found the poker room. I was pleased to see that they had two games going. At first I figured they'd be the typical fare of low limit hold 'em. But I found to my delight that one of the two games was 7-Card Stud. It was a very low stakes version, to be sure. But after surveying nearly every other casino in Las Vegas for stud and coming up empty I was pleased to at least be able to find my favorite game.
The game was not quite filled. I was the seventh player - and quickly the sixth player as someone got up to leave just as I was sitting down.
The game was $1-3 spread limit stud, with no ante and a $.50 bring-in from the low card. It was raked at 10% with a $3.00 max, though I don't think the dealer raked more than $2.00 out of any of the pots that I saw. They were taken out in $.50 increments.
The players were an interesting group. The shift manager was playing - a middle aged, heavy set jovial sort of a guy who went through his stack while he was there. There was also a chain smoking woman who was friendly and aggressive at times. A young dealer sat in the game. He seemed to recognize me from one of the publications I write for and was very pleasant - as well as being tight and aggressive. There was one rather peculiar man in the game, who unbuttoned his shirt to his navel so he could scratch, in a very nervous sort of way, his chest. He had the bizarre habit of moving his lips to repeat what he had just said aloud - and also seemed to talk to himself while scratching his chest.
