The Palms Poker Room Review

With a reputation for being the best party casino in Las Vegas, the Palms Hotel & Casino is where the hot, young crowd tends to gather. Home of the Playboy Club, Moon, Ghostbar, and Rain, the Palms offers some of the best nightlife anywhere in the world.

The Palms
4321 West Flamingo Road
Las Vegas, NV 89103
(702) 942-6961

The Palms Poker Room

For players, the Palms poker room in Las Vegas offers great weekend action. While the early part of

the week tends to draw a much older crowd, as Thursday rolls around the casino begins to fill with youthful partygoers and gamblers. Late night action in the poker room gets very loose, especially in the $1/3 NL and $2/4 FL Hold’em games. As the night gets later, people start trickling out of the nightclubs and gravitating to the poker room. This creates some wild action against very beatable opponents.

The Palms poker room doesn’t offer tournaments of any kind, just cash games. With only 10 poker tables in total, the room isn’t large enough to accommodate tournaments. Besides, as the Palms Poker Room Manager Joe Sartori told me “we like the room the way it is”.

Friendly dealers, hot cocktail waitresses, and players out for a good time combine to create a fun & outgoing atmosphere. Sartori claims that business in the poker room is actually up this year, so the ‘if it ain’t broke, why fix it’ attitude seems to be in order. The poker room is actually split into two rooms, divided by a hallway to a restroom. One side of the poker room is for FL games, the other side is for NL games. Don’t be surprised to see 2004 WSOP bracelet winner Joe Awada playing in the NL side. He plays a friendly game of $2/5 NL Hold’em here on a regular basis.

Cash Games

With games consisting of mostly geriatric players early in the week, then young & inebriated players later in the week, it’s easy to see why the most popular games at the Palms tend to be of low-stakes nature. The most popular games at the Palms poker room are $1/3 NL and $2/4 FL Hold’em games. While there are fairly steady $2/5 NL and $4/8 FL Hold’em games also, the action isn’t nearly as loose as the smaller games. On the weekends, the Palms will run a $2/5 Omaha game from time to time as well. If you have a group that’s coming to Vegas, and you’d like to play a different game or a game with higher stakes, just let them know. Sartori told me they’ll gladly run any game players want, as long as there are enough players to create a table.

Promotions

The Palms poker room runs a variety of promotions to give players more reasons to play. There are lots of progressive High-Hand Jackpots, as well as Diamond Flush Jackpots, the Poker Football Cash Bash, and a $25 for $20 promotion as well. The High-Hand Jackpots pay between $60-$599 for all 4 of a Kinds, Straight Flushes and Royal Flushes. Royal Flushes always pay $599 – not a bad jackpot for playing $2/4.

The Poker Football Cash Bash is crazy fun, and the poker room gives away a ton of money on Sundays. All day on Sunday, every time an NFL team scores, someone in the poker room wins either $50, $100, $150, $200, $250, or $300! This goes on all day Sunday, for all games, and during Monday Night Football as well. Starting on the first game of the day, when any team scores either a touchdown or a field goal, the computer at the Palms poker room randomly picks a table, seat and dollar amount. Whoever happens to be sitting there, wins the cash.

Cash Game Rake

As a self professed leather-ass, I tend to play at rooms that don’t scoop chips out of my winning pots to pay for long-odds jackpots. With that said, players can play $1/3 NL and $2/4 or $4/8 FL Hold’em at the Palms without feeling like they’re paying anything extra to build the jackpots. The reason is that these games only have a $3 max rake, as opposed to $4 at most other strip casinos. So, when the pot reaches $10, and your dealer takes an extra dollar out of the pot for the promotions, it feels more like a break-even type of deal. Like I stated above, the maximum rake for $1/3 NL, $2/4 & $4/8 FL games is $3. The first $1 is taken when the pot reaches $10, the second $1 is taken at $20, the third and final $1 of rake is taken at $30. With this said, remember that there is another dollar taken at $10 to pay for the High-Hand Jackpots. The maximum rake for the $2/5 NL games is $4. The strike points for this game are: $20, $40, $60, $80. The first 3 strike points are taken at roughly the same times as other poker rooms, while the final strike point is a little earlier than most. Most strip casinos don’t take the final $1 of rake until the pot reaches between $100 – $150.

Cocktails

Despite only having 10 tables, the Palms poker room enjoys the benefits of having fully dedicated cocktail waitresses. This means that players get their drinks very quickly without having to hunt down waitresses. The cocktail waitresses in the poker room also happen to be extremely hot, another added benefit! If they offered body shots, nobody would play anywhere else. If you prefer to take a break at a bar, the Palms has two bars within a 1 minute walk out of the poker room. Looking out from the poker room, take a left and you’ll walk into both of them.

Food

There are plenty of choices for hungry players at the Palms. Whether you’re looking for a quick, tableside meal, fast food, or fine dining, you can find it all here. For a tableside meal, the cocktail waitresses can take your order off of the room service menu. Looking out from the poker room, players can head right and take a 1 minute walk to the food court.

The food court offers: McDonalds, Nathans Famous Hot Dogs, Famiglia, Panda Express, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and The Coffee Bean. If you need some time to blow off some tilt, there is a movie theater towards the end of the food court as well. For a great buffet at a reasonable price, head directly out of the poker room through the slot machines, and make a left at the opposing casino wall. A 2 minute walk will lead you to the Bistro Buffet which features Lebanese, American and Italian dishes along with a nice seafood selection as well. Club Palms members can eat here at the following prices: Breakfast – $6.99, Lunch – $8.99, Dinner – $13.99. Non-members can eat there for: Breakfast – $7.99, Lunch – $9.99, Dinner – $16.99.

The Palms Hotel & Casino also offers several other choices for dining, including the following restaurants: Nove Italiano, Garduños, Little Buddha, N9ne Steakhouse, Alize, Blue Agave, 24/7 Café, and Simon Restaurant & Lounge.

Massage

The Palms poker room offers massage therapists at the rate of $2 per minute. Pretty standard.

Televisions

The poker room at the Palms is split into two rooms. One side is for FL games, the other is for NL games. Both rooms have a Plasma tv located on each wall. From almost any seat, players can see 3 tv’s at a time.

Summary

The Palms poker room is a great place to play on weekends. During the early part of the week, most of the games are full of tight playing senior citizens. As the week starts to come to a close, the action in the room starts to heat up. Action gets loose, and the games become beatable. Hot waitresses, fun promotions, lively opponents, friendly dealers, and a party atmosphere make the Palms poker room a great place to play.