Want to play at the top live US poker rooms? If so, listen carefully because we’ve put together a list of venues that are recognized as America’s most impressive. Regardless of whether you’re interested in size, style, history or gaming options, our rundown of the best live USA poker rooms has got you covered.

Information and Reviews about bestbet Jacksonville Poker Room in Jacksonville, including Poker Tournaments, Games, Special Events and Promotions. Attention Poker Rooms: Get your Real-Time Live Action on PokerAtlas! This is a relatively new one but in 2014 the WSOP used air cannons to shoot money into the Amazon Room. The WSOP shot 10,000 one dollar bills to be exact. It was a very odd promotion considering some of the players that frequent the Rio are millionaires and not exactly thrilled with the idea of scrambling on the floor for $3.

The Bellagio:

Bellagio
3600 S. Las Vegas Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89109

Arguably one of the most iconic casinos in the world, let alone the USA, the Bellagio is home to the infamous Bobby’s Room. Synonymous with high stakes gambling and the poker top pros, this intimate alcove is the proverbial jewel in the Bellagio’s crown.

Home to the likes of Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Gus Hansen on a daily basis, Bobby’s Room has seen some of the biggest poker games in the world over the last 20 years. From million dollar bluffs to prop bets involving male breast implants, this exclusive section of the Bellagio’s poker room has given rise to a slew of legendary tales.

Unfortunately, unless you’re super talented or super rich you’ll probably never get to ante-up inside Bobby’s Room. However, that doesn’t mean the Bellagio isn’t a top US poker room. In fact, it’s because of Bobby’s Room that the venue is loved by grinders from all over the world. While you may need a few million dollars in your bankroll in order to get into the casino’s richest game, there are hundreds of smaller games on offer each week filled with players aiming for the top.

The presence of the most exclusive live poker game in America is enough to pull people into the casino and give them something to aim for. This means that you’ll often find a string of low stakes games filled with weak players. Blinded by the dream of running a bluff against Doyle Brunson, these fishy players are commonplace inside the Bellagio and always ripe for picking.

In fact, aside from being known as one of the top live USA poker rooms, the Bellagio is known as one of the softest. Of course, when you move up to the higher limits you’ll find yourself amongst a host of top players, but below the top-tier it’s generally the case that the games are easy. In general, you’ll find that cash games start from $1/$2 and run as high as $1,000/$2,000 during the World Series of Poker. At high limits it’s possible to find Mixed Games, but in general you’ll find that Texas Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha will be on offer.

Foxwoods Resort Casino:

Foxwoods Resort Casino
350 Trolley Line Boulevard
Mashantucket, CT 06338-3777

Another top live USA poker room outside of Nevada, Foxwoods is another structural behemoth in the gaming world. Offering 300,000 square feet of floor space, the venue has everything the hopeful gambler could wish for.

Contained with the six interconnected casinos is every class game you could wish for. From blackjack and roulette, to craps and slot machines, the adrenaline junkies among you will have plenty of opportunities to swing the pendulum of luck when you enter Foxwoods Casino.

However, if the virtues of skill and logic are more to your liking, then Foxwoods poker room will, provide an oasis of tranquility amid the chaos of the six gaming floors. Boasting 125 poker tables and the honor of being the second largest poker room in the world (not just the US); this venue is one that literally offers something for everyone.

Regardless of what your poker persuasion is, Foxwoods will have something to tickle your fancy. Of course, Hold’em and Omaha are by far the most populous games on the menu and you can enjoy each at limits ranging from $1/$2 to $100/$200. However, if you’re looking for something a little different, then Foxwoods is one of the few live US poker rooms that offers 7-card stud cash games. Running regularly throughout the week (mainly because of the venue’s high volume of players), fans of non-Hold’em poker games can grind out a fortune at limits ranging from $1/$3 and $75/150.

For those that enjoy the rush of a good tournament, Foxwoods plays host to a busy schedule of daily tournaments with prizepools the regularly top five-figures. However, it’s when the Foxwoods Poker Classic gets underway that this live USA poker room comes into its own. Regularly welcoming the best players in the world, the event is a major fixture on the US poker calendar for thousands of players.

The Commerce Casino:

Commerce Casino
6131 East Telegraph Rd.
Commerce, CA 90040

In America, bigger is always better and there are a few live poker rooms in the country that can stack up to the Commerce Casino. Situated in the Los Angeles suburb of Commerce, this casino offers a poker room that can hold up to 200 tables at once.

Although the Commerce poker room doesn’t sit pride of place on the Las Vegas strip, the stature of this venue is no less impressive. Owing to the sheer size of this US poker room, players from across the country are able to enjoy cash games and tournaments of all sizes. Unlike many of the top live poker rooms in the USA, The Commerce doesn’t only cater to high rollers. While venues such as the Bellagio have based their reputation around the wealthy games they host, The Commerce has a much more inclusive policy.

Average cash games limits will start as low as $1/$2 and reach as high as $100/$200+. In fact, if there are a number of celebrities in town, something that often happens at the Commerce, the highest games on offer can run a stakes exceeding $200/$400.

Aside from offering a variety of Hold’em, Omaha, Stud and Mixed cash games, The Commerce also offers a range of poker tournaments. Although the daily and weekly schedule isn’t anything to get too excited about, the casino comes into its own when it hosts the L.A. Poker Classic. Part of the ever-popular WPT season, the event is extremely popular and regularly produced prizepools exceeding $5 million.

If playing poker isn’t enough, then The Commerce Casino is also a complete entertainment complex. Mimicking the services found at some of the top venues in Las Vegas, The Commerce has six restaurants, a sprawling hotel complex as well as numerous bar and leisure facilities.

The Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa

Borgata Hotel Casino
1 Borgata Way
Atlantic City, NJ 08401

Over the last few years the Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa has become one of the top live poker rooms in the US. Located in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and now the owner of an online platform, the Borgata has benefited from the recent changes in US poker legislation.

Being situated inside one of the states that offer legal US online poker, this venue is now being utilized by many of the world’s top poker tours, including the WPT. In fact, in 2013 and 2014 the casino wrestled the WPT World Championship event away from its traditional home inside the Bellagio. Such a move was not only seen as a sign of the times, but as a testament to the Borgata’s prowess as a top US venue.

One of the main selling points for the Borgata, aside from it being the home to some of the WPT’s top tournaments, is that it’s the largest hotel in New Jersey. Boasting 2,002 rooms, the venue is not only a giant when it comes gambling, but in terms of leisure and entertainment. However, we digress. When it comes to poker, the Borgata is equipped with 161,000 square feet of gaming space that encompasses 4,000 slots and 200 table games.

Alongside these options stands a poker room that can accommodate around 100 tables at once. Generally filled with a mixture of tournament players and cash game grinders, it’s the latter demographic that really benefit from the Borgata’s size and experience. In the tournament world more players equates to bigger prizepools and those that choose to ante-up inside this venue will always be in good company. In fact, such is the pedigree of this live US poker room that the WPT now hosts not one, but three major MTTs inside its walls.

Binion’s Horseshoe

Binion’s Horseshoe
128 Fremont St,
Las Vegas, NV 89101

It may not be the biggest live poker room in the USA, it might not be the most impressive, but Binion’s Horseshoe is undoubtedly one of the top US poker rooms. In historical terms, Binion’s is an industry icon as it was home to the original World Series of Poker. Providing the venue where the likes of Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese and Benny Binion decided who the best player in the world was, Binion’s has since gone on to host Poker’s Hall of Fame.

In today’s terms the casino’s ten poker tables and $4 rake on all cash games is a million miles from facilities offered by our other top USA live poker rooms. However, what it lacks in size it certainly makes up for in nostalgia. Anyone who takes the time to visit downtown Las Vegas and ante-up inside Binion’s poker room will feel a sense of reverence. Knowing that the venue is the birthplace of modern poker tournaments and once played host to the greatest grinders in history is something that can’t be ignored. On top of that the intimate setting makes each game more personal and the level of service that much better.

Of course, on a good day you’ll probably only find a handful of cash games on offer with stakes no higher than $10/$20. However, in reality, none of that really matters because it’s a poker room that every poker player in America should have the pleasure of playing in.

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I have written before about optimizing play under the rules of common kinds of promotions offered by poker rooms for their cash game players. As a way of rounding out that series of articles, today I'll discuss several less-common promotions, and how you should deal with them.

1. Bad Beat Jackpots

The basic idea is simple: If one sufficiently strong hand gets beaten by an even better one, there's money to be given out.

Commonly this requires quads being beaten by either higher quads or by a straight flush. But sometimes you'll see the qualifying threshold drop as time passes without the jackpot having been won. For example, the losing hand requirement might slip down to aces-full, then kings-full, and so on, when nobody has claimed the prize in a long time.

Most often, the loser of the hand gets the lion's share of the money, with a lesser percentage going to the winner of the hand — a 75/25 split, for example. Under some promotions, a percentage is also set aside for a 'table share' (everybody seated at the winning table when it hits gets a piece), or even a 'room share' (ditto for everybody present). Sometimes the big casino chains, such as Caesars, or Stations Casinos in Las Vegas, will link all of their rooms in one city, and a share of the bonus is given to everybody playing in any of the linked rooms.

Under most circumstances, the optimum strategy when it comes to bad beat jackpots is simple — ignore it. Don't play starting hands that you otherwise wouldn't, nor stay in the hand longer than the poker situation calls for, just in the hope of hitting the jackpot. The odds are so stacked against you that it's not worth even a dollar or two extra to take a shot at it.

In fact, one could reasonably take this further, and say that the optimal strategy is not just to ignore the jackpot, but to avoid it — that is, choose to play in rooms where they won't be taking out of every pot a dollar or two that will eventually go to somebody other than you.

However, the optimum strategy can change. If the jackpot is huge, and the threshold for hitting it has dropped sufficiently far, you may find two reasons to be interested.

First, you might hit it. Except in the most incredibly favorable situations, it's still unlikely to be profitable to change either what game you play (e.g., switching to the lowest-stakes limit hold'em offered), or to change how you play any given hand — but it might be worth temporarily choosing to play in that room rather than another.

Second, the poker room is likely to swell with inexperienced, bad players chasing the windfall, and you can take advantage of the room's super-fishiness while it lasts.

2. Random Drawings

In Las Vegas, this kind of promotion is most frequently offered during big sports events, as the casino is trying to get you to choose them as the place to make your sports bets and play poker while you watch the game.

The giveaway can take many forms. One common example would be a drawing every time a team scores a touchdown during a football game. The prize can be either a fixed amount or a mystery envelope. The winner is determined at random, either by computer or by an old-fashioned drawing from a bowl.

There is no strategy to win, other than not to be out of the room on a break when each drawing takes place.

This is the rare kind of promotion that can actually be significantly positive in expected value. Money that the extra rake has taken from every pot over the previous week, month, or whatever, is given away in a highly condensed period of time. If you haven't been contributing to the giveaway fund by playing in that room, it is genuinely free money to you.

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In fact, some of these promotions, such as on Super Bowl Sunday, are so strongly +EV that the seats get locked up hours in advance. If you have one, you might even be offered cash to relinquish your spot to somebody else who didn't get there early enough.

When the Tropicana was closing its poker room in 2012, they announced a plan to give away on the last day all the promotional money they had collected but had not yet distributed. From the amount they announced — over $16,000 — and the number of tables available, I estimated that just sitting in a seat for the eight hours they would be open would have an expected value of about $250. (I got one of the much-coveted seats, but, sadly, didn't get picked for any of the prizes.)

3. 'Paid to Play' Promotions

Best Live Poker Room Promotions 2019

Once in a while in Las Vegas, a casino will offer a straight-up dollars-per-hour cash giveaway. These are functionally equivalent to promotional freeroll tournaments, except that you get cash instead of a seat in a tournament in which you might win cash.

All of the parade of horrible side effects that I talked about in my earlier article on promotional freerolls apply equally to these pay-to-play schemes, so I won't repeat them here.

My best advice — vote with your feet, and play somewhere else.

4. 'Spin the Wheel' Promotions

In a few poker rooms, you'll see a big wheel — sometimes temporary, sometimes a permanent fixture. If some event happens to you, you get to spin it, and win whatever prize comes up.

The 'event' can be a high hand, a bad beat (usually with a much lower threshold than rooms with a big lump-sum BBJ), a random drawing, or some other special occurrence for a particular promotional period.

The amounts available are rarely over $100, and the most likely amount is typically $20-$25. These, then, are not life-changing bonuses, and it's virtually never going to be correct to deviate from otherwise optimal play in order to try to win a chance at one of them.

5. Comps

'Comps' refers to what are effectively cash vouchers that you can spend in the casino. For the most popular low-stakes poker games, casinos typically offer $1-$2 per hour of play.

Comps differ from all other kinds of poker-room promotions in one crucial way — they actually are free money, donated by the casino, rather than giving players back money that was taken out of pots.

For that reason, just about the only reason to decline them is if you have some important reason to want to avoid getting one of the casino's player's cards, which is a mandatory part of the process. If you're paranoid about privacy, you have a pathological aversion to being put on another mailing list, you're illegally playing in a casino from which you've been banned, or you will be unwilling or unable to show standard state-issued identification when you're redeeming the comps (as will be required), then go ahead and pass up the free money. Otherwise, take advantage of it.

The nuts and bolts of comps programs are all over the map:

• In some places, you have to check in and out at the poker room desk at the start and end of your play; in others they swipe your card at the table.
• Some will clock you out if you're gone from the table for more than a few hands; others won't.
• In some places, in order to use the dollars you've earned, you have to request a voucher for a specific amount to be written by one of the floor personnel; in others the credit is right on your player's card, and you can use it at your own discretion.
• In some casinos, the money is good at practically every retail and food establishment in the house; in others, it's highly selective.
• Under some programs, the money is good basically forever; in others, it has an expiration date, after which it vanishes.
• Most often the rate is fixed, but in some places, the hourly amount earned varies, with higher rates offered for the days or times when the room is slow (and they're trying to drum up more business).
• I've even seen one place let you use your accumulated credit to buy in to either tournaments or cash games, but that's rare.

One other hint, primarily for men: Don't use your comp dollars to buy dinner on a first date, because it makes you look cheap. I'll grant that every single aspect of that observation is stupid, sexist, outdated, and shouldn't be true. But it is true, nonetheless.

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Play smart, at both poker and love.

Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.

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