Írta: Tim Lavalli
What’s the best poker room in Las Vegas? What room do you prefer to play in? Name the top three poker rooms? What’s the best mid-limit room? Which room spreads the most games? Which rooms are well run? Which rooms take care of the players?

If you ask those questions of a wide range of poker players who live in Las Vegas or who play here even a couple of time a year, I would be willing to wager that the room you will hear named the most often is the poker room at Mirage. There are many reasons why nearly everyone has played at Mirage and have generally good things to say about the room.

There are thirty tables in the Mirage poker room; they are well spaced and run from not one but two brush podiums. The low limit Hold’em tables start at $3/$6 and there are always tables in play but this is not exclusively a Hold’em room nor a low-limit room. They also have a regular $6/$12 game going and most evenings a $10/$20 game is open. On the weekends expect both $20/$40 and $40/$80 games to be up on the board and I am not just talking about an interest list. Omaha8 is spread at $5/$10, Omaha Hi will play limit or pot limit and there is often a $1/$5 Stud game as well. The Mirage spreads a wide range of limits and the players know they can find their game here.

There is a standing list 24/7 for Sit-N-Gos at $70, $115 and $175; two winners and on the weekends, these regularly fill. There is an evening NLHE tournament Sunday through Thursday. The Sunday event goes off at 5 PM and is a $430 buy-in for 4,000 starting chips. All of the tournaments have 30 minutes rounds and all begin with blinds of 25/50. The other four nights the tournament begins at 7 PM. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, the buy-in is $230 for 3,000 starting chips and Tuesday is the $130 event with 2,000 chips. They run satellites ($35/$55/$100) each day for that evening’s event. These satellites are often very active, particularly on Sundays and Tuesdays.

It’s a nice diverse tournament schedule at Mirage but the room is known for the action at both the limit tables and the no-limit tables. No-Limit Texas Hold’em is spread at $1/$2, $2/$5 and $5/$10; on a recent evening there were seven NLHE tables in action with short waiting lists for all seven.

The Mirage is just north of Caesar’s Palace and when sitting at the NLHE tables in either room, you tend you hear about how good or how bad the action is in the other room. My personal observation is that the Mirage games are a bit tighter, if No-Limit games are ever actually tight, but the Mirage games also seem to be more profitable. That being said, a busted player who walks away from the Mirage is often headed for Caesar’s Palace and they probably pass a player coming the other direction for the same reason. The walking distance is just about right for a quick cool-off before sitting down at another table.