Phil Ivey Poker Room Aria
Since opening in 2010, the Ivey Room in Aria has transitioned to the hottest table in town for high stakes poker. This crown was previously held by Bobby’s Room in Bellagio since 1998. Minimum to get in the room is 10K, but most big game players bring at least 40-50K so as to not get steamrolled.
The Aria Hotel and Casino will open “The Ivey Room” in honor of poker professional Phil Ivey(pictured right) this weekend in Las Vegas. The private high-stakes room features one poker table, multiple 42-inch flat-screen televisions, and direct private access to a cashier’s cage that holds 480 safety deposit boxes. The room also features complimentary beverage service and around the clock table-side dining. The private room expands on the 24-table poker room that Aria debuted when it opened in December 2009.
- Phil ivey poker room aria Take-off and landing slots can be highly sought after by carriers, as a lack of new runways in the UK has kept their supply low. Thanks for reading this post to the end! Phil ivey poker room aria My sonsmy little boys whose small hands I could consume in mine are now men.
- Ivey was absent for the entirety of Season 6 and makes his return to open Season 7 at the property that bears his name on their high stakes poker room. The Ivey Room is ARIA’s answer to Bellagio’s famed Bobby’s Room. To learn more about the cathedral of high stakes poker, check out the Bobby’s Room episode of Stories from the Felt.
To launch “The Ivey Room” with a bang, Aria will host a $1 million invitation-only freeroll for VIP players on May 22. The winner will take home $250,000 in prize money and the player who knocks out Ivey will claim a $100,000 bounty. The winner of the tournament will also be given the chance to earn an additional $250,000 in a heads-up poker match against Ivey. The player who finishes in second will take home $70,000 and the top eight places will get paid in the freeroll event.
“We were thrilled that Phil agreed when we asked if he would consider putting his name on the room,” said Aria President Phil McBeath in an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. He continued, “Phil is a great guy, a longtime friend both of the MGM Mirage family and mine personally, and remains a fan favorite in the world of poker.”
Ivey now joins former world champion Bobby Baldwin as a player to be honored with a high-stakes poker room namesake. Bobby’s room sits next door at Bellagio and it is the current home to the Big Game. It remains to be seen if the Big Game will move over to Aria when the poker world descends on Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but the game has migrated before. Considering that CityCenter and Bellagio are both owned by MGM Mirage the new room isn’t a competitor as much as it is the next step in Las Vegas poker offerings.
This is not the first time a player has been tied to an individual poker room in Las Vegas. Daniel Negreanu was tied to the poker room at the Wynn in 2005. While playing at the Wynn Negreanu hosted a series of $500,000 heads-up matches against all takers. A few years ago in 2007 Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi was signed as the “in-house poker celebrity” at the redesigned poker room at Planet Hollywood. Neither of these business relationships lasted long and the player endorsement of individual poker rooms remains an untapped angle in Las Vegas poker.
Ivey is the biggest star in poker these days and he is a visible embodiment of high-stakes gambling. Ivey is poker’s all-time leading money winner with $12,650,783 and he holds seven WSOP gold bracelets, along with one World Poker Tour title. Ivey gained national media attention last year when he made the November Nine at the WSOP main event and cashed in seventh place for $1.4 million. He was featured on the cover of ESPN The Magazine and the television show E:60 aired a segment featuring the poker professional during his notable run at poker’s biggest tournament of the year.
Recently opening on the Las Vegas Strip was CityCenter, an MGM Mirage creation that includes the Aria Resort and Casino. Within the friendly confines of Aria is its poker room, which debuted amid an economic downswing. Nevertheless, it has received high marks and features a high-limit gaming area that may soon be named after Phil Ivey. Poker News Daily sat down with Adam Altwies, Aria’s Poker Room Manager, to recap its first three weeks in operation.
Poker News Daily: Thanks for joining us. Talk about the daily tournaments at Aria and what your setup is for cash games.
Poker Night 2 is a poker video game developed and published by Telltale Games.
Adam Altweis: We didn’t get our daily tournament going until about two weeks later in order to open up. The daily tournament starts at 11:15am and it’s $120. It has a great structure; players get 8,000 in chips and levels are 30 minutes long. It’s typical of what the Bellagio might be offering in terms of structure, but it has a lower buy-in. We have 24 tables in total. Eighteen are on the main floor, five are in a back high-limit area, and one is exclusive to a very high-limit game.
PND: What were your expectations for opening night?
Adam Altweis: We didn’t know. As a new room, we had an idea of what we wanted to spread, but after time, you have to figure out what games your customers want to play. The room was created for the player. The top-level executives really created the room for the players and made my job a lot easier in that respect. If you take a look at the room, it’s situated next to the Skybox Grille. Free wsop poker chips bonus promotion co…. We can offer tableside food service from anywhere, but that’s the biggest one we use. It’s next door, the prices are good, and the food is great. We also have the Roasted Bean, which is a coffee shop. The self-parking lot and main valet lead right into the poker room. It’s all very convenient.
PND: Address the room’s high noise level, which was one of the only complaints we’ve heard.
Adam Altweis: I’ve addressed that issue. Any time you have a main door, you have slot machines because you want to attract customers. It’s also the main line of traffic up to our Elvis show. In the beginning, it was loud. What made my job easy was that it was a simple phone call to fix. Our slots are all server-based, which means that our guys can hop on a server and turn the noise down. They did it for us, which is a testament to MGM Mirage. I’ve worked here for seven years and everyone works with each other. Each manager and each department makes a concerted effort to work with each other.
PND: What high-stakes poker can visitors to Aria expect?
Adam Altweis: We hope to get a lot more. We’ve had a couple of $150/$300 games in here as well as $40/$80. We also have a $20/$40 Mixed Game, which we want to keep going. We’ve seen a trend in this market where No Limit Hold’em is still the staple at $1/$3, $2/$5, $5/$10, and $10/$20, but a lot more players are looking to expand.
PND: How is Aria able to differentiate itself from the competition?
Adam Altweis: The room. It’s comfortable for players. There’s space in between the tables so that players can move around. We have sculptures, which are aesthetically soothing. We have a player paging system that allows us to text message people on the wait list, so when your name comes up, you’ll get a text message. We also have the capability to let customers know when a game is being started. When a dealer sits down, we can send out a notification that the game is live at Aria. We’re going to be utilizing Twitter and Facebook a lot more in the future. I’m a big proponent of letting us know what’s going on. We want people to tell us what’s good or bad.
PND: Have there been talks about partnering with a group like Dream Team Poker to bring a unique event to Aria?
Adam Altweis: That’s what’s great about being new – we’re open to everything. Right now, we’re not aligned with anyone, so we can listen to everyone. We want a televised event, whether it is a tournament or a late night show. I can pretty much guarantee that we’ll get some televised event, hopefully by the end of the year.
Phil Ivey Poker Room At Aria
PND: Talk about opening a massive casino and poker room like Aria in the midst of a severe economic downturn.
Ivey Poker Room
Adam Altweis: We had a poker boom a few years ago. Everyone was opening up a room. Now, it’s slid back a bit, but we opened one anyway. We opened up a room at the best time possible because we got to pick the best of the best in the industry for our staff. It’s a very unique situation. If we were still in the poker boom, we would have had to hire dealers right out of school and it would take a tremendous amount of time to get the room where we wanted it to be.
Phil Ivey Poker
PND: What’s an average day like for a poker room manager?
World Series Of Poker Phil Ivey
Adam Altweis: On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I’m taking care of administrative things and come in around 9:00am or 10:00am. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are big customer days, so I stay late, talk to customers, and ask them what we can do to better our room. My day is full and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love dealing with customers, employees, guests, the media, and everyone else. This is my love. It’s been my passion since I was 17.