A recent trip report by rukiding, got me to wondering.

Poker rooms in Vegas, I recall a long time ago that a number of them where not even owned by the casino. That the poker room was leased out. I remember this because the poker dealers always looked a little different then the rest of the well polished dealer crew.
My question....With the encreased popularity of poker, have the casinos found it, in thier best intrest to own the poker rooms?
I have never played one hand of live poker in a casino. My secondary question would be, are comps harder to come by in the poker room?

I had never heard of this Lee.

Jeff, I'm sure I'm not having a brain fart here.
This was before poker had been reborn.
The Sahara comes to mind on this.

That's definately ringing a bell Lee, but I don't know the specifics. I'll ask a few poker buddies. It might have been because the mormon mafia couldn't figure out odds on the game. It was just time X people = $. So they could rent out a back room and that floor space would generate revenue.

I think there was something about casinos not owning their sports books too. And that trend may be making a come back.

Since the boom of poker the poker rooms of today are owned and run by the casinos. Harrahs made just over $13,000,000 in juice from the 55 events at the world series of poker. They made $600 from every $10,000 buy in for the main event alone and there were 6,844 buy ins.

Comps are usually around a dollar an hour and some have swipe machines right at the table while others have you swipe in when you are assigned a seat and you have to make sure you swipe out when you leave or you do not get any credit for time spent. I read that The Imperial palace used to pay $3 an hour until Harrahs took over and reduced it to $2 and took away the free cookies and sandwiches.

rukiding,
The reason for this post was your bad treatment when looking for an extra days stay. I was trying to figure out why they didn't want you to stay. @1 dollar per hour.....yikes, that's kinda hard to get anything.

Pretty pathetic isn't it but together with the amount I did play on the machines with my brother and the amount he played through the machines over the course of two days with my card I would have thought there was enough action to justify a discount for a room we were already occupying. Like you said an empty room generates zero income.

Were you talking to teh front desk or the slot club?

Front desk.