"I don't let the people who have no personality play."
That's the guiding tenet for Boston Jimmy's high-stakes cash game at the Wynn Poker Room.
"They offer nothing and they take away from the game. I don't care how good you play in the game. I don't care how good you play poker. These games are set up for businessmen and recreational players to play with other action players and enjoy themselves."
Gim Sleiman — known on social media and throughout the high-stakes scene as 'Boston Jimmy' — is the man to call if you want a seat at a big money poker game in Las Vegas. And he's an important man to know, because it's harder than you would think. A lot of the best action takes place away from the casinos in private home games, where anything can happen and everyone could be stealing from you.
Boston Jimmy's game is different. "It's like a home game," he told us. "But it has the security and the safety. You're in a casino, there are managers here, there's security of the casino here."
It runs most weeks at Wynn — one of the classiest joints in town — from Thursday through Sunday with stakes from $50/100 to $100/200 with a regular straddle. It's in the back room that he acts as an emcee to a rotating group of personalities.
A high-stakes home game
We stopped by to see Jimmy at Wynn on a Sunday afternoon. The football games drew a big crowd to the poker room, where the regular game occupied the back area. Jimmy is a source of constant motion, whether it's to grab a video of the action or fire off a text to an incoming player. It's a lively table and everyone is here to gamble.
"This is a game where there are a lot of recreational players," Jimmy said, gesturing to the lineup at the table. "A lot of lawyers here — two lawyers in the game. That guy as an engineer. He's big, big. We have a businessman sitting in seat four. Seat one — he's a big real estate guy in Vegas, owns a lot of houses. There's only three pros in the game, and me, I don't consider myself to be a pro."
The game also draws a lot of celebrities. "Anybody that you could imagine has played in my game."
Jimmy started playing poker in the early 2000s. "I fell in love with the game. I was in business school and I realized, oh my God, I could make that much money playing poker."
He bounced around from to Florida and Rhode Island before poker brought him to Las Vegas, where he started playing higher stakes at the Bellagio until COVID shook up the scene.
"Vegas was sad. You'd walk and see big boards blocking off the main entrance of Caesars and Bellagio, and there's one security lonely security guard."
Live poker eventually returned in a big way and Boston Jimmy's group moved over to Wynn, where the game has thrived. "They're trying to make something happen here. They let us have a $10/20/40 public game. I drew a lot of attention to it through my social media and that actually blew up. We'd have three public $10/20/40 games every single day."
Global Jimmy
The game has grown and so has Boston Jimmy's social media foot print. On top of the time consuming job of recruiting players to high-stakes cash games all week, Jimmy edits and posts the best hands on Instagram, where he has over 83,000 followers. He also employs a team of producers who prep video and consult on social media strategy, but Jimmy still does all of his own editing.
"On Tuesday or Wednesday I have a meeting where I sit down with the guys. They cut the videos down and they send them back to me. They're cut down, they're ready to be edited. I edit my own video, I take pride of editing my own content. I edit it, I put my voice on it, and I send it back to them. They put the final touches as far as effects goes, final transcript touches, and things that they think it would need to go viral."
It makes what is an otherwise private high-stakes game more accessible, all while showing off the Wynn and its high class environment with a group of unique poker personalities. It's hard to pull off the home game atmosphere in a $2.3 billion casino, but Boston Jimmy has the magic touch.
"No other game in the whole country that run as much as we do. We have a very good game, a very consistent game. We let the game run in a very organized way. We try to avoid a lot of the gimmicky stuff because this is what makes people feel uncomfortable, but at the same time it's a private game. It's private setting. You're a very secure and safe area. The management does a fantastic job of managing the security of the game and doing everything else. So it's a home game in a casino, pretty much."
