There’s something just a little bit different about walking into the Wynn Las Vegas poker room. Technically, poker is played on the Encore side of the property, but from the moment you step into the poker room or the adjoining tournament space the player experience is top notch across the board.
Wynn Las Vegas recently celebrated 20 years of operations, and poker has been available since opening day at Wynn Las Vegas, on April 28, 2005. The poker room was originally located on the Wynn side, until the current space opened over at Encore in May 2016. The new and improved Wynn Las Vegas poker room occupies 8,600 square feet with 28 well-spaced tables and comfortable chairs.
Every table in the room is equipped with USB ports to charge your phone. But perhaps most importantly of all, the staff and the dealers are collectively viewed as a well-oiled machine that’s finely tuned to offer an ideal player experience.
Ryan Beauregard has served as Executive Director of Poker Operations at Wynn Las Vegas since 2015, and he was a Day 1 employee at Wynn Las Vegas as a dealer.
“Ever since we opened in 2005, the goal of the Wynn poker room was always to be a room for poker players,” said Beauregard. “We do our best to create a fun and friendly environment for all of our guests, just like they will find throughout the entire property.”
![Tony Dunst at the WPT Meet-Up Game]()
The poker room is full year-round, including Meet-Up games during the WPT World Championship in December.
Regular games and tournaments
Cash games
- $1/3 no-limit hold'em
- $2/5 no-limit hold'em
- $1/2 pot-limit Omaha
- $5/5 pot-limit Omaha
- $5/10 no-limit hold'em
- Higher limits during summer
Tournaments
When there isn’t a dedicated festival running, daily tournaments with buy-ins ranging from $160 to $300 offer a combined $200,000 in weekly guarantees, highlighted by a $40,000 guarantee event every Friday at 12 pm.
Cash games fill the room
Wynn Las Vegas’ cash games are built upon a consistent backbone of games – $1/3 and $2/5 no-limit hold’em, $1/2 and $5/5 pot-limit Omaha and a steady flow of higher stakes games from $5/10 no limit hold’em and up. Players who log in with their Wynn Rewards card accumulate $1.50 per hour of comps while at the table, and the rake structure is as straightforward as any system in place throughout Las Vegas – 10% of the pot up to $5 for $1/3 and $2/5 games, and time collection every 30 minutes at higher stakes.
Cash games in Las Vegas tend to fall under one of two schools of thought, and while many local rooms have gravitated towards additional jackpot and promotional drops to build up big and splashy payouts, Wynn centers its cash game experiences around keeping money collection as small as possible.
“A promotional drop rarely makes for a better game, depending on what the promotion might be,” said Beauregard. “Often, the promotion doesn’t reward players for putting chips in the pot, and it may train or attract the type of players that, when in groups, don’t drive action. As a poker player myself, I would much prefer to sit in a game that has more action. In the long run, I believe that anything that results in more money coming off the table is probably not going to be quite as good for the player.”
As often as the Wynn Poker room is full, things are kicked up a notch over the course of the summer. With so many additional poker players coming into Las Vegas for short or long stretches, the stakes grow and real estate becomes a more precious resource.
“We have a very loyal core group of higher limit players, between $5/10 and $10/20 no limit players,” said Beauregard. “Generally, in the summertime, we'll earmark some extra tables – oftentimes we'll get up to six or seven $5/10 games and two or three $10/20 games. We'll run a $25/25 or $25/50 PLO game too – it really just depends on the group of players that are in town, and the people that come in and start the games earlier in the day. When the games start earlier in the day, that generally sets the standard for what might run for the whole summer.”
Balancing tournaments and cash games
Wynn Las Vegas attracts poker players among every cash game stake they offer because of the overall experience, but they’ve received most of their attention in recent years by becoming a hub for some of the biggest guaranteed tournament prize pools in the world.
Festivals are where Wynn Las Vegas has built the cornerstone of its reputation. The 2025 Wynn Summer Classic, which runs from May 21 through July 14, carries $40 million in tournament guarantees.
That means that tournament events will strain table capacity to its limits for a big chunk of the summer, leaving the staff with the pressure of balancing out demand for tournament tables and cash game players. The poker room’s space does expand out onto the casino floor during Wynn’s consistent schedule of tournaments throughout the year, with dozens more tables to accommodate as much action as possible.
“We're fortunate, especially since we switched over to PokerAtlas, where we do allow people to sign up on the app a couple hours in advance, and their name will stay on that list for a couple hours,” said Beauregard. “The cash games can certainly get busy, not only here but across the entire city during the summer.
“Our goal is to continue to always run the same mix of cash games that we offer, so that our regular players that play year round still have their games available. We do expand by 10 tables for cash games also, which gives us some overflow as tournament tables break down. It can be a challenge for everybody, not only the players but for staff, with such an overwhelming demand. I wish we had more space, always.”
$40 million in guarantees?
A number like $40 million is eye-popping regardless of the context, and Wynn Las Vegas has thrived in recent years by setting such benchmarks.
The Wynn Summer Classic hits that benchmark by offering 10 different tournaments with guarantees of at least $1 million. The first, a multi-flight $1,100 buy-in no limit hold’em event with a $1 million guarantee, takes a concept the Wynn poker staff has been implementing in small doses and makes it an integral part of the tournament format.
An equal number of standard flights and turbo flights, one of each per day for three days.
“We've tried to really offer a little bit of both,” said Beauregard. “What we're finding from player feedback is some of the tournament days are just getting very long. There's so many options to play during the summer, not only here at Wynn but obviously around town, so it's important for us to give players the option to come in and play for a day and bag quickly.
“Our goal is to try to get players to the money or to reach the next day in 12 hours in a standard flight. The turbos that we put in for the evening flights are a good middle ground for those that prefer a shorter day. Players may have something else to play the next day, so it gives them the opportunity to still bag and be home at a reasonable time and they can still play another event the following day.”
Leading the charge for seniors events
One particular type of event where Wynn has been pushing the boundaries of expectations over the last few years is for the 50 and up crowd. Seniors events have drawn astounding numbers during a number of major festivals at Wynn Las Vegas, and so the bar has been raised once again for the summer.
A $1,600 buy-in, multi-flight seniors event running from May 30-June 3 during the Wynn Summer Classic carries a $1 million guarantee.
“It’s no secret that the seniors player pool is growing”. said Beauregard. “Most places start their seniors at the age of 50 plus, and if we look at the volume of players who started in the Moneymaker and online eras, that was 20 to 25 years ago. Those players are now entering the senior category, myself included – I'll be eligible to play seniors events next year. We are the ‘baby boomers’ of poker.
“So that player pool is getting much bigger, and seniors players really enjoy playing seniors tournaments. We happened to find a really good spot on the schedule last year, it did very well, and so we decided to expand it – and I think it's going to do great.”
Wynn Summer Championship is a can’t miss event
While a lot of the attention during the summer is turned towards some of the gaudy numbers put up for World Series of Poker bracelet events, Wynn Las Vegas has found an ideal carve out in late June and early July to run one of the biggest and most prestigious tournaments of the year – the $10,400 buy-in, $10 million guaranteed Wynn Summer Championship.
In 2024 it drew 1,440 entries and awarded a first-place prize of $2,221,775 to champion Nick Petrangelo. The top three spots each paid out at least $1.1 million.
“The Wynn Summer Championship has really been great for two or three years now,” said Beauregard. “It's just a really good spot – a good warm up for players that are flying in for a short period of time, maybe two weeks, and they get to play a couple of big events across town.
“It's really become a well-branded tournament, and I hope the turnout this year is as good as last year, if not stronger.”
