This review is just for the poker room at the Golden Nugget. I added it as a separate business to not unfairly affect the rating of the hotel itself.
We've loved the Golden Nugget poker room for years and always make a point to play there when in Las Vegas. The last two visits were disappointing. Oh, the dealers are still great and the poker room managers are still on the ball and attentive. The room itself is comfortable though a bit overcrowded at times, and the room spreads a wide variety of games and offeres some very good tournaments. You may be wondering why then I have chosen to give only 1 star. The reason for the 1 star rating is the riff-raff clientel who are allowed to cause trouble and act inappropriately while in the poker room. We witnessed a "stand-off" between a drunk (high?) patron who was causing a scene, two poker room managers, and two security guards. The guy was yelling and stomping around and the casino personnel just stood and watched and tried to talk him into leaving. Back before the corporations took over the casinos, the guy would have been physically removed at the first sign of trouble and the rest of us would have been left to enjoy our game feeling quite secure in the fact that non nonsense would be tolerated. The Golden Nugget needs to get back to a no tolerance policy for drunk and disorderly patrons - tact and diplomacy don't work well in those situations. On our last visit a guy at the table was mocking one of the other players and disrupting the game. One of the players reported the problem to the poker room floor manager who simply stood by the table a minute or two then went back to seating other players leaving the table once again at the mercy of the obnoxious patron. We left and won't be back.