Aria at CityCenter to open high-limit poker room named for card playing superstar Phil Ivey

Aria to open high-limit poker room named for Ivey

LAS VEGAS — Wealthy card sharks have a new exclusive table on the Las Vegas Strip that honors one of the game’s most famous players.

Casino operator MGM Mirage said Thursday it plans to open a one-table, high-limit poker room named for Phil Ivey at the Aria Resort & Casino at CityCenter. Ivey is widely considered the best card player alive today, having won millions in cash games and tournaments and seven World Series of Poker bracelets.

Ivey finished seventh at the series’ $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event last year, winning $1.4 million in poker’s most prestigious tournament.

Ivey won two tournaments earlier in the 2009 series and reportedly made a windfall — though he won’t say exactly how much — on side bets he made with other players about his results in the events.

The Ivey Room at the Aria is reminiscent of another famed, exclusive poker room built to draw the world’s best and richest poker players, Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio.

It’s named for MGM Mirage’s chief design and construction officer, Bobby Baldwin, who is known for being an accomplished gambler.

Baldwin, nicknamed “The Owl,” won the 1978 main event and three other World Series of Poker tournaments. He supervised the construction of CityCenter, the $8.5 billion joint venture owned by MGM Mirage and Dubai World that opened in December. Aria is the centerpiece of the 67-acre complex and its only casino.

MGM Mirage plans to open The Ivey Room with a celebrity and VIP tournament on Saturday, with the winner getting $250,000 and a chance to play Ivey heads-up for $250,000. The player that knocks Ivey out of the tournament wins $100,000.