I was doing it a lot several years ago when the only rooms I could get were $400ish because most of my trips were spur of the moment and not reserved well ahead of time. Obviously it limits where else you can play as well. 5 hours may not seem like much, but it's every day and you have to put it in even if you don't feel like playing. Unless you really can't find a room elsewhere I recommend you don't do the poker rate. They sort of debited your hours on the card so you have to play a couple hours just to get back to even. They were very cool in that if you were a couple hours short, they gave you the rate figuring they would get the hours from you next trip. Then before you check out, verify with the poker office that you have the time. The Wynn poker room used to make you get approved for the rate before you made the reservation, but they tracked the hours on your card. I would hope it's better now that they use the MGM players card. I'm sure I got screwed more than once, but I was going so often back then I lost track of hotel bills, etc. When your card was filled out you gave it to a woman in the poker room office and hope she applied the rate for you.
You had to get the floor to sign a card for the hours you played, and like for everything else, they wanted a tip for it. Hopefully Bellagio has improved since a few years ago when they had the gangster mentality.
