Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Foxwoods Trip Report (part 1) - The Trip/Casino
This is the first of 3 posts on the Poker trip to Foxwoods. On the first post, I'll review the casino and the trip. The second post I'll recap some of the poker and my version of a Matasau blowup. On the third post, I'll discuss a couple of my lessons learned.
Foxwoods Poker Adventure.
The Costs:
First, airfare to Boston was pretty reasonable, $158. But don't let that fool ya. You'll still need to figure in the cost of parking ($22), the cost of taxes and airport fees ($20), the cost of rental car/gas ($140). Then, Massachusetts charged us tolls to use their roads about every 10 miles ($5). I swear we must have paid tolls 4 times trying to get out of that state. The hotel we decided to stay at was about 12 miles from the casino. This worked out OK, but it took about 15 minutes to get back and forth and we had to coordinate with each other on who was staying/leaving each time we traveled back and forth. The Hotel was $209 all in for 2 days. In total, my share of the costs was about $350 for the 3 day trip.
The Travel Time:
Second, you need to figure the time commitment just for the travel. It's only a 90 minute flight DTW to BOS, but when you add 2.5 hour airport lead time, 1 hour to get a rental car, and the 90 minute drive to the Casino. I left the house at 4a and we arrived at the casino at around 11a. If we had driven, it would have taken 10 hours (door to door) and cost about $60 in gas. So, we paid about $180 to avoid 6 hour of commute time.
The Poker Room/Casino:
The poker room and casino are huge. I'm not a real connoisseur of casinos, but from what I could tell, it was a nice casino. It was very large, had all kinds of table games and slots, a large variety of restaurants, offered a race book and smoke free areas. They even had a theater and a night club. Blackjack stakes started at a min of $25 which seemed way too high.
The poker room was Gianormous. When we arrived on Saturday morning, the place was packed. I'm not sure that they had one idle table. They claim to have over 100 tables and they had about 15 temp tables set up outside of the poker room. All of this action was driven by the World Poker Finals. This really reminded me of walking around the RIO during the world series. There were thousands of poker players at the casino on Saturday morning. It was crazy.
It took us a looooooong time to get a table (over 2 hours). Their sign-up/call process sucks. They use a PA system and large screen monitors for the sign up list. It really sucked. I think they were just overwhelmed with demand. They would call for initials in rapid fire succession for a game, and since the place was so packed you could really claim your seat efficiently and risked being skipped if your yells of "LOCK IT UP" were not heard. The dealer skill level was mixed. I had some really good dealers and some really bad ones. They did OK. I'm not as critical as some on dealer skill. I just get pissed when we are paying $5 per half hour to play NLHE and the dealers are cranking out 8 hands in 30 minutes. The crew I traveled with were much less forgiving of the dealers and some of the other players were real critical as well.
They did spread a large variety of games and at all limits. As an example, they spread stud from low limits of $1-$3 to $200-$400. They spread high limit mixed games (SHOE, OE). They also offered a variety of 1 table NLHE Sit-n-go tournaments starting at $120. The blind structure was pretty "middle of the road". I played NLHE, Stud, Omaha8, and H.O.R.S.E. The NLHE game was moderate. The Stud and Omaha games were very soft. The H.O.R.S.E game was very tough.
So the real value for me from this poker room, was the game variety they could offer. The poker room was more/less on par with Greektown for comfort. There was not necessarily any more/less fish at this casino. The comps were not especially valuable. The poker room management was not particularly noteworthy (the gold standard on this has to be the Venetian). Beverage service was real slow (but free alcohol - which I didn't take advantage of). They did have a little lounge to the side of the poker room where you could chill out for a while (by chill out, I mean sleep for 5 hours instead of going back to the hotel...rock).
Overall:
It wasn't a bad trip. The countryside was scenic. But, for the price and time it took get there, there is much better value in a trip to AC or Vegas. The group I traveled with all agreed, the only real reason to plan another trip to Foxwoods is to participate in one of their tournament events. I guess I can say that I've played at Foxwoods now, but I really don't see me going back there again.
Foxwoods Poker Adventure.
The Costs:First, airfare to Boston was pretty reasonable, $158. But don't let that fool ya. You'll still need to figure in the cost of parking ($22), the cost of taxes and airport fees ($20), the cost of rental car/gas ($140). Then, Massachusetts charged us tolls to use their roads about every 10 miles ($5). I swear we must have paid tolls 4 times trying to get out of that state. The hotel we decided to stay at was about 12 miles from the casino. This worked out OK, but it took about 15 minutes to get back and forth and we had to coordinate with each other on who was staying/leaving each time we traveled back and forth. The Hotel was $209 all in for 2 days. In total, my share of the costs was about $350 for the 3 day trip.
The Travel Time:
Second, you need to figure the time commitment just for the travel. It's only a 90 minute flight DTW to BOS, but when you add 2.5 hour airport lead time, 1 hour to get a rental car, and the 90 minute drive to the Casino. I left the house at 4a and we arrived at the casino at around 11a. If we had driven, it would have taken 10 hours (door to door) and cost about $60 in gas. So, we paid about $180 to avoid 6 hour of commute time.
The Poker Room/Casino:
The poker room and casino are huge. I'm not a real connoisseur of casinos, but from what I could tell, it was a nice casino. It was very large, had all kinds of table games and slots, a large variety of restaurants, offered a race book and smoke free areas. They even had a theater and a night club. Blackjack stakes started at a min of $25 which seemed way too high.
The poker room was Gianormous. When we arrived on Saturday morning, the place was packed. I'm not sure that they had one idle table. They claim to have over 100 tables and they had about 15 temp tables set up outside of the poker room. All of this action was driven by the World Poker Finals. This really reminded me of walking around the RIO during the world series. There were thousands of poker players at the casino on Saturday morning. It was crazy.
It took us a looooooong time to get a table (over 2 hours). Their sign-up/call process sucks. They use a PA system and large screen monitors for the sign up list. It really sucked. I think they were just overwhelmed with demand. They would call for initials in rapid fire succession for a game, and since the place was so packed you could really claim your seat efficiently and risked being skipped if your yells of "LOCK IT UP" were not heard. The dealer skill level was mixed. I had some really good dealers and some really bad ones. They did OK. I'm not as critical as some on dealer skill. I just get pissed when we are paying $5 per half hour to play NLHE and the dealers are cranking out 8 hands in 30 minutes. The crew I traveled with were much less forgiving of the dealers and some of the other players were real critical as well.
They did spread a large variety of games and at all limits. As an example, they spread stud from low limits of $1-$3 to $200-$400. They spread high limit mixed games (SHOE, OE). They also offered a variety of 1 table NLHE Sit-n-go tournaments starting at $120. The blind structure was pretty "middle of the road". I played NLHE, Stud, Omaha8, and H.O.R.S.E. The NLHE game was moderate. The Stud and Omaha games were very soft. The H.O.R.S.E game was very tough.
So the real value for me from this poker room, was the game variety they could offer. The poker room was more/less on par with Greektown for comfort. There was not necessarily any more/less fish at this casino. The comps were not especially valuable. The poker room management was not particularly noteworthy (the gold standard on this has to be the Venetian). Beverage service was real slow (but free alcohol - which I didn't take advantage of). They did have a little lounge to the side of the poker room where you could chill out for a while (by chill out, I mean sleep for 5 hours instead of going back to the hotel...rock).
Overall:
It wasn't a bad trip. The countryside was scenic. But, for the price and time it took get there, there is much better value in a trip to AC or Vegas. The group I traveled with all agreed, the only real reason to plan another trip to Foxwoods is to participate in one of their tournament events. I guess I can say that I've played at Foxwoods now, but I really don't see me going back there again.
