Tunica trip report (long) June 14-19 '07

[LuckyTxGuy]

*Warning* Low poker content, just a LONG trip report about Tunica poker in general, which might help first timers. I’m sure I’ll ramble on endlessly and skip around in the report. I’m sorry ahead of time.[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Cliff Notes: Stayed at Gold Strike for 5 nights, played close to 60 hours of poker and had a blast. Free food, super cheap rooms and friendly people. Tunica is THE place to go for a cheap poker trip.

Just figured I’d write up a report from my latest Tunica trip. No real hand histories because I doubt you care to hear about any bad beats or “big” pots from my $3/6 and $4/8 play.lol

I made a trip out to Tunica with my buddy last month for the first time and we had a great trip. That report can be found here…… Previous Tunica Report

After my last trip, I told my wife, who also plays poker, that we needed to plan a trip over to Tunica because I knew she’d have a blast. We decided to go for our anniversary and we booked 5 nights at the Gold Strike. Last trip my buddy and I booked through the Horseshoe poker room rate and were given a room at the Grand Veranda. All that info can be found in other post but while I loved the Horseshoe, I didn’t like driving back and forth to the Veranda. Since this was going to be a trip with my wife and she might want to be at the pool some while I was playing poker or one of us might want to go back to the room etc, I decided driving back and forth to the poker room wasn’t an option. I called and talked to the Shoe and explained the situation and while they were very understanding they said there was no poker room rates given for the actual Horseshoe rooms anymore. Again, this is not me saying this, but what I was told on the phone by Dale at the Horseshoe when he returned my phone call about booking a room.

That left us with only one option in my mind and that was the Gold Strike. This actually made a lot of sense because it gave us access to play next door at the Shoe plus the GS’s main low limit game is $3/6 which is well suited for my wife, who had never had the opportunity to play below $4/8. I was told by everyone on the phone at the GS that the 5 hour/day mandatory poker play for the poker room rate could NOT be combined with anyone else staying in my room, including my wife. One of us would be required to get our hours in every single day (we could alternate days on who got the 5 hours if we wanted but it was frowned on). Johnny Grooms had also confirmed this to me in person when I asked the question on my previous trip. I had also asked Johnny G. about the GS comping meals and he said that meal “vouchers” would be provided if we played enough but he did not act like they were as free with meals as the Shoe was. I didn’t really get a good feeling about getting all my meals comped. Again, that info was gained on my first trip. More on why this is important later on.

My wife and I got there Thursday afternoon and checked out on Tuesday morning. Plenty of time for a ton of poker. Check in was smooth and quick except the machines that code the credit card type room keys all went down as the lady tried to make us room keys. Uh oh! She made some phone calls and said it might be an hour before they were fixed but to check back soon. So I took my wife on tour of the GS and we stood in line for 15 minutes at 4 pm on a Thursday to get our players cards. That line always seemed to be 10-20 people long at a bare minimum at all times. The weekend lines were horrible! After checking out the GS, we walked over to the Shoe and then over to the Sheraton. In case you’ve never been there, those 3 casinos almost touch each other. They share one big parking lot and sit side by side in a row. After entering the Sheraton I thought I’d found the location of the filming of the National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, where Chevy Chase and cousin Eddie go to the old Vegas casino and play War and “Guess the Number”.[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] Seriously, the signs on the wall said “$11.99 Lobster Buffet!” “$4.99 Steak and Egg Breakfast” and then the most amazing sign of all…. “$3 Blackjack”. Huh?! I’m not a blackjack player but have always wanted to play for fun, but being a cheapskate never have because of the $5 and $10 minimums I see everywhere I’ve been. Walking around in the place still gave me a National Lampoon’s feeling since it was small and felt a lot older than most casinos I’ve been in. Then I saw something that almost made me pass out…….$1.50 roulette!!! Yes I know how bad of a bet roulette is, yes I know I’m going to be a 5.25% long term loser but $1.50 roulette? I was in heaven. .25 cent chips are available so you can make your bets totally $1.50 on the inside. I knew I’d be coming back at some point for some cheap roulette action. We headed back to the GS and got our key and went on up to the room.

Quick run down of the room for those that are interested. It’s nice, it’s clean, it’s fairly small, the TV is around 19”, definitely the smallest I’ve ever seen in a hotel/motel room, but everything was fine. The room was at least as nice or nicer than any LaQuinta or Holiday Inn I’ve stayed in but not near as fancy as a lot of casino hotel rooms. Still nothing wrong with it at all and it was just as nice and clean as the Grand’s Veranda. My wife thought it was great FWIW. One piece of advice is to put our the “do not disturb” sign when you go to bed if you plan on sleeping late because, at least on our floor, the cleaning staff was in full action by 9 am and banging on all the doors.

For anyone that cares, the pool at the GS is indoors. That might be great for the winter but for getting a tan in the summer it’s not good. How do I know all this? My wife told me.lol For the record they have a small fenced off patio area right outside the doors of the pool with a small decorative rock waterfall and about 8-10 lounge chairs for laying in the sun. This was good enough for my wife, but it wasn’t exactly the same as having a nice outdoor pool she said. For $30 a night, we weren’t complaining.