Tunica Trip Report May 16-19

[bobpoker]

CLIFF NOTES: Went on a 3 day poker trip to Tunica for the first time. Had fun, had some laughs, won a little money. Will go back soon.

I just returned from a poker trip to Tunica on May 19th. I first heard about Tunica through this forum by reading past posts and trip reports, so I thought that I should post a little trip report myself. This idea for this trip was for me to get away for a few days of poker and let my wife shop in Memphis and lay by the pool all day. At the last minute, she decided to drop out and I was able to convince fellow 2+2er, LuckyTxGuy (Jason), to make the trip with me. My goal was to get in as much low-limit poker as I could and possibly mix in a tournament or two or a shot at a bigger game (10/20).

We left our home in East Texas Wednesday morning the 16th to make the 7ish hour drive to Tunica. We arrived and checked in at the Veranda Hotel (Grand) on the Horseshoe poker room rate. Let me say that the ability to book a cheap room and the possibility of free food was a huge factor in making the trip, since Jason and I are small budget, recreational players. The hotel was nice, not fancy, but it was very comfortable and I would not hesitate to take my wife back there another time. The hotel was a few minutes drive away from the poker room, but that was no big deal. The staff at the hotel was very accommodating and it didn’t take us long to get settled in before we were off to the poker room.

We arrived at the Horseshoe poker room and were surprised at the number of tables running on Wednesday afternoon. The poker room itself was nicer than the poker rooms that I am used to playing in Shreveport. The room didn’t feel cramped at all and there were plenty of flat panel TVs to look at. The staff was friendly when we checked in and the cage in the room is close by and made getting chips quick. I immediately sat down with a rack at the 4/8 game. The players at the table were similar to what I am used to at every other 4/8 game I have played: mostly loose, terrible players mixed with one or two who halfway know what they are doing. I won a few nice pots and I started to get hungry. I had heard that all you had to do for a food comp was ask and that was true. During my whole trip I didn’t spend a single dollar on food. The staff at the Horseshoe really takes care of poker players.

After filling up at the buffet, I returned to hear the floor announce that there would be a $130 buy-in freeze-out with bounties starting at 7:00. I went back to my table and checked out my stack to see the I was up exactly $130 for the session, so I decided I should buy in. The structure for the tournament was a very good one for a small buy-in event. It allowed for a lot of play which I needed since I didn’t get many hands before the first break. After the antes kicked in, I was able to steal enough pots to keep my stack around average. After the second break I had a short stack and it suddenly became “shove-time”. I was able to win a few pots, pick up a few $25 bounties, and just hang around until we got down to two tables. When there were 12 players left, I got into a 4-way all-in. I turned the nut flush draw, but bricked the turn and river. If I would have hit a heart on the turn or river I would have picked up three more bounties and gone to the final table as the chip leader.
After that hand, we moved to the final table with me as one of the short stacks. A even chop was immediately proposed for about $550, but there was a holdout as usual. A few hands later, I called a push from a another short stack and my 88 didn’t improve against his 1010. I finished 10th out of 52 or so and profited $35 after tip. It was a fun tournament and one that I would recommend. I got back into another 4/8 game a little later and played until we got tired and went to bed about 3AM.

I was only able to sleep until about 7, so I left the room and drove around to check out the other casinos. I went back to the Shoe to see what kind of early morning action they had going. There were 2 tables running, so I sat down in a short handed 4/8 game. The floor let us play at a reduced rake and even with one blind when it got down to 3 players. I don’t ever get the opportunity to play shorthanded since the majority of my poker is played from 5pm to midnight on weekends, and my lack of experience showed as I burned through a rack and a half in less than 2 hours. I decided to cut my losses head back to the room to pick Jason up.

The rest of Thursday I played 4/8 with more bad players. It always amazes me to see how many grumpy, nitty players there are in poker rooms. I think that there are a higher percentage of miserable people in poker rooms that you will find in probably any other place of business. I play poker for fun and I enjoy having conversations with pleasant people at the table, but sometimes I just have to laugh at some of the characters that I see at the tables. I often wonder if these people are like this every day in life or if losing huge piles of white chips brings this out in them.

One of my goals for the trip was to try to play a little in a 10/20 game which would be the biggest game that I have ever played in. I know that is lame, but my regular casino regularly spreads 20/40 as the next biggest game above 4/8. Thursday evening I sat down at the 10/20 game for the first time. I bought in for $300 and decided to lay low for a few orbits. The game was very tight with usually 3 or 4 to the flop with lots of chopping. I picked up a few hands and won a few pots. The thing that surprised me most, though, was how unfriendly the table was with me as an outsider. For the few hours I sat there, nobody at the table said a word to me, even if I were to say something. The dealers knew everyone by name, in fact, the dealers knew all of the 20 plus 10/20 players that I played with over the two days I played. While I would expect a lot of regulars at that game, I also would expect a table to full of regulars to try to make a “newbie” who obviously moved over from the 4/8 game feel comfortable at the new game. If they had chatted it up a little, I likely would have stayed in the game until I lost my whole stack. Instead, they just talked among themselves and made the game generally “unfun”. I decided since I was on vacation to have fun and the game wasn’t providing that, I should just go back to playing 4/8. I cashed out up $265 and bought back into the 4/8 game.

During the next session of 4/8, my buddy Jason and I witnessed one of the nastiest things that we have ever seen at the table. Jason and I were in the 9 and 10 seats and the player in the 6 seat was the perpetrator. Apparently, the 6 seat had an itch or needed to “adjust” himself. He reached straight down into his shorts/underwear and took care of business. His hand lingered a little too long and his arm was up to his elbow in his shorts. I have no idea what he was doing, but he got up and left for a few minutes immediately after that. After he left, Jason and I were discussing this behavior and laughing when the dealer interrupted us and said “you saw that too?” After she realized that we did, we all died laughing and she made some hilarious comments. She was laughing so hard that she couldn’t even deal the game, so naturally everyone else wanted to know what was going on. She explained to the table in vivid detail what had happened and the whole table was grossed out. Needless to say, nobody was able to look the player in the eye after that and nobody wanted to play a pot that had his chips in it for the rest of the night. It was one of those “had to be there” moments.

We played until about 2 or 3 in the morning and decided to go to Gold Strike to play for about an hour so that we could take home a chip and say that we played there. They had one 3/6 and no 4/8 games going when we arrived at poker room. I was not very impressed with room. It was basically an open area that was not on the same floor as the main casino. It very much reminded me of a home game all the way down to the self serve snack food. I’m all for free food as mentioned before, but the possibility that the guy with his hands in the peanuts might be the same guy that just had his hand in his pants was too much for me to stomach. I stayed away from the snack bar. One comment about the 3/6 game: what a stupid game. Is it really possible for a game to feel any smaller than 4/8? Apparently it is.

We stayed about an hour and were about to rack up when in walked a drunk college guy and his hot girlfriend. He decided that the best time to teach his girlfriend to play poker was while he was completely wasted. Now this is what 3/6 is supposed to be all about! We decided to hang around a little longer and watch the festivities. It was amazing to see how fast players racked up from the 1-2 game and ran to our table to fight over the remaining 3 seats. A fourth seat opened up after the first hand when drunk guy’s first F-bomb ran off the 75 year old table captain grandma. She just gasped, stood up, and racked up. Hilarious. He proceeded to raise and reraise many hands in the dark. He even played a few hands completely in the dark. It was so funny to watch him hit a flush or a straight nearly every hand even after not looking at his cards until the showdown. He felted nearly every one of the 1-2 players that came over to take his money. He was a really friendly guy and everything he did was in fun. He tipped a fist full at a time. I think I even saw my first “string-tip.” Lol. He actually seemed to know a little something about poker. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was a 2+2er. Billy, if you are out there, you were hilarious. It was some of the best laughs of the trip. When we left, Billy and his girl must have had $600 in front of them, in piles, not stacks. I played well and left with a very respectable profit for that game, $7. Lol.

The last day of my trip was filled with more 4/8. I had a nice run and built my stack up before going card dead for a while. We had a bad encounter with a guy named Bruce who supposedly is a dealer next door. He was tripped out on something and in a nasty mood. The floor was called three times in the first ten minutes that he was at the table. I really thought that that he was going to get the boot after he got into a rack shoving match with a nice dealer named Hollie. He was pissed and started to rack up and shoved a rack of chips into the middle of a pot during a hand just to piss the dealer off. She shoved it back to his seat and they went back and forth for a while before the floor came. He got plain nasty a few times and nearly fell on another female player when he went to get another seat. He then got crazy raising every street on every hand with nothing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t catch any cards to play with him. He racked up a lot of chips and stumbled to another table.
I decided to take another shot at 10/20 that evening. The was table full of different people Friday night and they were friendlier, although not very talkative. I played for a an hour or two, but the game just seemed too tight to be very profitable. I racked up with a $75 profit.

I got something to eat and went to pick Jason up at Gold Strike; he had gone over a little while earlier after going card dead and getting frustrated. I sat in a 4/8 game for an hour, ran good and finished up $106. The players at the 4/8 game there were just as bad as at the Shoe, maybe worse. I just didn’t like the room very much. I don’t know if it was the slick chips, the wobbly cheap table, or the atmosphere. In fairness to the room, I only played there for about 3 hours total. It might be a room that has to grow on you. After that we racked up and headed back to the room to get ready for the drive back to Texas.

I would just like to say that my total experience with the Horseshoe was an excellent one. The floor, dealers, and support staff all did an excellent job and it was obvious that it is a professionally run room. The tournament was outstanding and well run. I have nothing but good things to say about Horseshoe. Special thanks to Todd for answering questions that I had before I arrived. I would definitely recommend to anyone to stay on the poker room rate and play at the Horseshoe. I will be making another trip to Tunica as soon as I can.

I was in Tunica for less than three days and managed to squeeze in 35 hours at the table, several of which were during the tournament. All but 3 hours were spent playing at the Horseshoe. I played mostly 4/8 with a few hours of 10/20 and 3/6 mixed in. I ended up with a profit of $780 for the trip which worked out to be 2.37 BB/hr for my cash game play. It was a very successful and fun trip in my book. I can’t wait to go back.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Great report and well said....I should know since I was there! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Very well put and I don't have alot to add but I do want to say a few things. First off, the poker room at the Horseshoe is awesome. Very nice, clean, well run, alot of games going all the time, I could go on and on. As mentioned above poker players are treated like royalty there. Poker seems to be the step child of most casinos and a free buffet is out of the question for a measly $4/8 player like myself at any poker room I've ever played in. Not so at the Shoe, ask and ye shall receive. The snack bar and buffet are both excellent too I might add.

The first night I did great ending with a $187 profit at the $4/8 games but it went pretty much downhill from there. I could not get on the "other" side of variance to save my life. Not blaming the bad players, because I fully realize they are were the money comes from. I just couldn't get two cards to hold up to save my life. Then I went card dead. Not much more boring than being card dead in a slow $4/8 game.lol Still I had a good time and enjoyed the games at the Horseshoe.

I did play a couple more hours at the Gold Strike than BobPoker but I didn't play a ton there. I played my first ever $3/6 game there and I honestly kind of liked it. Granted it could be because I was running so horribly at the $4/8 at the Shoe. One thing I have to admit...I can't see how you can make any real profit at $3/6 but I know has to be possible. I did end up with a decent profit for both sessions but wow, talk about winning a huge pot and still not being up much?lol I guess I'm just used to $4/8 and two sessions of $3/6 is far from conclusive. The one thing I will give Gold Strike, it seemed to me there were alot more tourist fish in the games than I noticed at the Shoe. I played with men, women, and college kids many of whom had never sat down at a poker table before and were just begging to blow through a rack of chips. I didn't think anything could be any more fishy than the $4/8, but hello $3/6. Wow.[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Oh and Billy was a trip. That was the wildest event I've ever seen at a poker table and I was card dead the entire time and just itching to get in a pot with Billy and his girlfriend. I will tell about the one and only hand I was able to play with Billy and his girl......

We were about to head back to the hotel since it was almost 4 a.m. and we were both tired. I'd been trying to get some cards...anything so I could jump in on the action. Billy and his girl were felting players left and right and one time it was capped on about 2 streets and checked 3 ways on the river and Billy flipped over Queen high and raked the pot! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

I said out loud, "Ok one more hand and hopefully it will be good so I can play a pot with ya'll before I go..." Sure enough I got AJs in late position. Billy raised as he had done on every single hand (probably hadn't seen his cards), his girlfriend called and when it got to me I 3-bet it. Billy and his girl called. Flop comes J-4-7 rainbow. Beautiful! I have TPTK and Billy leads out with a bet, she calls, I raise, Billy re-raises, she calls, I 4-bet and they both call. Turn is a blank and Billy bets, she calls and I pop it for a raise. Billy slows down and jokes that he knows I haven't played a single hand and he things I have a monster, so he's gonna fold, his girl calls. River is King and I cringe. His girl says "well I guess I better see what my cards are, I haven't looked yet!" LMAO! She picks her cards up off the table looks at them, then the board, then her cards and says "how much can I bet?" Crap, this means she has....well it doesn't mean anything but I just know she has a king. She bets and I call saying I have a feeling this is gonna hurt. Sure enough she turns over K3o...no pair, no draw and rivers her 3 outer on the river! LOL DONKAMENTS! I couldn't help but laugh as I racked up the rest of my chips. I think loosing that pot might have been the highlight of my whole trip, just because it was so funny the way the hand played out and the way the two of them had ran over the table.

Anyway, long story short, we had a great trip and my wife and I are planning a trip back within a month if we can get a room booked through the Shoe. Cheap rooms, free food and great poker action, what more can you ask for?

[Chipr777]

I'm glad you had a good time and if you have anymore questions feel free to ask. Just make sure you book your rooms well in advance. I'd hate to see you try to come back on short notice and find the hotel full.

[tuq]

Solid recaps from both of you. Thanks for sharing.

[Brad1970]

[ QUOTE ]
Sure enough she turns over K3o...no pair, no draw and rivers her 3 outer on the river!

[/ QUOTE ]

Welcome to 3/6 limit at the Goldstrike. LOL Goldstrikeaments.

FWIW, GS runs a 10/20 game also usually on the weekends but its kinda hit & miss. If you guys want to take a shot at a 10/20 game try this one. It is a 3/6 game played with red chips. Seriously. Mostly older folk who aren't nearly as aggressive as your BFF Billy, but usually has decent action.

I agree with whoever said that the GS has wobbly tables. Some of them are. Cheap tables I guess.

[Wahoo73]

[ QUOTE ]
We arrived and checked in at the Veranda Hotel (Grand) on the Horseshoe poker room rate.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nice report...makes me want to return to Tunica soon.

I was a little confused, however, by the passage quoted above. Does this mean that you booked your accommodations through the Horseshoe Poker Room at the "poker room rate", but they actually had you staying at the Grand (Veranda) Hotel instead of at the Horseshoe Hotel? I suppose since they are both Harrah's properties that this is possible, but I just didn't know they had this sort of reciprocal agreement. If so, this is good to know for future reference.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Wahoo, yes the room was booked through the poker room at the Shoe's poker rate but the rooms were at the Veranda. Being a first timer I didn't know if it was even possible to ever stay at the Shoe when booking the poker room rate? I thought they might always put you up at the Veranda? I guess I'll find out when I try to book for my wife and I.

[KDuff]

Nice TR. I'm pumped for my first Tunica trip next week.

Is the Shoe room non-smoking?

[Brad1970]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice TR. I'm pumped for my first Tunica trip next week.

Is the Shoe room non-smoking?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes & No. Yes its non smoking but its so open & close to the rest of the casino that the smoke drifts into the poker room. But it won't be directly in your face.

[NicksDad1970]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Nice TR. I'm pumped for my first Tunica trip next week.

Is the Shoe room non-smoking?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes & No. Yes its non smoking but its so open & close to the rest of the casino that the smoke drifts into the poker room. But it won't be directly in your face.

[/ QUOTE ]

I love the Shoe but that sure is frustrating. I see poker players leave the table to go smoke. They can't just sit a few feet behind the rail. They're leaning over it blowing smoke all over the damn place.

They can't be totally blind to what thy're doing. I was a smoker years ago and tried to keep smoke away from others.

Still an awesome room though.