Saint Louis Area -- trip report

[JMAnon]

I spent several weeks over the pas two months in Missouri on business, and I got a chance to play at Harrah's and Ameristar, two of the Saint Louis area casinos.

Harrah's:

The main game at Harrah's is NLHE, with stakes from $1-2 to $2-5 blinds. Purportedly, the max buy in for the $1-2 game was $200, but I saw many players sit down with well in excess of that amount. The max buy in at the $2-5 game was $500, but the games were much tighter than the wild $1-2 games. During my few visits, the $1-2 games actually played bigger than the $2-5 games. There were routinely opening raises of $20-25 at the $1-2 games, and players with $800-1500 stacks. I saw one drunk guy run a $200 stack up to roughly $2K and then give it all back.

One note of caution, there were a group of three young players (one an attractive woman, one a young, thin caucasian male, and one a young, thin asian male) who I suspected were colluding at one of the $1-2 NLHE games. They were all clearly friends, and I overheard one tell a high-school friend that he played professionally. Based on what I saw, he was not a good enough player to play professionally. It is possible that they are just friends who play together often, but some of the looks they shot each other and some of the plays they made were abnormal.

I also played in a mixed game that was half NLHE and half Pot-limit Omaha high with $5 blinds (I think). The game was shorthanded, and the other players were fairly tight relative to the NLHE games. I was on the interest list for the mixed game for at least 6 hours before the game got going. I played for less than an hour before I got tired and left, so I don't have much feel for how good the game was.

In general, Harrah's is a nice place, and the games were very soft.

Ameristar:

This is also a nice place. At Ameristar, I played $5/10 O8 with a full kill. They had two tables running of the game, and one was a must move. The O8 games were incredibly soft; I only encountered one or two other players who knew how to play well. The downside was that the O8 games moved very slowly (like all live O8 games), and it can be torturous waiting for the dealer and the other players to figure out who wins the pot. On the whole, I preferred playing in the $5/10 O8 game at Ameristar to playing at Harrah's because the game was so soft. I didn't play any of the holdem games at Ameristar, so I can't comment on those.

If you are ever in Saint Louis, I would recommend either place as a good place to play.

[surfinillini]

Ameristar holds a special place in my <3

I learned to play NL there with their 300max 1/2NL game during my senior of school in Champaign. Every other weekend 3 of us would pile into my car and go down to St. Charles get a room at the red-roof in and play like 2 straight days of poker and then drive back to school and discuss our sessions on the way home (about 2.5hour drive).

I've only been to Harrah's once and thought it was nice but this was way back in summer of 2004.