Trip Report - Isle of Capri Prairie du Chien, WI/Marquette, IA

[ATrebek]

Warning - this may be the lamest trip report ever.

So my father-in-law and I had about 6 hours to kill this weekend, so we made the 90 minute trip from La Crosse, WI to the Isle of Capri in Marquette, IA. The purpose of this trip report is to prevent others from making the same mistake.

To start with, their website lists Blackjack/Craps/Roulette/"Live Poker" as their table games - that should have been a red flag in hind site.

We depart La Crosse, WI around noon and get to the river boat around 1:30 PM. We walked across the land bridge to the casino area and the security guard tells me my out of state ID looks fake. I'm 26 so I expect to be ID'ed, but I certainly don't look less than 21. After a few moments getting that sorted out, we proceed to the gaming area.

Once we enter the gaming area, I immediately start looking for the poker room. I didn't take long to find it -- the only problem is that there was no poker room per se, but only a couple of tables at the end of the pit area. Both are empty. At this point I'm thinking we should have driven another 30 minutes and gone to Ho-Chunk, but its a little late now.

I find the pit boss and ask what the chances of getting a game up are. I don't even bother to ask about various games, as the sign only lists 3/6. The boss tells me that we can probably get a game up in an hour or so, so its off to play some blackjack with the father-in-law.

After about 90 minutes of some frenzied nickel blackjack with pops-in-law, they finally get the game going. It plays just like you would expect a 3/6 table to play with one interesting caveat. There is absolutely no raising pre-flop - seriously. I saw one hand in particular where AK, KK, and QQ all limped in pre-flop. I got some really strange looks when I raised preflop, and even got a speech from one of the locals letting me know that I shouldn't raise preflop because anything can happen on the flop.

I sat and folded most of my hands for the two hours I played. The only interesting hand was when I limped with J8s on the button after 6 other limpers and flopped two pair on a 8JQs board. Called the flop and bet the blank turn and blank river and MHIG when called down.

All in all it was pretty lame and I would definitely not go back. If it was the only thing around I might go donk off some chips and get drunk - only problem is the drinks aren't free. Next thanksgiving I will definitely be driving the extra half hour to Ho-chunk.