Mike and I met in the lobby on Friday morning all set to take a bus to Foxwoods casino. This was to be my first live poker ring game experience, and I was pretty excited. The bus ride was about 2 hours long from Boston, and we arrived at Foxwoods sometime in the early afternoon. Foxwoods is an amazing sight - it is absolutely *huge*, with three buildings of hotel rooms, slot machines, poker tables, and other casino table games. Instead of heading to our hotel right away, Mike and I checked our bags and headed straight for the poker room. I sat down at a 2/4 limit table, and Mike joined a 1/2 no limit game. My first impression? These players were *terrible*. I got frustrated though because I couldn't get cards to take advantage of it! After about 4 hours of play, I was down about $60 or so.

Mike was really hungry, and I my stomach was fast to agree, so we left to get some food at the Hard Rock Cafe. We seriously had the best service at a restaurant so far this trip there, which was pretty cool so we left a pretty good tip. It helped that Mike was up almost $200 at that point!

Before returning to the poker room, we wandered around for a few minutes to take in some of the atmosphere. Really, it felt like any other casino I've ever been in ... just that it was ginormous. We stopped at a craps table and played a few rounds where I won about $25 ... not too shabby. Craps is one of the only casino games that I find fascinating because at a full table, there's so much going on. People placing bets like crazy, and yelling and cheering as the dice are rolled - there really isn't a game more fun that craps in a casino environment. Plus its a low house edge game if you know how to bet, so that's another advantage!

Anyways, after our brief break we returned to the poker room. This time, I got a rush of cards and pulled up about $50 at one point ... only to hit 3 bad hands for me in a row including twice running into pocket aces with a big pair of my own. I swung up and down quite a bit, but ended up only down $30 when Mike and I decided to head back around 3 in the morning.

We caught a cab back to our hotel which was just a few minutes away, and checked in. I got to sleep a little after 4:30 in the morning which is officially the latest I've been up all trip. I woke up around 10:20 to the alarm clock so we could catch the shuttle in after a bit of breakfast. The hotel had free breakfast before 11am, including these awesome belgian waffle makers that were all set up for the perfect one every time. So I rather enjoyed breakfast!

Mike and I caught the 11am shuttle back to the casino. We had about an hour and a half to kill before we caught the bus (so we thought) ... so we returned to the poker room for a little bit of play. I started up fast - with 3 hands in a row which I raised preflop (ATs, JJ and JJ again). I won the first two and lost the third, but was up for a decent amount of time. Not too much later though, I had a terrible beat. I had A6 of hearts and limped in. The guy in the blinds raised so 4 players and I all called. I flopped a flush draw with a Jh 4h 2s, so I check and called with lots of odds. The turn was a 2c, which looked a lot like a blank. Again I check and called with one lady also staying in. The river was the queen of hearts giving me the nut flush. Unfortunately, the preflop raiser had just made queens full. Ouch!

So I took another $25 hit, but all in all I don't think I played terribly. I should probably have laid down my Jacks to the Aces last night, but besides that, I felt really comfortable and the amount I lost was totally within reasonable statistical variance. Still, it would've been nice to come out of foxwoods ahead!

Mike is up about $100, which is nice for him. It pretty much pays for the sidetrip to foxwoods for him with a little on the side. Apparently I should've been playing no limit.

I typed up this post when I was waiting for the bus to show up at the bus terminal. Turns out that the bus was almost a full two hours late! So we waited for a long time for the bus to arrive and then were late arriving in new york to meet up with Mike and Nolan.

Up next? Adventures in New York! Our first visit is apparently the Museum of Natural History.

Heraldk