I wrote this up right after my trip way back in mid December but lost the file and just refound it today and thought I’d post it finally. Better late than never right?
I had a blast during my New Jersey/Philadelphia trip this past week. The trip started off with a trip to Atlantic City and a stay at Tropicana. We gambled a bit and ended up going to the club Providence. It was alright, but nothing spectacular by any means. I was expecting to see loads of drunk guidos here but to my disappointment they are all pretty much from long island I learned (basically no one from the Jersey Shore MTV show is actually from NJ). I manage to see a few here and there, but definitely not the stereotypical 12 of them dressed identically in their double popped collars with their new haircuts ordering jager bombs and heinekans all night.
Gambling wise I won a bit, and my gf and college buddy lost a little bit. It was a bit disappointing for me as I’d much rather have it the other way around as losing a couple hundred bucks doesn’t really bother me, but other people will “real life” hourly jobs just aren’t accustomed to losing money gambling and it can really upset them. The Pai Gow and craps gods said otherwise and I benefited at their expense.
The next day we checked out the Borgata as I had read it was the nicest casino in AC. It was definitely up there, but certainly no Bellagio or Wynn in my opinion obviously. On Saturday around noon they had one $30/$60 stud game running which I was excited to play in but had to wait til our girlfriends were occupied later in the trip.
Next day was Philadelphia touristy stuff. Saw the liberty bell, Ben Franklin’s grave, their market, the rocky statue etc but the most exciting thing I did that day was eat a declicious philly cheese steak from Jim’s. It’s not one of the famous two rivals right across from each other, but my buddy said it was better than either of those. I got a “whiz wit” which means with cheese whiz and onions. The cheese whiz sounds gross, and I’ll be the first to tell you that, but it’s the local traditonal way of having a cheesesteak and besides my gf got provolone cheese instead which I got to try, and the whiz was definitely way better. I also had the exciting experience of having a gas attendant fill up my gas for me. Didn’t even have to get out of the car. It was awesome, definitely the second best highlight of the trip. Even kept my receipt.
Delicious Cheesesteak
Reading Terminal Market Sign
My gf and I with the Liberty Bell
My college bud and I chillin with the Rocky statue (ran up the stairs which are right behind him)
The next day I mostly just rested up as I was still tired from the redeye I took over from Seattle. Just played some video games and watched the Sunday Night Football game where the Eagles played a great game vs the Giants. Monday, I made it out to an amazing “rare game” restaurant Half Moon where I tried blackened alligator and a kangaroo burger for the first time. They have rotating game specials every day and I love trying new food. It was the first time I’d ever tried either of those animals and they each definitely have a distinct taste to them. The gator was a tough kind of almost chewy meat and the kangaroo was a hard to describe texture which I don’t have the vocab for because I’m no food critic. I did really like the place and would definitely go back though. After that it was off to Herrs chip factory where I got to see loads of assembly lines of potato chips being made with warehouses and warehouses stocked full of boxes of them and even ate fresh potato chips that were peeled just 6 minutes before. I think what made them taste so great was they were still warm.
After that it was off to Atlantic City again to finally get some poker in for the trip. I was hoping to play some live stud for the first time ever, but it was Monday night and nothing was running. I ended up playing a little $10/$20 limit hold’em, followed by about 5 hours of $20/$40 limit hold’em. It’s the first time I’ve ever played LHE seriously at a casino(as opposed for just fun) and I actually kind of liked it because:
The hands go fast – people make decisions very quickly, there’s no 5 minute tanking like there is in no limit and in general people make their decision in 20 sec or less I’d guess so you get in more hands
I can play more hands – I often get bored playing live, but limit hold’em kind of helps because I can defend my blinds much more, and in general just see more flops which is more fun. With a hand like QJs I’m almost always in the pot and am not getting squeezed out of the pot or have to fold preflop nearly ever after I commit some chips to the hand
Things I didn’t like were:
The hands go fast – there wasn’t really any time to pay attention to live reads or anything like that. I mostly just had to play like it was an internet game and make my decisions based on board texture and potsize.
We were playing with small denomination chips – even though the Borgata has $10 and $20 chips, which a few people used sporadically, greater than 90% of the chps in play at the $20/$40 game were $5 chips. I fumbled around a lot and had a hard time counting out 8 or 16 chips at a time and had to dedicate way too much of my time stacking 4 or 8 high chip stacks ready for betting as opposed to paying attention to the other players or hands.
It was Monday night and most of them were regulars – I’d say more than half the people at my table knew each other and were calling them by their first names. Now, I was playing the highest LHE game going on at the time, and it was a Monday night, but it’s never a great table when Tom is talking to Juno who’s talking to Steve and a couple other guys who clearly go there every night and know each other very well.
Having said that I ended up winning $268. Might have been enough to pay for my whole trip even minus flight of course. I started off hot winning a couple hundred, then had a big losing streak and was down about $600, but then starting running hot again, got up about $400 and finally quit up $268. I don’t think I played that great and made more than a few mistakes, but my opponents, even the regulars seemed to make a lot of mistakes too. I was surprised how often they would check back the river with the best hand or fold the river for one bet or how little they bluffraised in spots which are pretty standard online. Anyways, I learned a couple things and hope to be back at the live pokers soon.
Awesome british rap by Christian Van Vuuren who had to spend 7 weeks in quarantine cause he got TB