Saturday, Oct. 3, 2009 I went to Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT with a group on a casino excursion arranged by a local travel agency, Travel by Tatten. Turned out to be very nice. So easy to drive to a local hotel and board a luxury bus. It had been raining heavy off and all on day, so, it was great to leave the driving to someone else.
I played at a $1/2 no limit hold’em table. When I arrived at the Poker Room, I asked how long the wait was and the Board Person said that I could be seated right away… and I was. I asked how many $1/$2 no limit hold’em tables Mohegan Sun had going that evening and she answered 10. So, approximately 24% of the Poker Room’s tables (10 out of 42) were running $1/$2 no limit hold’em games.
The Poker Room was very busy and abuzz with activity. Chips were chattering with nervous energy. Every few minutes the cheer from a big beat could be heard; balanced several minutes later with an anguished groan from a bad beat.
Minimum buy in for a $1/$2 table is $60; max is $300. I had brought $200 to play. In the past, I would buy $100 in chips at a time regardless of the total amount that I had allocated for the session. Since January, I have been doing a lot of reading and research for this website, and learned that it is better to purchase all the chips at once and go to the table with your larger stack than it is to go with $100 in chips and refill as needed. So, what did I do? At the last moment, I purchased $100 in chips. Huh? Guess I was not really committed to playing $200.
Upon sitting down at the table, I immediately realized that I had made a mistake and should have purchased the $200. I was outstacked by seven of the other players at the table. I don’t know how long any of them had been at the table, nor whether they had arrived with those stacks or had been winning for hours. Sigh…
At my end of the table (I was in seat 10), were 4 players who were pretty chummy. Two seemed to know each other well and apparently run into each other every Saturday night when they come to play (and take advantage of) the occasional, less-experienced live players like myself. All four were good players. They spent a lot of time talking about and criticizing the player in seat 3. You know him. You’ve seen him, and probably played at a table with him. A Poker Pro wanna-be… Sunglasses, baseball cap, long pauses, tried to talk like he knew what he was doing. He didn’t have a clue – and – the four around me were on to him and chomping at the bit to bust him. Problem was, he was drawing great.
One hand I was involved in, he played to showdown against the player in seat 9. The player in seat 9 was experienced and playing only premium hands. When he entered a hand, you knew he had the goods. Seat 9 was in the Small Blind and the Poker Pro wanna-be was out of position. The Small Blind bet $12 pre-flop. I called, the Poker Pro wanna-be called and the player in seat 5 called. A J 5 came on the flop. The Small Blind bet $25. I folded. The Poker Pro wanna-be called and seat 5 folded. The Turn was a small card and the Small Blind bet $60. The Poker Pro wanna-be called. 7 came on the River. The Small Blind slowed down and didn’t bet the River. The Poker Pro wanna-be bet some amount that gave pot-odds that the Small Blind couldn’t refuse. The Poker Pro wanna-be turned over 7 5 offsuit . The Small Blind showed a Pr Kings. The Poker Pro wanna-be won the hand on a River suck out making 2 pr. The collective grunt of disgust at the table could be heard throughout Mohegan Sun. The players not involved in the showdown were dumbfounded and shaking their heads. (Sometimes no limit hold’em is very cruel.)
I played for about 2.5 hours at the same table. I folded a lot pre-flop, and won the majority of the hands I played. I lost one big hand in which I had invested about $57. At showdown I had trip Aces. The other player made a Full House. I was focused on the potential wheel and hadn’t even considered that. He had a pr 3’s in his hand.
I left with $48; down $52 and $7 of that was for tips.
The Mohegan Sun Poker Room Experience
For as busy as it was, the noise level was pretty normal.
It is a no smoking poker room. Although you can smoke all around it, the room is somewhat closed off, so, it is much less smoky than other parts of the casino.
The Board person was friendly and efficient and had me seated in less than 2 minutes.
Floor personnel managed table turn over very well and empty seats were quickly filled at all the tables around me.
The dealers changed every half hour. Each was experienced, friendly, and kept the play moving at a good pace. Overall they were very good. There were a couple of goofs…One dealer misdealt which she recognized immediately and re-dealt. Another dealer forgot to deal me in one hand. (I was in seat 10 talking to the player in seat 9). It was interesting because it wasn’t the first hand he had dealt and there was no player movement (coming or going) at my end of the table. He simply skipped over me. No problem. The dealers were moving really fast and these incidents were a blip in time. We were off playing again in short order. This experience with the dealers at Mohegan Sun was very much more positive than my experience with the dealers at Mohegan Sun back in April.
I took some flyers in order to share tournament info with you here, but, today, I went to the website to double check on something, and realized that they are doing a much better job of posting information about the Poker Room tournaments online, so, no need to duplicate. Here’s a link: Mohegan Sun Poker Room Tournaments.
Travel by Tatten announced that they have a Casino excursion in January, 2010 to Foxwoods in CT. Sign me up! I don’t see it listed on their blog yet, but, here’s the link: The Travel Blog