A number of people have asked me what I did for my birthday this year. Since I was missing half of the group birthday crew (remember that Jack was an original member) and I’m in NYC, there were really only two choices: Atlantic City or Foxwoods. The decision was pretty much made for us, since hotels in AC were $400+ (just for Saturday). So we spent my birthday at the World’s largest casino (well, maybe it’s not, I knew I had to go to Macau someday anyway) where you can check out what is probably the World’s largest rainmaker statue or at least the one with the largest sack. See:

We did the usual stuff, played poker, ate the buffet, and eventually got stuck at the craps table. I really need to learn to stay away from it, but damn it’s fun. Poker was somewhat uneventful. I spent all of my poker time playing $4-$8 limit. The people were your average players, with some terrible calling stations, some crazy aggressive high-limit players trolling in a low-limit game for some unknown reason, and my favorite - the know-it-all who critiques every play you make. I love playing poker live. Seriously. I had a million drinks and got so hammered I couldn’t read the cards on the board. That’s how you know it’s time to head over to the craps table.

The real story was getting there. Without a car, there are three options for getting to Foxwoods from NYC: take the bus, take a train halfway and a bus the rest, or take a train most of the way and take a bus for the last 20 minutes. We chose to take the train halfway because it was cheaper than taking the train most of the way. Plus it said “casino package”. Which is a good enough selling point for me. It was a bad decision. The train portion of the trip was fine, but the bus part totally blew. I blame Greyhound for the bad mojo which eventually lead to my losing weekend. To start, the bus was an hour late. Buses don’t have schedule monitors. That would be asking too much. So we spent an hour waiting outside of the train station with child molesters, serial killers, and the crackwhore single moms that frequent Greyhound buses. Once we got on the bus, I realized the real treat wasn’t just getting to ride on the bus with these people, it was the opportunity to smell them for 2 hours.

Anyway I’ve rambled enough. Here’s the real review of Foxwoods: It’s fucking huge. They have more poker tables than anywhere I’ve ever seen, spreads more games at more limits, and it’s run as well as the majority of casinos I’ve been to in Vegas. The craps table runs at $10 on weekends and I’m pretty sure I saw a $5 craps table on Sunday afternoon. It’s inconvenient to get to (which is exactly what everyone told me before I went). Oh yeah and there are hillbillies up here just like in the South. Still I’d like to go back, as long as I could get better transportation. I need to find one of these charter Chinatown buses, those chinese people love their gambling.

Oh yeah, and keno. One of the freebies in the “Casino Package” was some free Keno action. Having never played keno before, we just gave our cards to the guy at the counter who told us to come back in two hours. We showed up a few hours later to find out that we had won $5. That’s five American dollars. It’s no $400, but it will do.