Road Trip: Final Report—Foxwoods

[Mark Heide]

On Saturday, I left Atlantic City for Foxwoods. Found a motel called Hilltop Inn & Suites four miles from the casino. Rates were not cheap here, so I decided to check in for two nights and possibly look for something else—it cost me $279 for two nights.

After checking in, drove in to Foxwoods. It was next to impossible to find a parking spot. Plus, the layout of the place is confusing—I felt like a rat in a maze. Finally, I found a space to park. Eventually, I found my way to the poker room, but was disappointed, the waiting lists were too long to get into a game. I then had to search around to find out where they were playing the satellites for the tournament—which were being held in a conference room, downstairs, at the other end of the casino.

I ended up playing two $80 satellites for the $500 No-Limit Tournament for Sunday. The satellite paid $650. On the first satellite I played, I ran into Myrtle who introduced himself to me. I asked Myrtle if he knew John Cole. He was not sure if he remembered him. Anyway, I busted out of the first satellite and made a deal on the second one for $200. So, I'm $40 ahead. After playing, I went to the buffet to eat dinner. Not, a place I'd recommend (unless you like the food that Ray Zee likes—as you know Ray does not have taste buds).

On Sunday, I went back to Foxwoods and entered the $500 No-Limit Tournament. Well, I did pretty well up until 8:20 PM. There were 850 entrants and they were paying 80 places. The monitor screen said that we had 93 players left until I played the following hand. The two players to my left had approximately $6000 in chips left. Both players did not play unless they had a hand like AT or a medium pair or better. I was down to $2200 with the blinds at $600-300 with a $100 ante. Everyone folded to me on the button. I decided that the cards I was holding didn't matter. These guys were not going to risk their chips so close to the money unless they had a real hand, so I pushed in my chips, which was still a big enough raise for neither of them to get involved. The small blind thinks for quite a while, I thought he was going to fold because he thought about it so long, but he calls me. He's got a pair of 9s and I have 68 unsuited. Well, you know what happens. I'm out of there. What a disappointment, to play for over 10 hours and just miss getting into the prize pool.

I decided to call it quits and headed for home on Monday.

Good Luck

Mark