Sandia Casino - Albuquerque, NM report...

[sucka]

Well, not much of a report as I didn't get to play long at all, but thought I'd post in case anyone was thinking of visiting anytime soon...

I was meeting my wife, son and her family for a vacation in the mountains near Las Vegas, NM. I left Austin straight from the office Tuesday evening and caught a flight to Albuquerque (man that's a bitch to spell) thru El Paso. After a slight delay in El Paso because the flight attendant realized as we were in line to take off that the door wasn't closed all the way, I made it to Alb. about an hour or so late.

I hop a cab and take about a 20 minute ride to the Sandia Casino, located just north of Alb. pretty much in the middle of nowhere actually.

In short, very nice casino. I was pleasantly suprised by the decor and the overall 'feel' of the place.

I had my suitcase with me and my wife hadn't arrived yet as she was coming from the resort to pick me up. The security guard at the door said that the valet folks might be able to help me with that as I couldn't haul it into the casino. Thankfully, the valet took care of that for me - and I tipped them well on the way out to show my thanks for going out of there way to handle my bag.

Anyway, so I head right to the poker room. Decent size - about 15 tables or so. The brush is a young woman who seems a little in the weeds as they are getting into the late stages of a limit tourney that they run on tuesday nights and people are busting out and wanting to get into the ring games. Some people were just getting on the lists and others, who I guess wanted to leave the room and go eat or play in the pit were getting the coaster/vibrator/light show discs very similar to what you get at a restaurant while waiting. Neat idea.

They were running a pretty good mix of games - stud, Omaha/8, a pot-limit game, several 4-8's with 1/2 kill and a single 10/20 with a half kill that was full. I got on all the HE lists and waited about 15 minutes and got called to start a new table of 4-8.

Like I said, not a lot to report as I only played about 2 hours - but one thing worth mentioning is that the games are soft. There were only 3 players at the table who had a clue - at least 2 that I think it might have been the first time that they had ever played - and another 2 that seemed intent on pissing away every dollar that they had in their wallets as fast as humanly possible.

I'm up $120 in the first hour winning 5 pots and get paid off in at least 2 or 3 places one was a kill pot where I rivered the top boat only to get 4 bet by a guy who had middle pair and rivered '2 pair' when the board paired on the river. Nice.

One weird thing in that casino - you can't drink at the tables. Not sure if that's some indian casino thing in NM or what, but it was a little strange. I didn't think to pay much attention on the way out - but it didn't seem like people were drinking in the pit or at the slots either. They had several bar areas where people were drinking though, so it's not like you can't booz it up in the place - just not at the tables...

Another thing worth mentioning - cheap rake. $3 max with no jackpot drop. Nice.

They are in the process of building a resort/spa on to the casino and when we go up next year my wife and I are going to hang out there for a couple days before going up to the mountains. There's a nice outlet mall area just north of the casino that she wants to check out while I play some cards.

Here's the link if anyone's interested...

http://casinocity.com/link/index.cfm...000&Op=web