Aruba Trip Report

[budman]

There is only one casino in Aruba spreading poker. It is the exelsior, located at the Holiday Inn in the high rise section of hotels.

The nights I was there (5) they only had two tables spread when they were busy. One night I waited for the first table to open up.

The dealers were ok, and very nice. The owner of the casino played with us a few nights and he was a lot of fun. A very wild player. Half of the players were locals who played poorly and caught lucky over and over. The tourists did not have the bankroll to hang in very long (I played the 10-20 hold'em).

They had some weird rules. When you first sit down you never have to post a blind unless it is your natural blind. They just deal you in. So, the locals would get up and walk around and come in behind the button for free. Also, there is a bad beat jackpot which everyone agrees is a bonus for the locals, as it is almost impossible to win it.

Another weird rule is that, even though we were playing 10-20, you can come out betting $20 on the flop. This also is in the favor of locals as it changes the texture of the game and for me, made it less advantageous to try and draw out on people.

All in all, I would much prefer to play in either Vegas or Connecticut, but this was a fun way to kill some hours on vacation.

I don't understand why poker is not much more popular there. The exelsior is running a million dollar tournament in October that will draw the top names in the game. And the WPT plays there and got a lot of coverage on TV.

It seems to me that someone should be able to clean up if they opened up a first class poker room there.