Loooooongg Indiana Trip Report

Just got back yesterday from an extended gambling weekend. Friday afternoon a few of us decided we should take advantage of free buffet coupons at the local racino (Indiana Live/Shelbyville). We got a late start, made it over to the casino at around 9pm and the four of us headed straight for the buffet. After going through all the BS paperwork, we each had our free ticket to the $22.99 smorgasboard. All I can say about the buffet is I am glad it was free...if I payed $23, I wouldn't have been pleased.

Anyway, after we gorged ourseleves, we decided we'd head to the race track and see if we could catch the last few races of the evening. Our first race - #10 race for the evening - featured only 6 horses. We had all of about 2 minutes until post to make our bets, so I randomly picked the #6 horse across the board, as it was going off by about 9-1 (I like to pick the middle of the odds pack - no long shots, no favorites.) We make our way outside to stand trackside by the finish line. The starting gate was all the way across the track, so we couldn't see it too well, but we noticed some commotion. Then we notice that one of the horses had broken away from the gate, and was running wild with no jockey, going the wrong way around the track. He gallopped along - the wrong way - all the way around to us.....sure enough it was my #6 horse. I'm not a frequent visitor to the horse track, so I don't know how common that is, but it was the first time I had seen it. Anyway, it took them FOREVER to get this horse tracked down, he must have made a solid 2 laps around. Everytime they'd get close to him, he'd turn and take off the other direction. Anyway, I thought this might have been a bad omen, being my first bet of the weekend. I headed to the bar. Of course, the #6 horse was scratched and I got my bet refunded. Bet on the #5 horse, and watched it come in dead last. My friend hit his exacta bet. I went back to the bar. :-)

We didn't have a program, and for some reason I thought that was the last race of the evening...and mentioned that we should head back over to the casino. Fortuntely I was wrong, and there were two more quarter horse races. This time I let my better half make the pick after viewing the horses. The #4 horse went off 15-1, I bet across the board, and the #4 horse finshed first! My $12 bet ($4 win/place/show) paid about $110. I won again on the last race - as did my friends - and we decided we should continue our gambling at a more proper destination (i.e. one with a craps table).

We packed up the car, and my friend drove us the hour or so down to Lawerceburg, IN to Hollywood Casino. We arrived around 12:45am or so. On the way down, he booked us at the Holiday Inn Express across the street from the casino, for around $80/night (the casino hotel was somethig rediculous like $289/night). We ditched the car, got the shuttle, but didn't bother checking in...this turned out to be a good thing. We head in, head to the bar and have some cocktails, and play some bar-top VP. Lost a few bucks, had another round, and then decided we need to hit the tables.

The lady and I buy in for about $300 at the craps table. One friend buys in for $200 next to us, the other friend heads to the blackjack table. Odds were 10x, field played 2-1 on both the 2 and 12. All the tables were $10 min. As discussed last week, I let her play the PL, and then I make a come bet after the point is established. The dice are just to our right, and after a couple of wins and a seven-out, the dice get passed to my friend. He plays a lot looser than I do, plays the PL+Odds, plays the 4, 6, and 10, and he also plays the 12 a lot. He goes on shoot for one of the longer rolls I've actually seen in person. It had to be pushing an hour that he had the dice. If I were a place better, I would have cleaned up. The opposite side of the table was having a blast as they had everything covered, while we continued with PL & Come. He didn't hit as many points as one would expect after shooting that long, and I lost a few come bets on a come-out seven. We did well though, and won maybe $175. My friend did much better for himself, hit his 30-1 boxcars at least 3 times, and was cleaning up on his place/buy bets. He walked with around $800.

Back to bar for celebratory drinks, and we caught the last of a cover band that was playing. It was around 3am or so at this point, and we had to make the call if we would push on with more gaming or call it a night. Must have been the combination of booze and winning, but no one wanted to call it a night. We wondered around, I decided to play a couple poker games, first Ultimate Texas-Hold 'em, and then Crazy 4 poker. Hold-em went really bad. The second hand I paired my ace on the flop, bet 3x my initial bet, and watched as the dealer turned over some ugly two pair (something like a 4 and 7). I played another 5 hands or so and think I only won once. Ended up losing $100 or so. Crazy 4 wasn't much better. I'd never played the game before and didn't know the proper hand signals, and the dealer took a hand I wanted to keep. The pit boss came over, and they gave me my cards back. I bet it and promptly lost. Fortunately I hit a straight on about my 5th hand, and the dealer gave me grief for not playing the bonus bet "where I could have really cleaned up". I wasn't pleased and got up and left, down another $50 or so.

We proceded to play throughout the night and into the morning, hitting up a variety of games. I was going to buy in Hollywood's nice, updated poker room in the lower level ($1/$3NL, $100min/$300Max), but the group wanted to eat. Finally, around 8am or so, worn and ragged, and all with sizable profits we caught the shuttle back to the hotel. As mentioned, we had never checked in the night before and we were suddenly concerned we may have a bit of a problem on our hands. Somehow my friend sweet-talked his way into convincing the front desk that what we really wanted was a room for Saturday night, not Friday and that it would be nice if they just forgot about the Friday night reservation...oh, and can we have an "early" check in. :-)

Somehow this worked, we had a room for as long as we wanted (still for only $80 total), and we now realized that we could stay another day. We debated whether this was a good idea, and concurred that it was. We slept until around 2:30pm or so and decided to make the 20 minute drive to Rising Sun, IN...and the Grand Victoria Casino. This was the first visit for any of us to Rising Sun, so we thought we'd check out the town a bit and eat somewhere local. It was a very sleepy, river town, with a 'downtown' area right along the river's edge. They had a nice little park where we enjoyed the warm weather and the good views. We had late lunch at a local pub that had great fish and chips. The town was practially deserted for a summer Saturday, and I think we were the only non-locals in the bar. We had a couple of pitchers of beer, chatted with the locals, and then decided it was time to press on to the Grand Vic.

For being only 20 minutes apart, the Grand Vic has an incredibly different vibe/feel than Hollywood. The entrance/lobby is old school Americana. Their central promotional display was a wide variety of John Deere lawn equipment, as well as a new Camaro they were giving away. While Hollywood is very modern, spacious, and dark, and all on a single level, the Grand Vic casino was an old-school riverboat. This meant a long narrow shoot of machines on multiple level and just one level with a variety of table games. It was pretty busy, but the average patron age had to be north of 70. As a casino itself, Grand Vic doesn't really compare to Hollywood. There is no poker room, it’s pretty dated, and it doesn't take much for it to feel really crowded anywhere you are going. It certainly feels every bit of its 15+ year age. However, kudos to the Grand Vic for offering one great thing. On the weekend they open up their top level outdoor deck at the rear of the boat. Up there they have a tiki bar set up, a lot of outdoor tables where you can sit and eat/drink, and the views up and down the Ohio from up there are terrific. They also have a 3 blackjack tables set up out there, and is the only outdoor gaming that I know of anywhere in Indiana.

We enjoyed it so much up there, we just got a table and hung out for a couple hours. Two of us bought in at one of the $10 tables upstairs, but the cards were not with us. I lost about $40, my friend lost about $100 in a short session. None of us played at any of the indoor tables, but we enjoyed the Grand Vic soley for the great use of their outdoor area. All of the tables were $10+, which is similar to Hollywood, so we saw no great reason to play. Around 8pm or so, we hopped back in the car and made the trip back over to Lawrenceburg/Hollywood.

Since it was prime-time Sat night, the place was absolutely hopping. Hollywood has a pit of about 10 craps tables all together...and they were all doing business. There were two $10 tables, a bunch of $15, and a couple $25. A good band was playing above the main bar, and we sat and enjoyed them for a while. Then it was back to the craps table and I watched in amazement again as my friend cleaned up. At one point, he hit three 12s in a ROW, and the third one he had pressed it from $5 to $10...so that was a $150, $150 and then a $300 payout to him. Needless to say, he was having a great time. He had the board mainly covered and was getting paid practically every roll. The shooter on the opposite side of the table rolled for A LOOONG time again. The table was hot, and was even getting the attention of the floor boss...which I thought was interesting considering we were at the lowest limit table.

The lady and I won another $150 or so. Back to the bar. My friend was up about $2k at this point and was buying drinks all around. We watched the band finsh their set, and of course the friend was ready for another session. Why not? To my continued amazement this guy just couldn't lose. My better half threw TWO MORE 12s for him, as well as a variety of other bets, and in about 20 minutes turned his $200 buy-in into about $700. I just watched and let my better half play, as I had seemed to be bad luck for her at this point. She turned $200 into about $300 during the same period.

Unfortuntely the other non-craps playing friend wasn't having as good a run at the card tables, so he was ready to go. We were all pretty worn out by this point, and sometime around 3am or so we get the shuttle back to the Holiday Inn and called it a night. After all expenses, tipping, food and lots of drinks (no free drinks allowed in Indiana), we had a long weekend of enterainment and made about $100. The hot craps player friend had almost $2k more than he started with, even after his big spending at the bar. A good time was had by all.

I've just realized how long a trip report this turned into....but I've enjoyed reading others so I figured I would post one as well. As you probably noticed, we were drinking quite a bit, so there was probably a good bit that I am missing. On Friday night/Sat morning for example, I was drunk enough to actually play some roulette. The table was empty, and the poor lady looked bored to death. I bought in for $40, it was a $10 min. I spread the $10 of a bunch of corners and missed them all. Did it again and hit two corners for a decent payoff. Proceeded to put it all the winnings on red and it hit. I tipped her $5 and left after 3 spins.

Awesome trip report! I was down in Indiana this weekend too. You're right, Hollywood is much nicer than Grand Vic. Grand Vic is "cozy." They have a decent $25 double-deck pitch game and Spanish 21 with the good rules. Belterra is somewhere in between. Hit a dollar royal at Hollywood that I was pretty happy about. Was playing dollar 9/6 Jacks since it's the best game they have available, but it's pretty much above my bankroll.

Hey! Nice report! I missed the deck at the grand vic when I was there in March. I was going to venture over to Belterra tomorrow, but maybe I'll go check out the deck at the Vic instead. I brought both players' club cards with me to Louisville, just in case:-)

Great report.

Don't worry that it's long. If people don't want to spend the time reading, that's their problem.

Me? I was Jonesing to have been at those craps tables....

Quote: teddys

Awesome trip report! I was down in Indiana this weekend too. You're right, Hollywood is much nicer than Grand Vic. Grand Vic is "cozy." They have a decent $25 double-deck pitch game and Spanish 21 with the good rules. Belterra is somewhere in between. Hit a dollar royal at Hollywood that I was pretty happy about. Was playing dollar 9/6 Jacks since it's the best game they have available, but it's pretty much above my bankroll.

Thanks! I was pretty shocked to find a $25 double-deck pitch, 3:2 S17 at Hollywood on Saturday night. It was over in the "high-limit" section. Have not been to Belterra yet, we may check that out next trip. The thing thats good about Hollywood is that there are several hotels right there, that are A LOT cheaper than the casino. I don't think there are any options at Belterra except staying at the resort.

Loved the trip report. The longer the better, in my opinion.

Quote: rdw4potus

Hey! Nice report! I missed the deck at the grand vic when I was there in March. I was going to venture over to Belterra tomorrow, but maybe I'll go check out the deck at the Vic instead. I brought both players' club cards with me to Louisville, just in case:-)

I would call and check, because I think they may just have that deck open on the weekends. The three tables were all $10, 3:2, H17 with surrender - 6 deck shoe. They have wind screens up in the bar area where the games are, so the view is somewhat limited. But we just enjoyed the tables right out behind the bar for the great view. We could not believe that it was not busier than it was up there. Its a great place to hang out even if you don't gamble.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Great report.

Don't worry that it's long. If people don't want to spend the time reading, that's their problem.

Me? I was Jonesing to have been at those craps tables....

Thanks! Yeah, this is my first extended excursion where it just seemed every craps session was a winning one. The tables were pretty full everytime we were playing, and the rolls were so long I only got the dice one time over all of those sessions over 2 days/nights. We would play for an hour or more, and the dice would still be at the same corner of the table. If I had just stuck to craps we would have been up a lot more for the weekend, but I enjoy playing cards as well.

Quote: ruascott

...the rolls were so long I only got the dice one time....

ooooooo.....

You're KILLING me!

I'd LOVE to not get a chance to shoot...

Quote: PaulEWog

Right across the street is the Fairway Inn:

http://www.fairwayinnflorence.com/

I believe Vevay, (15 minutes away), has a few options as well.

There are also a vew places in Carrollton (sp?) KY, right across the river. Not that it helps if your plan is to hit it again like you did this weekend:-)

Quote: teddys

Awesome trip report! I was down in Indiana this weekend too. You're right, Hollywood is much nicer than Grand Vic. Grand Vic is "cozy." They have a decent $25 double-deck pitch game and Spanish 21 with the good rules. Belterra is somewhere in between. Hit a dollar royal at Hollywood that I was pretty happy about. Was playing dollar 9/6 Jacks since it's the best game they have available, but it's pretty much above my bankroll.

Actually, GV has some great BJ rules that they used to have posted at every table, but lately, they are hidden. These are on the 6-deck games only, but in the high-limit room has S17 on top of these rules: Split aces up to 4 times, split any pair unlimited times, Late surrender and casino surrender (that's a bad bet, I know). Double deck at Hollywood is stingy, although they S17.

ALL of Belterra's tables offer S17, although they replaced a great Spanish table with about 3 Super Fun with 8 decks.

Does anyone know the rules for double deck pitch at GV?I know what the rules are at Hollywood and they are stingy indeed.I am guessing the $25 digi-deal "pitch" at hoosier park is the same as at Hollywood.Congrats on your win ruascott!!! Next time you are at Hollywood,check out the BJ back in the celebrity pit.All 6 deck,but no machines.

Quote: avianrandy

Does anyone know the rules for double deck pitch at GV?I know what the rules are at Hollywood and they are stingy indeed.I am guessing the $25 digi-deal "pitch" at hoosier park is the same as at Hollywood.Congrats on your win ruascott!!! Next time you are at Hollywood,check out the BJ back in the celebrity pit.All 6 deck,but no machines.

Thanks! Where was that pit located? I didn't notice it on Saturday night. All the BJ I did play was 6 deck, hand shuffled, but to be honest I didn't really play that much.

To get to the celebrity pit,keep going straight until you see "hollywood on the roof" on your left.Turn right and their will be about 6 games(3 abreast)with the video dealers on the screens.Keep going right and just past them is the celebrity pit.10 tables,7 of which are BJ.They have a small stage with speakers where the dealers sing/dance/whatever when they are not dealing.Pit is open TH-SU.I believe 1PM-6AM FR-SA,2PM-2AM SU...unsure about TH.Some of the 6 deck games on the main floor are continuous shuffle,with the dealer putting in the cards about every 52 cards.I usually play 3 card poker and BJ only,no bones.The other 3 games in the pit are 4 card poker,Let it ride,and 3 card poker.Let it ride paid quad jacks and a straight flush Sunday night.(not to me however...i rarely touch the game).

Quote: avianrandy

Does anyone know the rules for double deck pitch at GV?

2 decks, H17, DAS, no surrender, don't know about split aces. Your basic off-strip Las Vegas pitch rules. Penetration is one deck.

Quote: teddys

2 decks, H17, DAS, no surrender, don't know about split aces. Your basic off-strip Las Vegas pitch rules. Penetration is one deck.

Split aces once

I'm reviving this thread after a month to post some comments, since I had a chance to visit a couple of the same casinos this weekend.

The purpose of the trip actually wasn't gambling -- that was just an interesting side activity. My wife and I were traveling to Louisville for the Kentucky Music Weekend, an annual event (this was the 35th) which provides Friday and Saturday night concerts of folk, bluegrass, celtic, and misc. music by more than a dozen groups. It's all held at the amphitheater at Iroquois Park.

Anyway, we got an early start and spent Thursday night in Lawrenceburg, IN getting a little entertainment at the Hollywood Casino. On Friday afternoon, we stopped at Grand Victoria and Belterra on the way down to Louisville. Then on Saturday, since we had nothing planned for the daytime, we went over to Horseshoe Southern Indiana. I didn't look around in any of these enough to write up a useful review, but I thought I would provide some comments on table minimums at the non-prime-times I visited. I think this might be useful info to have for a number of casinos, particularly to us low rollers.

I only played craps and didn't look at the other games, so no new info there. On Thursday night at Hollywood, they had three (maybe four?) tables in action, with a $10 minimum on all tables. That matches what ruascott reported for his visit, so Thursday vs. Friday night doesn't seem to make a difference.

On Friday afternoon, both Grand Victoria and Belterra had a $5 table in operation, so daytime vs. night apparently makes a difference at Grand Victoria. Down at Horseshoe on Saturday afternoon, they had three tables going. They were all $10 min when I arrived and quite busy. One table went up to $15 sometime during the afternoon (didn't notice just when) and drove away some of the customers. That was a little surprising to me, since there were plenty of green and black chips in action on the $10 tables. The players with stacks of blacks showed no inclination to move to the $15 table.

As for my own results, I lost at Hollywood and started off losing at Grand Victoria. I was playing my usual cheapskate game at the $5 table, betting $5 on the pass and a few other things, plus $1 pass for the dealers when I was shooting. I lost so consistently that one time around I told them I was going to put the dealers' $1 on the Don't -- that way one of us should be happy with the outcome. That turned out to be my best roll of the weekend. They didn't have the Fire Bet, but they did have the Sharpshooter bet, which I didn't play. But on that turn, I hit seven points, betting the Don't for the dealers each time. When I had an even number point, I bet the hardway for the dealers and hit four or five of those, so they got a little toke anyway. By the time I had to get on the road, I had recovered about 70% of what I had lost the night before at Hollywood. Down the road at Belterra, I won enough more to put me very slightly on the plus side for the trip, then added a little more on the positive side the next day at Horseshoe. A lot of craps fun, with the casinos overall paying me to play!

Sunday, on the drive back to NC, I decided to give myself one more chance to go home a loser and stopped off for lunch and a little entertainment at the Tri-State Casino in Cross Lanes, WV. Well, that beastly ogre known by the name of "Variance" raised his ugly head, slowly smiled upon me, and amazingly decreed that the variance would again be of the positive variety. Had one very nice turn with the dice, with the other players making a lot more money from my rolls than I did. Yep, won money at the crap tables in 4 out of 5 casinos on the trip while my wife was winning at the penny slots in 4 out of 5 of the places. No major sums of money for either of us, but positive variance just adds to the fun of the game. And after 37 craps sessions and 7 blackjack sessions so far, I'm still on the positive side for all of my gaming for the year! Just wish I knew what I was doing. :-)

Quote:

"Variance" raised his ugly head, slowly smiled upon me, and amazingly decreed that the variance would again be of the positive variety

maybe the jinx put on us here by the "hoax" thread is now lifting!!