Chicagoland Casino Trip, day 3

Fire Keepers Casino, Battle Creek, MI (sunday, 11am): Firekeepers was by far my favorite casino of the trip. It is huge, but made to feel warm and quaint. The people were very friendly. I got a club card, which came with a food coupon and an offer of future comp to equal 25% of my 1 day losses. I'm not sure if I'll ever go back (it's out-of-the-way), but I decided to try to make use of that promo. At the time I was there, only 1 of 5 table games pits was open. BJ rules were quite liberal. The only improvement would have been H17. I was torn as to what to do. TCP had a progressive jackpot at $25K, where the breakeven is about $9600 (the whole game breaks even when the progressive is about $13k). PGP had a progressive that was $250K (breakeven is about $285K). I like PGP a lot more than I like TCP, the table was full, and I wanted to bank, so PGP won out. Turns out the table was only full for about 3 minutes. On my first hand banking my hand was 2356clubs, Ahearts, A Diamonds, and the joker. That cleared about half of the people out. The rest of the session was pretty unremarkable, except for one hand. About 2 hours in, I had 4 natural aces as my cards 4-7. The person to my left had the joker as card 1, and 5 aces pays 10% of the progressive jackpot. As it was, that hand put me up 1 unit, and I maintained that through several consecutive pushes before I finally left the table.

I had asked the Floorperson how long the drive back to O'hare would be, and she warned that it was extremely variable. Between construction on I-94 in MI, and the traffic on the tollways in IN and IL, she estimated it would be between 3 and 5 hours. My flight was in 6 hours and 30 minutes, so I left and started driving back. Michigan drivers drive me nuts. I've noticed this everywhere I've gone in MI. They must not teach common sense in drivers ed up there. There were maybe a dozen times in the 100 mile stretch heading back down to IN where the person in front of me in the left lane was passing at a speed less than the speed limit and without speeding up. That just drives me nuts. Like, really, you want to go 47 instead of 46 so you're going to pass? What about the 30 cars trying to go 60 behind you?!?

Anyway, all in all it was a good trip. Net with travel costs deducted I was up about $250, which I was happy with. I got to O'hare 3 hours early, and that was a little rough. Then I let myself get bumped from the flight and took the travel voucher anyway, so I flew out to Louisville at 8 monday morning.

Great 3 posts rdw4potus. I really enjoy reading about your travels. I doubt that I would have the energy to go to all those different casinos in 3 days. Now if they were walking distance that would be one thing, but driving around finding each place would wear me out.

Good stuff. I missed day one and two though. I suggest you do a blog, that way you can have a record of all this that you don't have to search for.

I enjoyed the trip report.

I'm originally from Chicago, living in Missouri now.

I have visited most of the casinos you went to. Not in 3 days though! Very impressive.

It's easy to see that the Illinois casinos are simply not as good as the Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan casinos. The reason for this is the stupid law that each casino can only have 1200 gaming positions. This forces the minimums up on the tables, and pretty much eliminates anything resembling a good poker room.

The Missouri casinos are a lot more like the Indiana ones, just not in the ghetto. And you truly were in the ghetto at Horseshoe, A-Star, and M-Star.

Glad you had fun. Next time you should do a Missouri casino tour, I think you would enjoy it!

Quote: FinsRule

Glad you had fun. Next time you should do a Missouri casino tour, I think you would enjoy it!

I concur. I, too, lived in the Chicago area and moved to Missouri (KC side). Since they removed the loss limits, Missouri casinos have become viable tourist areas. I would make sure to visit both St Louis and KC (about 4 hours, city to city), as St Louis casinos are very nice, while KC casinos are quite large, especially Ameristar, which reports to be one of the largest outside of Las Vegas and AC.

Ameristar should be the easiest to get to. the tollroad has an exit directly to the casino. Majestic Star, theres this small area you have to cross with a traintrack. i always imagined this would be the best place to get robbed since theres nowhere for you to go. to get to Horseshoe, you end up driving through the ghetto a bit especially when you are trying to get back onto 80-94 leaving the casino. Bluechip and Fourwinds are fairly close to eachother. the road by the bluechip leads to the road that goes by Fourwinds.

Quote: FinsRule

It's easy to see that the Illinois casinos are simply not as good as the Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan casinos. The reason for this is the stupid law that each casino can only have 1200 gaming positions. This forces the minimums up on the tables, and pretty much eliminates anything resembling a good poker room.

What is the logical reasoning beyond a limit to gaming positions? It just seems like they're destroying jobs and not letting the good companies grow... but I'm sure there's some messed up "argument" to it.