Saturday, June 30, 2007

Your Place for the Best in Live Poker!

Or not.

(This is Part One of a guest post. Not by Zerbet though.)

The stars aligned on Friday when The Dear And Patient Wife advised that she was dragging inviting The Kid with her to see Grease at The Muny that night.

To coin a phrase, show tunes went off in my head. As might well be expected, the recent Vegaspalooza trip left me with a jones for live poker, so the opportunity for "a trip to the boat" as they say here in Missouri - there is no land-based gaming here - couldn't have come at a better time.

I had it in mind to try to find a tournament with a reasonable buy-in and structure to play, but after checking a couple of places I found that there aren't any tourneys around here after about 2 PM or so on Fridays - I guess the don't want to take their tables and dealers away from the high cash game play, or something...

Anyway, a while back a St. Louis-area blogger (to whom I'd link if I could just remember who it was...) mentioned that his favorite room to play in St. Louis was in the President Casino. As I recall he was particularly complimentary of the dealers and he liked that the room was separated from those damn slots.

The President floats on the Mississippi very near the Arch in downtown StL, which is near where I work... and yet I'd never been there. I didn't know it even HAD a poker room for a long time, and since the river front is pretty seedy looking overall, even when I found out about the room I'd supposed it, too, was probably small and "less than attractive."

I decided to check it out - if it turned out to be a dump, I could always head out to Harrah's (which is much newer and very nice) or the AmeriStar, (another place I haven't visited yet.)

Given that this is Missouri, I knew that the first thing I'd have to do when I got there was to get a player's card. I hopped into a line of 20 or so people waiting to get one, and almost immediately found myself explaining to a nice lady in line who was visiting from out of town WHY we are REQUIRED to get a card to enter the casino.

While these cards DO serve the "usual" purpose (awarding comps like free valet parking for various levels of play) in Missouri they are MANDATORY because it is against the law to lose more than $500 over two hours of gambling!

Obviously the casinos have to track your loses relative to the clock, and the cards are used to a) validate your age, etc., when you get one, and then b) track your chip purchases & slot play to make sure you don't break the law.

I was pretty shocked to discover that The President actually charges you $2 to issue the card, too. No one else charges, at least that I know of. I don't know how they've managed to get that past the Gaming Commission, but ya gotta give 'em props for finding a way to shift the cost burden to the consumer... the bastids.

So, little black card in hand and about a half hour after getting there, I finally actually enter the casino. While the entry area outside is quite stylish and well lit, once you get to the actual boat (christened The Admiral - yes, it's a real boat and not just a modern-day raft like most of the rest use) the appearances take a serious turn for the worse. Frankly, the place is pretty much a dive.

I wandered around for about five minutes trying to find a way to go down to a different deck (I knew the poker room was on Deck A) but there were NO signs of any kind that I could see after walking the boat from stem to stern.

I finally had to ask someone and they pointed toward a doorway near the central bar and food court (does four tables and a half-door counter on the side of the bar qualify as a "food court"?)

There was a small stand-up sign with the claim that is the title of this post just inside the doorway at the top of the stairs, so it initially seemed that the directions I got were good... then I went down to the bottom of the stairs and around the corner as guided by the velvet ropes and saw... a large empty hallway with rows of out-of-service slot machines lined up back-to-front-to-back in storage.

I was obviously in the wrong place. I reversed my path and began to climb back up the same stairs (anticipating the weird looks from the patrons at the slots around the doors at the top) when I heard a faint sound that my senses, so finely-tuned from a full week in Vegas, instantly recognized as the sound of chips being riffled, far away.

End Part One

1 comment:

  1. I live in the St. Louis area. I have not been to the President Casino but I am very familiar with The Admiral. It used to make daily cruises up and down the Mississippi in the St. Louis area. During the day it was a family fun cruise and in the evenings it was dinner and dance cruise. One floor was a HUGE game room/arcade, one was a dance floor and the top deck was an open air observation deck. It was one of my top three things to do in St. Louis in the summer, after Six Flags and before the Zoo. Its popularity waned and repairs were not kept up with. It got to the point it was unsafe to operate, too expensive to repair or even move from the area so they permanently moored it. In the floods of '93 it partially broke loose and almost sank. Then they decided the Casino Queen (its a dive too and has no poker) across the river needed competition so they made the Admiral into the President Casino. It used to be a site to see and was docked in front of the arch. Its Stainless Steel exterior shining in the sunlight. Now it is almost invisible just north of the downtown riverfront.

    Also, they have really cleaned up the downtown river front. The area around the arch and Lecledes Landing are great areas in the afternoon and evenings. If you drive through there in the early am you have to watch out for drunks in the street though. Just a bit to the north is another story. The President is in the area just north of Lecledes Landing and just south of the run down, decaying industrial area. I would not walk north of The President on a dare.

    CenturionFive

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