Exploring Midwestern Poker Part 1 of 5

I went on a road trip with my family. The main purpose of the trip was to visit family and friends that I had not seen in almost two years. It’s the first time that we left Las Vegas for longer than 24 hours since 2019. Even though poker was not the focus of the trip, my wife understood that if I had the chance to go play poker I would be going to play. The thought of being able to play poker in a different environment was exciting and it was something that I was looking forward to doing on the trip.

Because of our infant, we had decided to break up the drive into 7-to-9-hour days. We left Las Vegas a little late in the morning than we originally planned. You can take the time to plan everything out and last second things will still find a way to pop up. I felt extra paranoid because up until that day I had never really carried a large amount of cash with me. I typically just take what I need to the casino for one session and the rest is left in my bank account. I didn’t want to have to keep withdrawing cash at random ATMs during the trip. I decided to bring more cash than I normally carry to avoid going to ATMs for more cash and at the same time save myself from paying absurd fees.

My first stop on the trip was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We arrived around 9:00 PM local time and went straight to the motel that we had booked for the night. Originally, I had not planned on playing poker in Albuquerque, but I started to get the itch to check out the local cardroom. The night before a local reg had made some recommendations for dinner and shared some stories about playing poker in Albuquerque. I had shared the dinner recommendation with my wife, and we agreed that we wanted to go to 66 Diner, but because of recent pandemic events they had changed their hours. By the time we arrived they would be closed. We found dinner at a local restaurant called the Frontier Restaurant. They serve some American food with a mix of New Mexican-Mex cuisine and are open late! I highly recommend getting their sweet bread. The plan after dinner was to go play poker if I could have found an open poker room. The few casinos in the area that were within a reasonable distance were all still shuttered! There was one that had posted they would be opening back up the following week, Sandia. I wouldn’t be coming back through on the return trip and would not get a chance to check it out after they opened. The only other casino that was in the area and had an open poker room was Inn of the Mountain Gods. Only problem was that they were a 3-hour drive from where we were staying for the night. That night after dinner I pulled out my laptop and jumped on the motel wi-fi and played poker online. It wasn’t my best session and I ended up losing two buy ins before I decided to call it a night and go to sleep.

The next day woke up and left early in the morning. My next stop was going to be in Dallas, Texas. My wife kept asking me during the trip if I had any plans for poker and even though I know she was teasing me I did want to check out the poker scene there. The TCH live stream is starting to become popular and there are a few vloggers from Texas that I knew that poker was alive in Texas! I chose not to go play. The reason we stopped in Texas is because a good friend of mine lived there and I wanted to see him and introduce him to my infant son. Since I knew I wouldn’t be playing poker in Texas, one of the first things I did when we stopped is buy lotto tickets. Just a little something to get the degen tingles out. We spent a chill couple of days there. We had some local Texan barbeque, and I ate with my eyes. I had ordered a big pile of meat that included smoked sausage, a whole rack of ribs, some pulled pork, brisket, and onion rings. Luckily my wife and friend were there to help me eat all the food I ordered.

On our last night in Texas my wife and I began to discuss our next stop. I had planned to stop in St. Louis because I knew there were some open poker rooms there. We had not booked a hotel yet because we had not found a good rate and so the discussion about stopping in different city began. The drive to St. Louis was a little under 10 hours, a length of time that my wife did not want to spend in the car with our infant child. As she searched online for a more reasonable route for us to take, she discovered there was a Caesar’s property in Kansas City, Missouri. She began to ask me about my rewards account with Caesar’s and if it would benefit us at all.  I did not know what the answer was to her question since I had never looked at what offers I would receive. I just gave her my log in information so that she could check the hotel rates that would be offered to me as a rewards member. The room rate was very reasonable when compared to other hotels in the city. It was settled! Our next stop would be Harrah’s Kansas City!

Click on this Google Maps link to see the route that I traveled – https://goo.gl/maps/pBzvb4pmvusGPDaU8. To get notifications when I make another post about my trip you can scroll down to the bottom of my blog site and subscribe to get email notifications.

Bizzy’s 2021 Gains: $3492.83

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