Trip Report: Casino New Brunswick
First off, if you're looking for a story with lots of poker talk and hand histories, feel free to move along. This report contains a negligible amount of poker. It'll mostly be a short and poorly worded account of my trip, with a quick review of the poker action that I witnessed.
On that note, let's go.
It's been years since I've been able to play at a real casino. I work at 1 of the 2 casinos in Prince Edward Island, (Red Shores) and we are not allowed to play at either. If any of us feel the need to scratch the casino itch, we must go off island. Yes, there are home/bar games and at least one illegal club for some poker action, but those are supposed to be off limits also. The usual destination is usually Casino New Brunswick in Moncton.
Located in the middle of Moncton, NB the property is on the smaller side, but it has a hotel, restaurant, a concert venue, and of course, the actual casino. They offer the usual table games like Blackjack, Ultimate Texas Hold'em, 3 Card Poker, Let It Die err.....Ride, plus Roulette and unfortunately for me as you'll see, Craps. (More on that later) The place is basically a smaller version of Casino Niagara, without the Falls.
So with 2 of my friends who are also dealers,(we'll call them D and C) we make the 90 minute drive over to 'the mainland' for some Sunday afternoon gamble gamble. This being my first trip to CNB, I get a rewards card while the boys head for the bar. Apparently they are quite generous with their free room offers, which will come in handy when the wife wants a Costco run. (No Costco in PEI).
I get my card in a few minutes and I join them for a beer. Turns out the list for poker was over 10 players long but they soon would be opening a new table, when the 2pm shift of dealers arrived. No biggie, we added our names and went to find the table games. While they sat at UTH, I decide to run $40 through a slot machine, just to get my points card going. Naturally that was gone in 10 minutes so I returned to the tables games area. While en route to find the guys, I found $40 on the floor by a slot machine! Cha-ching! I'm back to even!
I buy into the same UTH table as my buddies for $160. As I'm slowing bleeding off money, I'm naturally watching the dealer work. I notice that his mechanics seem slightly off, and he's slower then the average dealer. I peg him as Noobie with under a year's experience. (With 3.5 in the biz, I consider myself to be a little better than average) Several times we would have to help him with hand recognition and who the winners are.
During one hand, I end up with a straight and win. When he went to pay out my TRIPS bonus bet of $5, he announces that I've won $40 (8 x $5) but the win should only pay $20 or 4 to 1! Now, I'm mostly an honest guy and I do feel bad as I think he's new at the job and I hate paying out the wrong amounts myself when I deal. So tell politely tell him its only a $20 win. He sheepishly says thanks and pays me the correct amount. The other players at the table (including my buddies WHOM I WORK WITH) look at me like I'm from Mars. The Francophones at the table promptly burst into chatter and I'm sure the topic was about yours truly being a money-hating idiot.
Whatever, the game continues and I'm down to having only enough in chips for one 4x bet pre flop if necessary. Sure as shit I get AKh and I'm all in. The board runs out xxKAK! Runner-runner full house for Johnnie! Sweet! Once again my slightly incompetent friend assumes I'm playing $10 (not the $5 that I was) on TRIPS and announces that I've won $80. This time I keep my fat yap firmly shut accept my ill begotten winnings. Hey, I warned him once!!! The table lets this happen and Frenchy in Seat 6 gives me a wink. After a few more small but correctly paid wins, we are called for the new poker table that is opening. I'm up to slightly over $200 and when I go to colour up, he puts outs 3 BLACK $100 chips on the table and I'm thinking 'Holy HELL, I LIKE THIS GUY' .....but as it's a $100+ transaction he must call for a Supervisor for approval. Of course the Sup notices and my bogus UTH rungood is over. D'oh!!
The poker room at CNB is located upstairs with 5 tables, 2 of which are now running 1/2. Their BBJ is currently just under $100,00 and they offer a $10,000 Royal Flush bonus. Our brand new table has 9 players (I guess some players left) and nearly every one of them buys in for $40 except the 3 donks from Charlottetown. As expected the game is super horrible. Clearly everyone is playing uber nitty and trying to bink one of the Jackpots. The only action at the table is from my buddies, as I'm slightly card dead until I change seats. (Although I did pop my Moncton cherry by taking down a smallish pot with AA.) The dealer is a nice lady, but she's more concerned with enforcing the table rules (no cell phones, watch your hands/chips in play, etc) then improving her craft. She's rather slow, and it starts to annoy me.
After awhile we get a few new players and the game improves. One of my buds (D) loses a couple of cooler hands and gets tilty. Him and I get into hand and unfortunately for him I flop top pair and stack him when he spew-bluffs off his stack. (Sorry buddy!) He's had enough and goes back downstairs to UTH. I stay for maybe another hour during which the table gets a new dealer. This guy makes other 2 poor dealers that I've seen seem like Las Vegas veterans. You can tell that he gives no Fucks about his job and really doesn't want to be there.
After a few hands with Dealer McSloth leave the table booking a small win of $100. I just couldn't take the slow game and the slow action. Maybe one or the other, but not both. By this time C is well into the beer and feeling no pain.
I find D getting crushed (again) at the UTH table. As I blow off $100 (this dealer knew his job) I get nudged in the back. I turn around and it's one of the dealers that works at CNB who comes over to see us when he wants to gamble. His name is J and I consider this guy a friend as he's super nice and funny when he's at Red Shores.
He tells us that he's about to open a new Three-Card Poker table. We promptly ask him to save us spots and run over to play when the table is ready. For anyone who doesn't know, 3CP is one of the worst games in the casino. So naturally I go on a stupid hot heater (on the level this time) turning $100 into well over $200 (I lost track of the actual amount as I was tipping quite heavily) All we did was laugh and joke with J as we raked in the chips. I point out the incompetent UTH dealer (he's over at BJ now) and explain about my 'bonus' wins off him. He looks over his shoulder and bursts into laughter. "That guy?! He's worked here for years an he's usually a SUPERVISOR!!" Holy crap, that's funny. Any misgivings I had promptly vanish.
J gets tapped for his break and we book our win and head to the buffet which was just fair but not a bad value at $12 (with the players card)
When we are done we notice that the craps table is open and it's $5 minimum on the Pass Line....oh boy.....here we go.
My friend D is a very experienced casino gambler but he admits that he was always to intimidated to try Craps. Well c'mon, how bad could it be? It's only a $5 min bet. I show him the basics (which is about all I know about Craps) and over the course of 2 hours I lose back all my winnings from the day plus an extra $200. Sigh.
I will say that I had a ton of fun however. Clearly the casino the 'good' dealers for craps as they were all awesome, including our friend J.
We play a few more games over the next little while and I recover about $50 from more slots and BJ. All this time C is still grinding a large win from $1/2 and we peel his drunk ass off the table for the long ride home. We made him buy us McDonalds.
So that was my first over to Casino New Brunswick. An OK casino with mostly below-average dealers but still decent enough games to make the trip worthwhile. I just wished they had kept the Craps table closed
On that note, let's go.
It's been years since I've been able to play at a real casino. I work at 1 of the 2 casinos in Prince Edward Island, (Red Shores) and we are not allowed to play at either. If any of us feel the need to scratch the casino itch, we must go off island. Yes, there are home/bar games and at least one illegal club for some poker action, but those are supposed to be off limits also. The usual destination is usually Casino New Brunswick in Moncton.
Located in the middle of Moncton, NB the property is on the smaller side, but it has a hotel, restaurant, a concert venue, and of course, the actual casino. They offer the usual table games like Blackjack, Ultimate Texas Hold'em, 3 Card Poker, Let It Die err.....Ride, plus Roulette and unfortunately for me as you'll see, Craps. (More on that later) The place is basically a smaller version of Casino Niagara, without the Falls.
So with 2 of my friends who are also dealers,(we'll call them D and C) we make the 90 minute drive over to 'the mainland' for some Sunday afternoon gamble gamble. This being my first trip to CNB, I get a rewards card while the boys head for the bar. Apparently they are quite generous with their free room offers, which will come in handy when the wife wants a Costco run. (No Costco in PEI).
I get my card in a few minutes and I join them for a beer. Turns out the list for poker was over 10 players long but they soon would be opening a new table, when the 2pm shift of dealers arrived. No biggie, we added our names and went to find the table games. While they sat at UTH, I decide to run $40 through a slot machine, just to get my points card going. Naturally that was gone in 10 minutes so I returned to the tables games area. While en route to find the guys, I found $40 on the floor by a slot machine! Cha-ching! I'm back to even!
I buy into the same UTH table as my buddies for $160. As I'm slowing bleeding off money, I'm naturally watching the dealer work. I notice that his mechanics seem slightly off, and he's slower then the average dealer. I peg him as Noobie with under a year's experience. (With 3.5 in the biz, I consider myself to be a little better than average) Several times we would have to help him with hand recognition and who the winners are.
During one hand, I end up with a straight and win. When he went to pay out my TRIPS bonus bet of $5, he announces that I've won $40 (8 x $5) but the win should only pay $20 or 4 to 1! Now, I'm mostly an honest guy and I do feel bad as I think he's new at the job and I hate paying out the wrong amounts myself when I deal. So tell politely tell him its only a $20 win. He sheepishly says thanks and pays me the correct amount. The other players at the table (including my buddies WHOM I WORK WITH) look at me like I'm from Mars. The Francophones at the table promptly burst into chatter and I'm sure the topic was about yours truly being a money-hating idiot.
Whatever, the game continues and I'm down to having only enough in chips for one 4x bet pre flop if necessary. Sure as shit I get AKh and I'm all in. The board runs out xxKAK! Runner-runner full house for Johnnie! Sweet! Once again my slightly incompetent friend assumes I'm playing $10 (not the $5 that I was) on TRIPS and announces that I've won $80. This time I keep my fat yap firmly shut accept my ill begotten winnings. Hey, I warned him once!!! The table lets this happen and Frenchy in Seat 6 gives me a wink. After a few more small but correctly paid wins, we are called for the new poker table that is opening. I'm up to slightly over $200 and when I go to colour up, he puts outs 3 BLACK $100 chips on the table and I'm thinking 'Holy HELL, I LIKE THIS GUY' .....but as it's a $100+ transaction he must call for a Supervisor for approval. Of course the Sup notices and my bogus UTH rungood is over. D'oh!!
The poker room at CNB is located upstairs with 5 tables, 2 of which are now running 1/2. Their BBJ is currently just under $100,00 and they offer a $10,000 Royal Flush bonus. Our brand new table has 9 players (I guess some players left) and nearly every one of them buys in for $40 except the 3 donks from Charlottetown. As expected the game is super horrible. Clearly everyone is playing uber nitty and trying to bink one of the Jackpots. The only action at the table is from my buddies, as I'm slightly card dead until I change seats. (Although I did pop my Moncton cherry by taking down a smallish pot with AA.) The dealer is a nice lady, but she's more concerned with enforcing the table rules (no cell phones, watch your hands/chips in play, etc) then improving her craft. She's rather slow, and it starts to annoy me.
After awhile we get a few new players and the game improves. One of my buds (D) loses a couple of cooler hands and gets tilty. Him and I get into hand and unfortunately for him I flop top pair and stack him when he spew-bluffs off his stack. (Sorry buddy!) He's had enough and goes back downstairs to UTH. I stay for maybe another hour during which the table gets a new dealer. This guy makes other 2 poor dealers that I've seen seem like Las Vegas veterans. You can tell that he gives no Fucks about his job and really doesn't want to be there.
After a few hands with Dealer McSloth leave the table booking a small win of $100. I just couldn't take the slow game and the slow action. Maybe one or the other, but not both. By this time C is well into the beer and feeling no pain.
I find D getting crushed (again) at the UTH table. As I blow off $100 (this dealer knew his job) I get nudged in the back. I turn around and it's one of the dealers that works at CNB who comes over to see us when he wants to gamble. His name is J and I consider this guy a friend as he's super nice and funny when he's at Red Shores.
He tells us that he's about to open a new Three-Card Poker table. We promptly ask him to save us spots and run over to play when the table is ready. For anyone who doesn't know, 3CP is one of the worst games in the casino. So naturally I go on a stupid hot heater (on the level this time) turning $100 into well over $200 (I lost track of the actual amount as I was tipping quite heavily) All we did was laugh and joke with J as we raked in the chips. I point out the incompetent UTH dealer (he's over at BJ now) and explain about my 'bonus' wins off him. He looks over his shoulder and bursts into laughter. "That guy?! He's worked here for years an he's usually a SUPERVISOR!!" Holy crap, that's funny. Any misgivings I had promptly vanish.
J gets tapped for his break and we book our win and head to the buffet which was just fair but not a bad value at $12 (with the players card)
When we are done we notice that the craps table is open and it's $5 minimum on the Pass Line....oh boy.....here we go.
My friend D is a very experienced casino gambler but he admits that he was always to intimidated to try Craps. Well c'mon, how bad could it be? It's only a $5 min bet. I show him the basics (which is about all I know about Craps) and over the course of 2 hours I lose back all my winnings from the day plus an extra $200. Sigh.
I will say that I had a ton of fun however. Clearly the casino the 'good' dealers for craps as they were all awesome, including our friend J.
We play a few more games over the next little while and I recover about $50 from more slots and BJ. All this time C is still grinding a large win from $1/2 and we peel his drunk ass off the table for the long ride home. We made him buy us McDonalds.
So that was my first over to Casino New Brunswick. An OK casino with mostly below-average dealers but still decent enough games to make the trip worthwhile. I just wished they had kept the Craps table closed
Comments
I believe we are having an 'average' winter this year. Still waaaay more than Ontario for sure. In spite of this, the forecast is still supposed to be +10 degrees this weekend.
Totally agree.
Thanks Moose. Have fun in Florida.
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