Trip Report - Majestic Star Casino, Gary IN

Spent a week here for the Heartland Poker Tour and had a good time. Here's a rundown of what the place is like.

The place is located on Buffington Harbor, on the south side of Lake Michigan. For Chicago area players, its just a little bit across the IN border as you make your way around the SE side of Chicagoland - near Hammond and East Chicago, IN. Its within sight of Resorts East Chicago.

This is a 2-boat operation, one of the boats used to be Trump's before being bought out and is now the Majestic Star II. The poker room is at the top of boat 2. There's a deli with about 6 table tops right outside the poker room, and access to the deck if you want to smoke outside in the lovely lake breezes. Smoking also allowed in the casino, but not in the poker room. Poker room and both boats are open 24 hours.

They have 21 tables, the biggest room I've played at in my very limited live experience. It wasn't as packed in as the other places I've been to, was pretty comfortable. Couple big screen TVs and some smaller ones scattered around so you can follow your sports action. Dealers seemed sharp, floor was attentive, knowledgeable, and carried their authority well. Cocktail service was a bit lacking, they were working 2 floors and forgot me on several occasions.

Oh yeah, they have poker! To be honest, with the tournament going on and me being a NL player, I didn't pay much attention to what limit games they were spreading. I know they had 3/6 and up, but not sure how high up they offered for limit. I did hear Omaha being called a few times as well.

For NL, they had 40 min/100 max with 1/2 blinds, and 100 min/300 max with 2/5 blinds running all the time. Most of the time they had the space and the interest to run 1000 max 5/10 (not sure what the min buyin was). The 100 max had a pretty high fish ratio, and the tables were very loose with plenty of all-in action. It paid to see a lot of flops and try to build a stack. The 300 max was much more solid, tighter and an order of magnitude greater on the aggression scale. Didn't play the 5/10 so no comment about how that game played.

For the Heartland Poker Tour, they were running $65 and $125 single table SNG satellites pretty much constantly. They used at least two tables for these, sometimes opening up another table or two depending on their lists for the sats vs. the side games. The sats fed the MTT qualifiers, which were 150 entries max, so when those were going on, obv the side games were limited. They did a good job of opening tables back up as the tournament progressed and tables merged. Main event for the HPT took up 19 tables, and again they did a good job opening side tables as the day progressed.

Weekly Tournaments - They have a regular Sunday freezeout MTT for $65+$15, max 150 entrants. The blinds and payout structure look to be reasonable. Monday and Wed nights they have a rebuy/addon tourney. Entry is $85+$15, with $40 rebuys and a $60 addon at the end of the rebuy period. I've got the sheets on these with more detail - I could post them, or PM me if you're interested and I'll send em.

Other misc - While playing in the poker room, sign up for the card and you earn $/hr ($1.00??) toward comps on stuff like sammiches, smokes, buffet, etc. They also offer a reduced hotel rate for players ($40 vs $regular $80) --- but not while the HPT was in town, bleah. The hotel room was average, not very spectacular. The best thing about it was that the 3rd floor pop machine was broke and sold for 50 cents. The buttons were screwy, so you didn't know what you were going to get. I got an armload, it was like playing roulette, hehe.

Overall, I had a very enjoyable experience and will definitely be back. This place far outshines what passes for poker rooms at Hollywood in Aurora and Potowatami in Milwaukee.

I used to play the 3/6 LHE game down there. It has a full kill. On more than one occasion I would have the kill button (if you win 3 hands str8 you have the kill, and are required to post $6 or 2xBB before the hand is dealt). There were some fish but mostly local "grinders" who were not that good. They seems to take offense to pre-flop raising, which would help when I would bump to $12 PF from the kill and get some big pots going. I tripled my stack there on more than a few occasions.

You went to Gary, Indiana and lived. That's always an accomplishment, and better than what happened to former baseball star Lymon Bostock. I once had a student from Gary (great kid), who was very proud of the city despite all its problems. She claimed that people were murdered in Chicago and the bodies were dumped in Gary, so Gary's murder rate was listed higher than what it actually was. I drove through Gary once on the highway, and later told the student that I kept my head down the whole time to help dodge any bullets. She threatened to hit me.