London

Spent a week in London to go to a couple of English Premiere League games and while I was there I visited 5 of the London casinos (they have lots).  All five were within easy walking distance of the hotel in Picadilly Circus and I played at two of them.

1.  Hippodrome.  Biggest one of the ones I visited.  Pretty nice.  Tried to play there twice; the first time they didn't let us in because we were too drunk and the second time it was too busy and we couldn't find an open table.

2.  Casino at the Empire.  Also denied access to play there due to drunkenness.  Hey, it happens.  And we saw people get asked to leave bars because the bouncer felt they had had enough.  Who knew the Brits were such hard-asses?

3.  Napoleon's.  Right next door to the Empire.  I don't remember not getting into this place so either we tried and were denied.  Again.  Or we skipped over it.

4.  Grosvenor Casino.  Played blackjack at the G two nights.  The first night, we were once again told we were too drunk, but managed to talk our way in.  Or we offered the door guy a chicken schwarma.  Either way.  We finally made it inside one to play!  The first night there were three of us and we had no trouble finding a 5 pound table with three open spots.  I guess at 4am that's not hard to do, once you pass a field sobriety test.  Luka was the best dealer I've had in years.  He even half-laughed at our Second Floor jokes.  Normal rules, nothing crazy, just good ol' regular blackjack.  Even won a few hands.

The next night we returned to the G and played the table next to Luka because his was full.  The new dealer was pretty good too - even comping us a couple of beers (they don't hand out free booze in London casinos)... but she beat our brains in.  The G is a fairly small casino with only a couple tables and no craps (none of the Picadilly casinos offer craps, you have to travel 15-20 minutes by the Tube to find that game) but they were really nice.

5.  Golden Nugget.  Played here the last night.  Couldn't find the Michigan-IU game on ESPN America, but they had no trouble finding MMA for us to watch.  Uh, thanks?  Rob and I each started with 50 pounds on a 5 pound table and played for a while before finally succumbing.  With a 6am wake-up call for my flight home and seeing how it was nearly 2am we would have been smart to call it a night.  Or would we have?  We re-loaded, hit the roulette table and played our favorite Michigan and MSU athlete numbers.  Remarkably, we won.  A bunch.  I think Tom Brady hit a couple times and maybe Andre Hutson once or twice.  Trey Burke hit once, but Denard and Stauskas came up empty.  We left after Woodson hit back to back and I hadn't played it, but we still got back most of our losses from the blackjack session.  All in all, a pretty good time.  And I still have roughly 20 casinos to hit the next time I'm there.