What Can You Learn From Gambling Trip Reports?

As a gambler, one of my favorite things about the internet is the access I’ve gained to other gamblers’ trip reports. These are posts on blogs and forums from gamblers about their experiences while traveling and gambling.

What can you learn from other players’ gambling trip reports?

In this post, we’ll find out.

Some Gambling Trip Reports Are Boring, and That’s Okay

Some posters will even warn you ahead of time that their trip report is boring. If you want trip reports that relate to exciting adventures, they’re out there, but even the boring trip reports offer something to the savvy gambler.

For example, you can find accurate descriptions and reviews of the amenities at casinos and hotels that are often more accurate and up to date than what you’d find on a standard gambling site or travel site.

You can also get details about the methods of getting from point A to point B. Some airlines offer better service than others, and some gamblers take Amtrak to their destinations. You can find out what those trips were like.

And you can even find out what various car rental services are like or what to expect from the cab service taking you from the airport to your hotel. A good trip report will include details about the lobby of the hotel as well as the property’s other amenities.

Pictures are always a bonus, too, so you can visualize where you’re going.

You Can Learn What It’s Like to Retire and Travel Nearly Constantly

Some people travel because they’re retired from their job and want to travel constantly. Many of these trip reports are written by people who are traveling on a budget.

But you’d be surprised at how often you can find gambling trip reports from gamblers who have a reasonable amount of post-retirement income and want to write about their adventures gambling and traveling.

I read an interesting thread in a discussion forum about one such retiree who began his trip report with a list of destinations he’d visited since retiring.

He spent most of his time in Las Vegas because he likes the warm weather there. He includes details about which credit card he uses and why. Some people might use a credit card that’s tied to a frequent flier account, while others might use one that’s tied to a casino account.

Either way, you should take advantage of the rewards available from various credit cards, and you can find some ideas about those cards in gambling trip reports across the internet.

Here’s a list of gambling destinations you might find trip reports for:

• Las Vegas
• Reno
• Atlantic City
• Foxwoods
• Los Angeles
• Chicago
• Biloxi
• New Orleans
• Deadwood
• Council Bluffs

And those are just for starters. I know that Oklahoma is becoming more of a Mecca for gamblers who don’t want to travel far, and Shreveport is still a popular gambling destination, too.

You Can Find Detailed Reviews of More Obscure Destinations

Sure, you could Google the expression “Chinook Winds Casino Lincoln City review,” but what are you going to find when you do?

I get a couple of pages from TripAdvisor and a couple of pages from Yelp on the top of the results. I was a little surprised because I expected to find the official site for the property.

One of the nice things about these sites, in theory, is that they offer user-generated content. TripAdvisor, for example, claims to offer 1,232 reviews for the property.

The truth is, though, that most of those reviews only consist of a sentence or two. I didn’t see any reviews that were substantial or that gave me a real feel for what to expect at the property. And, in order to find those user reviews, I had to scroll past the advertisement that was obviously written for or by the property and the booking engine.

But the trip report I found for the casino contained a lot more detail than that. It started with how well the casino adhered to safety protocols. This seems like a yes/no box to tick, but when it comes to casino gambling, it’s more complicated than that.

Gambling Trip Reports Often Focus on Perks for Gamblers

Gamblers care about some things more than other travelers. Many gamblers like to eat at buffets. It seems like buffets and casinos go together like peanut butter and jelly.

You can find more detailed descriptions of what’s available at the buffets in a casino in a gambler’s trip report than you can in some generic review almost every time. The writers who produce the best trip reports include photographs, too.

Also, most travelers pay no attention at all to one of the most important things about a casino/hotel, and that would be the comp rates.

How easy is to get a free drink? What about a free meal at the coffee shop? And how about bigger perks like free room rates? You can almost always find this information in a well-written trip report.

Casino Games Available and Under What Conditions

The best gambling trip reports include plenty of information about what casino games they played while staying somewhere. I read a trip report from someone who hit Atlantic City just last month. He wanted to stay at Bally’s to see what the new management was like. And in his first paragraph, he mentioned being interested in blackjack, craps, and video poker.

In his section about craps, he pointed out that he didn’t play because the minimum bet at all the dice tables was $25. That’s useful information for a traveler to have, and that’s the kind of thing you’ll find in good gambling trip reports.

He also wrote about how he found some 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker games to play, but he’d lost his players’ club card and had to wait in line for half an hour to get a new one.

He even included some commentary about how well the video poker strategy chart he was using worked. Gambling trip reports in forums are a great place to learn about casino games and gambling.

You Can Also Find Out When Games Have Gotten Bad

Blackjack used to be the best game you could play in Vegas, but it’s hard to find good blackjack games anymore on the Strip. Many casinos offer a lot of 6/5 games. You should know to avoid those games and why.

It used to be the case that the casinos in Downtown Las Vegas offered good blackjack games, but I read a recent trip report that said that Binions, the Four Queens, and the Golden Nugget were all offering 6/5 games, too.

I don’t think this meant that all their games are 6/5 games. But it does mean that these games are becoming more common. This means you’ll need to look harder to find the better games.

And the best place to find information about those better games is via trip reports on the internet.

Poker Trip Reports Can Have a Lot of Value

I’ve read that the most important piece of your poker strategy is game selection. In other words, you’ll increase your earnings by more and reduce your losses by more by choosing better games than by anything else.

But how do you know where the soft games are? And how do you learn which games to avoid?

My suggestion is to consider poker rooms and type in the name of the room along with the phrase “trip report” to find out what poker players are saying on the forums.

Take what they say with a grain of salt, and also, pay attention to how old those trip reports are. The players might be old and predictable at the Excalibur, but that situation could change at any time. The demographics of the people who visit specific card rooms can change for all kinds of reasons.

Depending on where the cardroom is, you might have to sift through some results. When I searched for “WinStar poker trip report” in Google, the #1 result was from Reddit and was dated 2015. I doubt that I’m going to learn much that’s useful from a trip report from six years ago.

Conclusion

Gambling trip reports can be fun to read and help you experience various gambling destinations vicariously through people who write about them on the forums. They can also help you determine where you want to gamble on your next trip.