Next poker destination: Boston. So Boston had just finished up building it’s first casino in the city, The Encore Boston Harbor, exact same building as the Encore in Las Vegas. Originally it was going to be the Wynn, but after some sexual assault allegations I guess they didn’t want to attach the Steve Wynn name to it. Fair enough! So usually when they have new big poker rooms open up in cities that didn’t have any before, the games tend to be quite good (at least at the beginning!) So I was hoping to capitalize on that. I got an airbnb basically right across the street from the casino, which was sweet. ($350/night to stay at Encore) It was the type of place where you get your own room and everything else is communal. It wasn’t the nicest place, but whatever, Boston is expensive! Just one huge problem: no locks on the doors! I’m sure as hell not going to be leaving thousands of dollars unlocked in my room with random people coming and going! So I ended up carrying silly amounts of money on me for this whole trip, so annoying. I’ve really never seen a communal airbnb with doors that don’t lock!
But anyway the casino is really nice! Just like it’s counterpart in Vegas, everything from carpets to the details on the walls, to the flowing designs of the chandeliers is gorgeous. There’s a bunch of restaurants inside, but man are they pricey. In the poker room you get comped $1/hr for food (not much given the prices). You’d have to play 20 hours to pay for your cobb salad! But they do give you free drinks including alcohol, so that’s fine. The games here were also pretty soft, much better than in Chicago. I lost a few thousand the first night and was worried I didn’t bring enough cash, but I turned it around and finished up a very healthy amount on the trip. Although I did have to lose a few thousand right at the end - I just cannot for the life of me finish on a high note on any of these trips! A little bittersweet.
I also had some time to wander around Boston, which is a very walkable. Around Bunker Hill, the shipyards, North End, the Financial District, Back Bay, all very cool neighborhoods to take a stroll. Boston has plenty of landmarks and monuments from the Revolutionary War era and you can even visit Paul Revere’s house. They were doing renovations on it, so I didn’t take any photos of it though. And I did catch a game at Fenway, a 1:00pm game where I scalped some tix at gametime for super cheap (Red Sox being out of the playoffs and all). Although to be honest, I’m just not big enough of a baseball fan to really care about two teams that aren’t the White Sox, especially sitting alone, so I left after 6 innings or so, Boston having a 5-1 lead.
Photos in order: North End, Bunker Hill area, Back Bay, Financial District
So that was a solid two week trip. Then it was back to Chicago land to hang out with my parents and onto my brother’s wedding! Which I’ll get to shortly…