Twin River Casino Poker Room Review
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Twin River reopened its two casinos in Rhode Island on Monday, minus the smoking, free soft drinks, table games, sports betting, and entertainment that make it worth visiting. Twin River Poker Overview - CLOSED Part of Twin River Casino. Poker has arrived! Twin River opened a 16-Table Poker Room i n the smoke-free Casino in December 2015. The room is on the 2nd Floor. 7-Card Stud and Texas Hold’em. Poker tables are open from noon to 4 a.m. During the week and then nonstop from Friday afternoon to 4 a.m. Twin River Casino is adding poker to their selection of table games. According to a news release, 16 poker tables will be built inside the casino’s new poker room and eight traditional games, such as Blackjack, will round out the other additions. Twin River Chairman John Taylor said the gambling expansion will create 120 more jobs. Twin River Casino. Facebook; Twitter; 5 4 3 2 1. Recent Twin River Reviews. Twin River's poker room is just too small at only 16 tables.
- 2 First stop, Twin River
- 3 Next up, Mohegan Sun
- 4 Finish your trip off at Foxwoods
The cool thing about playing poker in New England is you have three different casinos within an hour of one another. In 2018 a fourth option will open, MGM in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 2019 there will be a fifth New England poker room when the Wynn Boston Harbor opens its doors.
But for now, all the poker action is spread across the southern New England states of Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Getting there
If you’re flying in, TF Green Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island will get you much closer to the casinos than Logan Airport in Boston or Hartford Airport in Connecticut.
Whether you fly or drive, for the first leg of the trip I recommend staying in Providence, Rhode Island for a night. Providence is a short drive from TF Green, and there’s no shortage of high-quality restaurants to choose from, particularly in the Federal Hill area.
In the morning you can wake up, have a good breakfast, and maybe lounge around by the pool for a while before you head to the first stop on your New England poker road trip, Twin River Casino, about 15 minutes away in Lincoln, Rhode Island.
First stop, Twin River
Playing poker at Twin River
Not too long ago there wouldn’t have been a reason to stop at Twin River, but in 2016 the casino opened a 22-table poker room.
Considering Twin River’s slot parlor history, the poker room is decently busy and because it’s new, and since most of the low-limit grinders play at the much larger Foxwoods, the players tend to be a bit below average.
Like most poker rooms in 2017, Twin River boasts mainly low-stakes ($1/$2 and $2/$5) no limit hold’em tables. During peak hours you’ll find $5/$10 NLHE, and even the occasional $25/$50 NLHE game.
Low limit, limit hold’em and seven-card-stud are also available.
You’ll also want to get a seat early, as the wait-lists can grow quite long in the evening.
Eating at Twin River
Twin River has one upscale eatery, Fred & Steve’s Steakhouse.
The restaurant is open for dinner Wednesday – Sunday and is owned by former NFL players and local sports TV personalities Fred Smerlas and Steve DeOssie – who are often wandering around.
Pricing-wise, Fred & Steve’s is on the low-end of steakhouses of this caliber. The food is good, a step below David Burke Prime at Foxwoods and on par with Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse at Mohegan. The menu is almost entirely steaks and seafood dishes, but be warned, the portion sizes are gigantic, with appetizers that could be mistaken for entrees.
Value-wise, this is a really good dining option.
You won’t always need them, but I still highly recommend reserving a table.
Staying at Twin River
Twin River is in the process of adding a hotel, so a trip to Twin River in the near future will require making hotel arrangements off-site, which explains my Providence recommendation above.
Fortunately, you’re only about an hour from Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, so after a day of cards and dinner at Fred & Steve’s, and maybe some more cards, you can drive to the next stop on your poker tour, Mohegan Sun.
Even with a late arrival, you can check-in to your hotel room, and get a good night’s sleep for another day of cards.
Next up, Mohegan Sun
Playing poker at Mohegan Sun
Mohegan Sun has a very nice 42-table poker room. Unfortunately, most of the local action takes place at Foxwoods, and Mohegan gets the low-limit leftovers.
The room has a lot of potential, but Mohegan has been unable to come up with a strategy to end Foxwoods stranglehold on poker in the region. It’s location towards the back-end of the casino isn’t much of a help.
What you’ll find at Mohegan is a lot of loose low-limit action, particularly in the $2/$4 limit hold’em and $1/$5 stud games.
Mohegan does one cool thing that most poker rooms do not: The card room rules are published online. So you don’t have to worry about obscure local rules.
Poker tournaments at Mohegan Sun
On the tournament front you’ll typically find three daily events during the week, and one or two on the weekends. The format and buy-in vary, but for the most part, they’re NLHE tournaments with buy-ins in the $75-$120 range.
Mohegan Sun also offers single-table Sit & Go tournaments, with buy-ins ranging from $60 to $5,000.
Staying at Mohegan
Mohegan has two hotel towers, the original Sky Tower, and the Earth Tower, which opened in November 2016. Both are perfectly fine for a couple of days of habitation.
The Sky Tower rooms are considerably larger, averaging 450 square feet compared to the Earth Tower’s 365 sq. ft. average. However, the Earth Tower rooms are newer and more tech-friendly.
Discounted poker rates
Mohegan offers discounted poker room rates to eligible players, but be warned, the number of available rooms is limited and the cost of an on-site hotel room during the weekend can be pricey.
Eating at Mohegan
Like its poker room, Mohegan Sun is a very upscale, clean casino. The property boasts a mind-boggling 47 dining options, including four high-end choices:
- Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain
- Todd English’s Tuscany – an upscale Italian-American restaurant
- Ballo – a trendier Italian restaurant
- Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse
You won’t go wrong with any of the above choices, but if you’re only going to choose one steakhouse I would wait for the Foxwoods leg of the trip, or eat at Fred & Steve’s at Twin River over MJ’s.
And unless you’re a true gambler, definitely make reservations, particularly on show nights.
Finish your trip off at Foxwoods
The Foxwoods Poker Room
With over 100 tables, Foxwoods is the largest poker room on the east coast.
The poker room is tucked away underneath the Rainmaker Casino, with the stairs located in a bit of a no-man’s-land between the Asian table games and the race book. The upstairs areas are used for tournament play.
In the poker room, you’ll find round the clock limit and no limit hold’em games, as well as round the clock stud games. During peak hours you can expect to hear anything and everything called over the PA system, including mixed games, high-stakes stud games, PLO, and high/low games.
Play can be very tight during the day but tends to be looser and a bit wilder during peak hours and in the wee hours of the weekend.
Poker tournaments at Foxwoods
If tournaments are your thing, it’s pretty easy to plan a Foxwoods trip around a few tournaments you’d like to play.
Foxwoods routinely offer anywhere from three to five daily tournaments, as well as playing host to multiple major tournament series (WSOP Circuit and World Poker Finals) throughout the year.
The buy-in for most of the daily tournaments are in the $60-$160 range.
Single table Sit & Go tournaments at Foxwoods range from $65 to $340, and while the rake is steeper than at Mohegan, these tournaments run more frequently.
Foxwoods Hotel
Foxwoods is actually multiple hotels and casinos. The newest hotel is the Fox Tower, but there’s also the Two Trees, Great Cedar, and the Grand Pequot Tower.
- The Grand Pequot is the main hotel at the property.
- The Great Cedar Hotel is the closest to the poker room, and one of the more budget-friendly options.
- The Fox Tower is the newest and nicest, but walking from the poker room is quite a hike, even if you know a couple of the shortcuts.
- The Two Trees Inn is located across the street from the casino proper, which makes it cheaper, but also less convenient.
Discounted poker rates
If you play in a major tournament at Foxwoods, or if you qualify through cash game play, you might be able to score a discounted hotel rate at either the Two Trees or Great Cedar Hotel.
The rates are as follows, and are subject to availability.
Two Trees Inn:
- Sunday-Thursday $79
- Friday $159
- Saturday $189
Great Cedar Hotel:
- Sunday-Thursday $109
- Friday $189
- Saturday $219
Eating at Foxwoods
Like Mohegan, there are plenty of dining options at Foxwoods.
High-end restaurants include:
- Vue 24 – upscale dining on the 24th floor of the Pequot Tower
- David Burke Prime – premiere steakhouse in the region
- Cedars Steak House – a solid alternative to David Burke
- Red Lantern – a very busy Asian restaurant
David Burke is my go-to restaurant at Foxwoods, but I’d happily to go to any of the four listed.
As with Mohegan, you really need to make reservations if you plan to go eat during any normal hours. In some cases, depending on what’s going on at Foxwoods, you’ll need to make reservations weeks in advance.
Are you ready to take the ultimate road trip to play poker in New England? Let us know how it goes and follow us on Twitter.
© Gretchen Ertl A sign warning that masks must be worn at all times looms over a patron playing an electronic game at the Twin River Casino in Lincoln, Rhode Island, which reopened Monday.LINCOLN, R.I. – There’s only one guarantee for your next visit to Twin River casino: You’re going to leave smelling like Twin River casino.
Even after the coronavirus kept its doors closed to the public for 86 consecutive days, that distinct aroma — which kind of smells like a stew of Marlboro cigarettes, well liquor, and the cologne sample from GQ magazine — was still in the air when Twin River in Lincoln welcomed back a select group of its prized players Monday morning.
The look and smell of the casino may be familiar, but it’s hardly business as usual. From temperature checks at the door to social distancing restrictions that leave two or three slot machines between players, the casino is slowly adjusting to the new normal while still trying to entice customers after months with virtually zero revenue coming in — for Twin River, and the state.
This is what it was like to be at Twin River on day one of its reopening.
Not every Joe from Cranston, R.I., was allowed to visit the casinos in Lincoln and Tiverton on Monday. Twin River sent invitations to 4,000 players, and officials expect roughly 1,500 people to visit each day over the next two weeks. Craig Sculos, a vice president and general manager at Twin River, declined to say exactly how the 4,000 people were chosen, but he acknowledged that frequent use of their player rewards cards played a role in the invitations.
As visitors drove into the parking lot shortly before 10 a.m., they were stopped by security and asked to show their invitation. A woman in a Jeep with a Massachusetts license plate was told to leave because she wasn’t invited. Those with a golden ticket (or a reporter’s notebook) were instructed to park in one of three parking lots because the casino is now separated into sections called “north,” “south,” and “west.”
The longest lines were at the north casino, considered by many gamblers to be the main entrance, where about 50 people backed up into the Twin River hotel as they waited to get in.
At each entrance, every player and employee was required to stand in front of a thermal camera (which costs $10,000 to $15,000 each), to have their temperature taken, which is over in less than five seconds. The temperature pops up on a screen, and if you’re over 100.4 degrees, you’re not allowed to enter.
If you do find yourself running hot, Twin River is actually a convenient place to be: CVS Health has a coronavirus rapid testing station set up in the parking lot. (Note: At this point, if you have a temperature but test negative, you can’t just use a doctor’s note to get inside.)
From there, visitors are required to hand over their driver’s license so they can be checked into the casino’s contact tracing system. If a player tests positive for the virus, Twin River will send an e-mail to everyone who was in the casino that day to inform them of the infection.
“It’s no different than going to Whole Foods,” Sculos said, referring to the extra precautions that all businesses are taking in a world of the coronavirus.
Once you’re in, and wearing a mask (the casino will provide one if you don’t have it), you’re free to gamble like its 2019 all over again. Kind of.
There are no table games (no one wants to touch your sticky betting chips), poker games, or off-track betting allowed for the time being. Even sports betting, Rhode Island’s best advantage over the casinos in Connecticut, is out unless you have the Sports Book Rhode Island mobile app.
Before you ask whether there are even sports to bet on right now, you should Google “Russian table tennis.” In April, while the casinos were still closed, the sports book accepted just under $600,000 in wagers, and cleared $27,000 in revenue. More than 65 percent of the bets were for table tennis, and 32 percent were for soccer, according to Paul Grimaldi, a spokesman for the Rhode Island Lottery.
At the casino, the games include slot machines, video table games (you haven’t lived until you watch a Rhode Islander cuss out a scantily-clad digital blackjack dealer), and stadium games, which allow you to play blackjack, roulette, and mini baccarat with dozens of other players while the dealers stand behind tables set up several feet away.
With the exception of a handful of two-seater slot machines located throughout the casino, it’s nearly impossible to avoid social distancing. For every one machine that is running, the two or three next to it are turned off and the chairs have been removed.
And you know how casinos are famous for their eyes in the sky, the thousands of cameras placed in almost every section of their facilities? In addition to catching cheaters, they’re now being used to ensure that players are keeping a safe distance from one another, Sculos said.
“Our mantra is, play smart, stay apart,” Sculos said.
If you don’t want to gamble, you probably won’t want to visit Twin River during its first few weeks of reopening. With the exception of the food courts, restaurants are closed. The hotel still isn’t welcoming visitors. And the Julio Iglesias concert that was scheduled for July 3 is already canceled, as are any other events scheduled for the near future.
Twin River Casino Poker Room Review
The good news is that Twin River has never been cleaner. The casino will close at midnight every night for the time being, and undergo a thorough scrubbing. It even has an electric thermal fogger that is supposed to sanitize entire rooms in minutes.
Twin River Casino Poker Room Reviews
And yet it still smells like Twin River.