Three Days at Pearl River Resort...Silver Star Casino/Golden Moon Casino

. The Baboo and I decided to make a little trip up to Pearl River Resort a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the beginning of summer. One of the best things about PRR for us is that it is less than an hour away and we can take our time on travel days. We sometimes feel a little rushed on departure day when going to one of the Gulf Coast casinos or Harrah’s New Orleans because of the 3 hour drive. By two in the afternoon we were getting registered in the Silver Star Casino’s hotel. Getting in our room early allowed me time to go enjoy the pool for a while before getting down to gambling. I quickly fixed my pool bag complete with a poker book to read and a few beers to consume. The Silver Star has just undergone a major renovation and they did not forget the pool area. All of the chairs and tables are brand new. All of the chairs are an appealing shade of orange or blue with most of them being molded loungers with a few straight chairs to go with the larger tables scattered about. Some were high-tops such as you would see in a bar and some were a traditional height like in a restaurant. On this Tuesday, they had one of the two waterfalls turned off for maintenance but they got it fixed and it was splashing away on the next two days. If you haven’t been to the Silver Star pool, it is a grotto type pool with rock sculptures and waterfalls coming off the rocks. It is sort of an over-sized kidney shape with an arched bridge going over the middle of the kidney to the bar area. Unfortunately, they did not have the pool bar staffed during the week although cocktail servers from the casino would occasionally wander thru to see if anyone wanted to order a drink. The pool also has two hot tubs back behind the main seating area. Music was decent by my standards. On this first day, the pool was not very crowded so I had my choice of chairs and spent a pleasant two hours enjoying the sun and reviewing a few poker maxims. The only thing to possibly moan about was that the loungers were not adjustable. Their fixed position in sort of an elongated S meant that it was next to impossible to lay on your stomach. The frames are a metal grey with orange or teal fabric stretched onto it. That combo looked good.

Walking back to my room, the renovations were evident. It looked like all the common area carpets had been replaced and all the paint looked new. The room had also been changed up a good bit. The old Silver Star room décor used a lot of classic dark wood in their furniture. Now it is much brighter with a lot of things that lean toward more metals. Our room had a nice couch, new lamps (chrome looking metal), and new artwork featuring tribal themes. (Native bead-work, stick-ball racquets, etc) Of course the carpet was brand new and they had upgraded the television considerably (42“ HD flat screen). The bathroom had been completely re-done. They now have one of those wide shallow sinks that are in vogue now. The bathtub/shower combo has been replaced by a walk-in shower with new tile walls. The mirror behind the sink supplies most of the light in the room and is almost like a four foot wide make-up mirror. There is one other light directly over the shower. All in all, the bathroom looks much improved.

After a quick shower, I was ready to hit the casino floor. On most of my casino visits, I am all over the floor playing VP, blackjack, craps, 3CP. However, at Pearl River Resort, the vast majority of my time is spent in the poker room. It was still early and I felt like easing into things with a little VP so I started in the direction of the VP bar located on the East end of the casino next to Phillip M’s. (their high end restaurant) One of my main complaints about the Pearl River Resort is their absolutely awful video poker offerings. The bartops at PRR have paytables of 6/5 JOB at .25, .50, and $ denominations. On the bright side, there is absolutely no pressure from the bartender about your playing speed or playing max coin. Plenty of people sit there and relax with a drink without investing tons of money on those awfu paytables. That pretty much sums up what I did. I played full coin but spent plenty of time watching TV or people. One neat thing is that every machine had it’s own little miniature TV built into the machine. No audio but it was pretty good to watch sports on. I spent about an hour at this VP bar and wound up $20 behind.

For a long time, my favorite VP spot in either casino (Pearl River Resort has two casinos-Silver Star & Golden Moon) was the Atrium VP bar. It had a Tiki theme and there were a couple of 25 ft tall faux trees going up towards the roof of the atrium. It was a peaceful and fun place. Unfortunately, I noticed while I was walking across the SS casino floor that not only was the Atrium Bar gone, but the entire Atrium area had been completely walled off. The only thing left of the Atrium was the ramp up to the restrooms on that level.

I finally made it to the Poker Room over in the Golden Moon Casino. I expected things to be slow on a Tuesday but they only had one table open and that was a 3/6 limit game. That was fine with me because that was what I wanted to play. The only problem was all the no-limit guys were playing 3/6 because there was not a no-limit game going on. That left a waiting list of five for the next 3/6 seat. Once I put my name on the waiting list, I walked over to the focal point of the Golden Moon, the Center Bar. As usual, there was not a single person at the bar. (terrible 6/5 VP paytables and $1 or $5 denominations)I got a beer and decided to play one credit (1$) blackjack to kill the time I would be waiting on my poker seat. The bartender was happy just to get someone in a seat who was willing to tip him for each drink. The blackjack sucked just about as bad as the video poker. ..no double down, no splitting pairs, hitting soft 17. Amazingly, I wound up winning over $20 on this awful game. What really frustrated me was the times I got AA and could not split them. At least I was still getting a little play credited to my account even with this minimal play.

At last one of the poker room dealers came over and told me that they had a seat for me. I lucked into a seat almost directly across from the dealer which I liked because it makes it easy to be sure of what cards are in play. Poker was somewhat anticlimatic thru the next 5 hours. I play a pretty tight game but still get pretty active when I have good position. Basically I never caught any big hands and it is pretty difficult if not impossible to bluff in low limit hold-em. My best chance of hitting a big pot was when my pocket queens caught another queen on the river for top set. Although the pot was huge, I didn’t get it as that last queen completed a flush for a lady who had hung with me the whole time on her flush draw. That set (QQQ) was my biggest hand of the night. The end of the story is that I lost $80 on the night playing poker. That $80 was also my loss for the day gambling wise. Time to go test out those new beds in the Silver Star hotel. As hoped for, they were wonderful for a trip to Dreamland.

We both slept late the next morning. That is the norm for the Baboo. She has been retired several years and is used to sleeping late after staying up late the night before. We always carry an assortment of room snacks and we kind of made a small continental breakfast from those things. After that in-room brunch, I made my way back to the pool. My time at the pool was pretty much a repeat of the day before. I sat around reading about poker, drinking a few beers, and watching people while taking an occasional dip in the pool to cool off. The pool had a few more people this day but I still would not put it in the crowded category. Plenty of chairs available. One group seemed to have made a deal with one of the cocktail waitresses because she headed straight to their table every time she came out to the pool Again, I had a nice pleasant time while recharging my batteries for the gambling to come.

While I was sunning like a lizard on a rock, the Baboo had made the short (15 minute) drive down to her hairdresser to get her hair done That was one additional incentive for this trip. She could make a 15 minute drive to her hairdresser instead of making an hour drive from home. That works for us. By the time I got back up to the room, she had made her way back and immediately showed off her new hairdo. She certainly got her money’s worth as her hair looked great. Once I had run thru the shower cycle, I made my way down to Dolce for some nourishment. I got the Baboo a Chicken Salad Croissant and a King Club sandwich for me. Both got potato salad as their sides and a brownie for desert. Even though they were just sandwiches, we both enjoyed the meal. After eating, we both got kind of lazy for a little while and rested a bit.

I get antsy pretty quickly in a casino and it wasn’t long before I was headed back down towards the casino floor. I wasn’t quite ready for the Poker Room so I went back to the VP bar in the Silver Star. BTW- I had looked for VP out on the floor but could not find anything that I wanted to play due to bad pay tables. I can sacrifice a little to have a bartender right in front of me but not out on the floor. This time I decided to play .25 JOB and just eat the crummy payouts on the full houses. I did play a little slower than usual but nevertheless I played. The bar was pretty slow and the bartender was glad to have some butts in seats. For some reason, the TVs behind the bar had lost their signal. Oddly enough, the miniature TVs built into the VP machines still had their signal so I could still watch the game. I was having a pretty good time because the machine was giving me enough to keep me playing and the bartender was taking good care of me too. There was plenty to amuse me in addition to the machines. One thing was a guy about 60-65 who looked an awful lot like a friend of mine (RJ) sitting two seats to the right of me. After an attractive lady about 40-45 sat down to his immediate right, he turned the charm button up to high. I mean, the man was working it! To my amazement, it seemed to be working. Before I left, they were all cozied up next to each other as he taught her the fundamentals of video poker. I didn’t hit anything to brag about but I got a lot of little stuff. One thing I wasn’t sure about was when I hit trip sixes three times in the space of about 20-25 hands. I was glad to get the credits but it was a little ominous. I also noticed that a guy who sat down right next to me had 125,000 points in his account. I had around 5,000 so I could only imagine how he had accumulated so many. While he was next to me, he was only playing .25 keno with 5 credits.

Tiring of this bar, I started toward the Golden Moon Casino and the poker room. While walking down the promenade to the people mover connecting the two casinos, I noticed the room across from the STATS sports bar had been transformed into a Bingo Parlor. The sign said “Coming soon” and it looked ready to go so it is possible that you will be able to play high stakes bingo in the next couple of weeks. . I am not a Bingo player but more power to those who are.

I mentioned this in another TR but I am still trying to figure out why they did it. All of the clear glass that gave you an elevated view of the area surrounding the two casinos while you traveled on the people mover has been frosted over so that you can’t see outside. On top of that, it seems like they have stopped air conditioning the space in the elevated people mover. We liked the view and would like to see them go back to the clear glass. As for the cool air, you really aren’t in the people mover long enough for it to be much of a problem but you sure notice it when you first hit get to the top of the escalator.

Again the Poker Room only had one table open (3/6 limit) and there were two people ahead of me on the waiting list. While waiting on a seat I had a talk with the PR supervisor and she explained a couple of promotions that they do during the day such as “Splash the Pot” where once an hour they add $50.00 to a random pot and “High Hand” that wins $100.00 for the best hand of the day. Too bad those promotions ended earlier in the day.I eventually got a poker seat and wound up playing till midnight. It was a profitable night with one big hand standing out. I played pocket deuces (2-2) from a late position and caught another deuce on the flop. The board had no obvious draws and most of the table stayed in. Even when we got to the showdown there were still five other players left in the hand. I had been betting or raising the entire way so the pot was one of the biggest of the night. At the end, my set of twos held up and I won a huge pot. By midnight I had experienced some ups and downs but still cashed $140 ahead. Both nights were enjoyable due to having very pleasant tablemates but I really enjoyed this night because of the young guy sitting next to me. He had just graduated from Jackson State University with a degree in Psychology and was going to graduate school to get a Masters Degree in Counseling. That is the exact degree pattern that I hold so we spent a lot of our time between hands talking shop. When our game broke up, we walked back to the Silver Star (BTW-the Poker Room is in the Golden Moon Casino) together and agreed that the night had been a productive one. (he won some too) He was a nice guy and had that type of personality that makes for a successful counselor. The Baboo was still up watching some movie but I went straight to bed and conked out.

The next day dawned bright and sunny. I went downstairs to the 24 Bistro and got us some breakfast (even though it was lunch time-24 Bistro has breakfast all the time) and we lounged around the room for a while. After an hour or so I was ready to get outside and took off for the pool. There was a bit more of a crowd this day, probably because it was getting closer to the weekend. Actually, there was one group of family or friends that made up a big chunk of the pool crowd. Counting kids, there were 15 or 20 of them. They were pretty well behaved though. I did my usual read, drink, swim cycle for a couple of hours and made my way back to the room.

After a quick shower, it was Casino Time. The Baboo and I made our way downstairs and made a circuit around the Silver Star floor. She wanted to check with the players club to see how to use her food credits but there was no one staffing the players club. I explained that the players club was always staffed over at the Golden Moon but she didn’t want to make the trip over there for such a minor thing. One other new thing that I like about PRR is that they have these self-service kiosks at the Golden Moon players club where you can make yourself a new players club card if you lose yours. You just put your drivers license in a slot and in less than a minute a new players club card pops out. Pretty handy and it cuts down on the number of people in the players club line needing new cards.

Our first stop was the Silver Star VP Bar. She had not had a drink this trip and was ready for one. After two days, the bartender was pretty familiar with me and knew I wanted a Miller Lite. Baboo got her a nice looking screwdriver. One of my pet peeves about PRR is their practice of giving you drinks in flimsy plastic out on the casino floor. However they give you drinks in nice glassware if you are sitting at the bar so that is another plus for sitting at the bar. Both of us got on the .25 JOB and began play. For some reason, I seem to have more luck whenever she is sitting next to me and soon I had hit my first 4OAK (Q). Before too long, we had gotten another round of drinks and I had seen five full houses. The Baboo was not having my luck but she was getting enough small hands that she was still playing off her initial $20. Eventually she wanted to go to her true love, the slots. I stayed at the bar and she went in search of that elusive jackpot.

After a while, I decided to cash my small profit ($25) and go find my sweetie. She was over in Dollar-land on a Blazing Sevens machine. When I walked up, she immediately complained that her ole-faithful was not treating her right today. She had been trying to find that one machine since she left me without success. The High Limit room didn’t do anything for her and so far nothing on the floor was being cooperative either. Ready for a break, she suggested us stepping over to Rally Alley and getting a bite to tide us over. We had reservations for Phillip M’s that night but a quick snack sounded good. Between us we got an order of nachos, french fries, and some pizza. All of it was good, especially the pizza. There was a down-side though. We ate too much and wound up canceling our reservations because we felt like we would not get full value if we weren’t truly hungry. We agreed that I would get my retirement celebration dinner when we go to the Gulf Coast later this summer.

After a fruitless round of gambling, The Baboo decided to call it a day and go up to the room. I went in the opposite direction towards the Golden Moon. I walked around for a while to see if a couple of my dealer buddies were working today. I didn’t see them but I did run into some other buddies who had come up for a day of gambling. I hung out with them for a while before making my way to the Poker Room.

They actually had two tables going this evening, one 3/6 limit and one no-limit. As usual, there was a waiting list. I went to wait it out at the Center Bar. Even though this is a beautiful bar with a dozen or so televisions, it was once again deserted except for the bartender. When I mentioned that fact, the bartender put it off on the fact that their machines only offer $ and $5 denominations. I pointed out that many people play dollar VP but almost anyone that plays at that level will refuse to play on a game with such an awful paytable. His attitude seemed to be “Whatever”. Well, it was his tip jar that was paying the price. At least he didn’t bother me about playing single coin dollar VP while I waited. In his defense, he did make a great White Russian.

Soon one of the poker dealers came with the good news that I had a seat. There were actually two seats open so I had a choice of where to sit. We seemed to have a seat or two open all night. I guess it was because all the no-limit players that had been populating our table the two previous nights finally had their own table. I have absolutely nothing about this night of poker in my notes so I must not have had any memorable hands. I do remember that my high-water mark was when I got 60-70 dollars ahead but things went south after that. I played for several more hours and eventually got involved in a big pot that had me putting the last chips from my initial buy-in into the middle of the table. The showdown revealed I was second best and I realized that I had had my fill of poker after three straight multi-hour nights.

Bidding everyone adieu, I began the trip across the highway to the Silver Star. Remembering how good those pizza slices had been that afternoon, I stopped by Rally Alley and bought an entire pizza. They only serve one size pizza and that size is HUGE. We both ate as much as we could stuff into ourselves and we still had half a pizza left the next morning. I am a cheese freak and they load their pizzas down with cheese so it was perfect for me. All that pizza eating definitely made us sleep like a couple of hibernating bears that night.

The next day we checked out but after throwing our luggage in the car, The Baboo took a notion that the machines over in The Golden Moon might be more productive than those she encountered at Silver Star. She had not gone to the GM at all this trip so across the highway we went. For some reason, the elevated people mover seemed much cooler today so maybe it was a temporary malfunction the other day. Once there, we made a stop at the Center Bar for a couple of wake-me-ups. We both got screwdrivers and piddled around playing single coin dollar JOB. After one drink, she went to check out the Golden Moon machines. She was only gone for about 30 minutes when she came back with a $240 ticket that another of her old dependable (Triple Lucky) machines had given her. As she is prone to do, she wanted to press her advantage and go for a big jackpot so I followed her into the Golden Moon high-limit room. (Outer Limits is the name I think). Despite trying multiple machines, she never found that magic one. Leaving the high limit area before they got all her winnings, she went back to the machine she had won on earlier. It took another 30 minutes but eventually this machine turned sour too.

She was wavering back and forth on heading home or not when I mentioned some new machines that the Golden Moon had just gotten. I am definitely not a slot player but I had been looking at these since we got there. While I don’t care that much for slots I do LOVE the Rolling Stones and these were the first Rolling Stones machines that I had ever seen. She loves the Stones as much as I do so she was in complete agreement about us playing them. There were two adjacent seats open so we grabbed them. We both slid in a twenty and proceeded to see what these machines were all about. These Rolling Stones machines were FUN, FUN, FUN. They had all sorts of bonus animations, many of which featured the iconic Rolling Stones lips doing various things to increase your winnings. Right off the bat, I hit the combination that spins their “Steel Wheels” bonus wheel. I got 7 free spins on that wheel which more than tripled my investment to almost 70 dollars. BTW- I was only playing the minimum bet of fifty cents. I think that was one cent on fifty lines. Imagine if I had been playing max coin. Anyway, my machine stayed hot and was very entertaining. Unfortunately, the machine right next to it was not nearly as accommodating for The Baboo. It let her play for quite a while but it never gave her the “Steel Wheels” bonus and so she eventually went thru her investment. By then, I was ready to go so I cashed out my $30 profit and we started for the car.

As we made our way back, we realized that we hadn’t used any of our food credits and decided to try the new, improved buffet. The remodeling had moved the entrance to the buffet from inside the casino next to Phillip M’s to a much larger entrance out on the promenade walkway. The entire buffet area has been re-decorated and looks great. The Baboo took care of our buffets out of her account. I usually try to be a non-presence at the casino on check out day to keep from damaging my Average Daily Theoretical. We had both been playing with her players card today to keep me from showing up in the system. We have always thought that Pearl River had an above average buffet and today was not a disappointment. Everything we got was well prepared and very tasty. Stopping at the buffet was a good decision and a great way to end our little excursion to Pearl River. One other great thing was that we now faced a drive home that was only a third as long as our usual return from gambling trips.

 

Nice report! Sucks the paytables are that bad though. 6/5 DDB (94.66%) too?

 

GREAT report! I was struggling with Biloxi .vs Philadelphia.... since I love the coast, I'll just go to the Beau! I really appreciate this report and look forward to my next trip to Philadelphia.