After checking into the dingy and disappointing Sycuan Resort hotel, my husband and I headed to the Sycuan Casino. The casino is not located on the same property as the Resort, it’s about a 5-minute drive away (Sycuan offers free shuttles to and from the resort from several locations throughout San Diego County, including the hotel.) Because we were guests at the Sycuan hotel, we got free valet parking at the casino, which was a nice touch.

The casino is a huge property, and the outside is nicely landscaped in a Southwest desert style. It didn’t look cheap or cheesy at all from the outside, it actually looked quite nice. The interior had the typical loud, bustling casino feel, with busy carpeting and oversized decorations. Sycuan is a very large, two-story casino, and it was packed on the night we were there (Labor Day weekend 2009).

We decided to start with video poker. Although Sycuan offers plenty of video poker machines (they even have a separate video poker area), they did not have the types of poker games I like to play–their machines only offer multi-hand games, and they were generic brands, with none of the more interesting branded video poker games that you’d find in Las Vegas casinos. I sat down at machines on both the upper and lower floors, and promptly lost $200…I barely won a single hand all night. Obviously, most people lose money while gambling, and I’m okay with that, but there should at least be some winning hands mixed in to retain my interest. I quickly became very bored with all of the video poker machines that I played, and I didn’t see any of the other players winning, wither. It was “yawn city,” and I quickly lost interest.

My husband went to the high limit blackjack rooms, which were almost deserted. Out of 15 tables in the room, 12 of them were empty, and there were only 1-3 players at each of the two active tables. He played for about 2 hours, and lost each time. We noticed that the dealers were cutting the decks in such a way that the house had an inordinate advantage…each dealer only dealt half decks. This made for a very boring evening, and my husband finally decided that it was pointless to continue wasting money on an unfair game. In addition to stacking the odds in favor of the house, cutting the cards into half decks also drains all of the excitement out of the game. The dealers were all dressed in oversize football jerseys, which looked silly and very unprofessional.

We wanted to eat dinner before we left the casino, but the buffet closed at 10 pm. So we went to the only open restaurant, the Wachena Restaurant. Wachena looked pretty nice from the outside–the decor was sleek, and it offered a full bar. There was a 30-45 minute wait for a table, so we sat at the bar and chatted with the bartender. Turns out that it was a very limited bar, and the bartender hadn’t even heard of the liqueur that I wanted to order. When we sat down to eat, we saw that the menu was a mish-mash of Chinese food, sandwiches, and breakfast food. We ordered several courses of Chinese food, and the waiter delivered them all at once, so our entrees got cold while we were eating our soup. I can say for certain that the food we were served was the absolute WORST Chinese food I’ve ever had in my life. Cold, tasteless, gluey sauces, tough meat…it was truly disgusting. Even the rice was bad. We ate as quickly as we could, and got out of there.

The clientele at Sycuan Casino is almost exclusively older retirees, so the energy was not upbeat. The whole scene was actually quite sad and depressing…the guests were poorly dressed, and the place gave off a pathetic vibe. We couldn’t wait to leave. There are many casinos in Southern California, and I’m sure any one of them would be a better choice than Sycuan. I wouldn’t return to this place, even if they paid me.

Rating: 1