Altogether, with its discount fashion outlets, sandy beaches and (in summer) amusement-park pier, there is a sense that you wouldn’t have to gamble to enjoy Atlantic City. But then who am I kidding? That’s why I came. More specifically, I came to play poker. I won $1,100 in a tournament the previous weekend. My aim is to double it this weekend.

Ever since the US banned online poker sites in 2006, the demand to play live has gone through the roof. Every major casino now has its own card room. You can play knock-out tournaments, where you pay a fixed entry fee for anything up to five hours’ play, or cash games, where you can lose hundreds in a single hand. I played both kinds. Several times. And, I’m ashamed to say, lost at all of them.

First, the Taj, where Matt Damon played in the film Rounders. The poker room is large and functional, with more than 100 tables, but rather tatty. The $100 tournament is disappointingly undersubscribed: just 19 people. The bloke to my right, an Irish plasterer living in New York, is here on a Friday because building work is drying up as the credit crunch bites. He’s a loose player, but I still let him raise me off my pair of eights with his pair of sevens. Bad play, and I don’t improve.

I try Bally’s in the evening. The poker room here is smaller, but more modern. It’s on the sixth floor, the huge windows giving a great view of the city lights. There are 57 players this time, and a livelier atmosphere.

The largest casino in the US

Our writer joins the tables at a giant casino run by descendants of the Pequot tribe - this time it's the Indians who are winning

BACKGROUND

• The world's biggest hotel - in Vegas

• Ian Fleming and... Las Vegas

• Having a Hooters in Las Vegas

• Bargains galore in Las Vegas

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Related Links

• The largest casino in the US

• Having a Hooters in Las Vegas

“Man, you guys are so tight,” says an Asian man as he pushes in all his chips (“tight” meaning “cautious betters”), “I’m going to need me some Vaseline.” I survive for four hours, until I play a pair of eights hard: this time I’m not going to fold them! Whoops. My opponent hits a second Jack and I’m out.

The next day, I move on to the Borgata. Wow. Now this is a card room. More tables than the Taj, high ceilings, flat-screen TVs on all the walls, beautiful cocktail waitresses to bring you free drinks while you play. In fact the pulchritude of the “Borgata babes” has become a point of nationwide debate: last summer the casino settled a sexism lawsuit brought by two former waitresses, fired for breaching their contract that they gain no more than 7% of their body weight.

Perhaps they distract me from my game. Or perhaps I really do have the outrageously bad luck that I think I’ve had. Whichever, far from doubling the $1,100 I came to gamble, I lose the lot.

Ah well. If I thought a trip to Atlantic City was a solution to my credit-crunch problems – that I could gamble my way into a fortune - then I, like millions before me, was sadly mistaken.

But as an introduction to the attractions of an unfairly maligned city, a long weekend in Atlantic City does just fine.

GETTING THERE

American Airlines flies to New York from £258 return, www.americanairlines.co.uk. Virgin Atlantic also has flights from £258, www.virginatlantic.co.uk. “Lucky Streak” return bus fare from New York to Atlantic City is just $35, www.greyhound.com. The express train service from New York’s Penn Station launches on Feb 6, $50 one-way (return fare TBC), www.acestrain.com

WHERE TO STAY

Rooms at the Chelsea Hotel start at $85 (plus taxes) for a weeknight in the Lite Tower, and $160 for a Luxe room, www.thechelsea-ac.com. Rooms at the Borgata start at $129, www.theborgata.com

EATING OUT

For the historic Knife and Fork, tel. 609 344 1133, www.Knifeandforkinn.com. Other notable restaurants include Stephen Starr’s Buddakan and Continental at the Pier Shops, Caesar’s Casino, www.caesarsac.com; Dock’s Oyster House, first established in 1897, www.docksoysterhouse.com; and the Red Square, with its ice bar, vodka cocktails and giant statue of Lenin, www.chinagrillmgt.com/redsquarenj

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