As part of your research, you should visit Mike Mason's website. He has information about all New Mexico casinos on it. Here's a link:

http://www.zianet.com/mmason/index.htm

The casinos in and around the Albuquerque area are scattered around, so it takes some driving to visit them all. Mike's page says that there are 12 casinos within a 2 hour drive of Albuquerque. Isleta and Sandia are the only ones located in the immediate area. I've hit several in the area, but only made brief visits to grab chips, so I can't recommend which ones to play at. Of the one's I've visited, I would probably put Route 66 (which is about an hour west of Albuquerque on I-40) and Sandia among my favorites.