I'm totally with you on the tournament thing. I've finished pretty deep in a few of the ultimate poker tournys and I was never happy. You're only satisfied if you win the damn thing. Those tourny pros are sick in the head.

Nice run, hookers and blow now.

i cannot disagree with this

Yea idk how they do it. I can't imagine if that had been the main event or really any WSOP event.

lmao

Nice playing against you on the table. Agree with you completely, getting close but not binking a tourney sucks.

Wow didn't know that was you cushlash. I think you were at one of my tables at one point, because I recognize your screenname. When I busted in 31st for a 50k pot, decoctor was chip leader wit 200k. Thought he would ship it. Sick run by both of you

Likewise.

Yea we were at the same table for an orbit or 2.

Yeah....you have to be a bit of a masochist to grind MTT's....but I prefer it to grinding endless hours of cash.

You get alot of "got it in good...got sucked out on"...but there are those moments...when the flips are with you...and you are brutalizing people with a monster stack....that make it all worth it for me.

You will never have an opportunity to win 100 buyins in a day in a cash game.

It is that very reason why I went from strictly MTT to about 90% cash games. Most of the time, you're miserable, unless you win the damn thing. As always, great reading from a fellow Wisconsinite. You're living my dream.

Hey taylor, good to hear you've starting playing some 5/10 at the bellagio. that game only runs once a week here but one thing i've noticed from playing is that my 2/5 game and mental focus have become stronger and more refined. that baseball donut analogy is spot on.

keep it up, gl.

Thanks man. Hope all is well on you're end.

You gonna be comin to town for DSE IV at all?

Subbed. Cool thread. Definitely 100% agree with your table chat comments and wish more players acted this way. I always enjoy the conversation and have met some really interesting people with great stories. Also it's less boring than sitting there in silence for hours.

Maybe see you are Aria when I'm in Vegas in December.

Hey guys, nothing to crazy to report over the last week. I've been playing mostly 5/10 at the Bellagio, with a few short 2/5 sessions in there while I'm game-hopping.

Sunday I took a big loss and quit after only 2 hours. It was a pretty frustrating session as it came down to 2 big hands that were played while at a 3 handed must move game. One I made a straight in a blind vs. blind hand and payed off an overbet on the river when the flush came in. The other was a semi-merge with an underpair where I originally thought I was bluffing but was actually making a value bet that was most likely too thin.

After a couple more losing sessions I recovered yesterday with a pretty big win and finished off the week with a small loser today.

My sessions have still been very short lately, I got about 21 hours in this week and have only played 56 since coming back from Wisconsin on the 16th. Thats pathetic to say the least. Part of the problem is that I've taken 3 200+bb losers that have cut my sessions short. The real issue though is that bad games have caused me to pick up early. Though several times I have dropped down and played 2/5 for a while and then either came back if the 5/10 got good or just stayed there for the day. But if I've been there 5 or more hours I end up just leaving instead of getting a few hours in at 2/5.

Today is a perfect example. I had planned to play a long session, but my game was super nitty with a couple good players, and the other main game wasn't great either, so after 5 hours I just left.

In order to reach my volume goals this year I'll need to average 35 hours a week for the 7 weeks until I go home for the holidays. So I'm just gonna have to buckle down and either be diligent with moving to 2/5 when 5/10 games are bad and I haven't played a full session yet, or just play in some mediocre games. I haven't really been leaving games until they are really bad, but its pretty wild how often the 1 or 2 main games are reg infested to the point of my hourly dropping below what it would be in an average 2/5 game.

I'm also going to play around with different schedules and see if that makes it better.

With the games being more and more "reg infested", I think that this is another indication that the poker craze is behind us (e.g. new money is not coming in fast enough to keep the balance between regs/non-regs at the ratios that were common a few years ago).

In a situation like that, it may that you play one style when the game balance is tilted towards regs and then when that tourists blows in off the desert, you switch to a different style.

Sky isn't falling. It's slower this time a year. Just have to game select more.

Yea poker is harder now than it used to be according to just about everybody. Still very beatable for people who stay ahead and work on their game. I haven't been playing full time in Vegas long enough to know what it was like before, but from what I've gathered, the skill level of the average 5/10 game now would have been unheard of 5+ years ago at those stakes. The game, like everything else, has evolved and we have to either adjust or die.

While I agree that a lot of the boom is behind us because the Moneymaker situation is something that probably won't be replicated, I think the games will get better. Things like poker go in cycles, and imo the main reason new money isn't coming in very fast is because the economy has still not recovered. There will be a bit of a lag, but once the economy gets better the games will follow.

And yes, reg-filled games call for quite a few adjustments vs fishy games.

Agreed. I have always put a lot of emphasis on game selection, and even more so when playing 5/10 and/or its a slow time of year. I have found my game-selection decisions seem to clash with many of the good regs. This was the case at 2/5 too, though at 5/10 this is probably at least partially a function of not being as experienced/skilled as some of them (thus they may stay in games I find not worth playing). I have however just been trusting myself in this regard since my game-evaluating skills have always served me well even though my conclusions were often different than those of other good regs.

Extremely high quality post sir!

If you figure 5/10 isn't worth playing due to some good players, why don't you pick different card rooms every now and then? If Bellagio's 5/10 sucks, there should at least be better 2/5 games at Wynn, Venetian and Aria (considering the 100BB max @ B).

Yea I'd rather play the deeper 2/5 games, but if I'm just gonna play for a few hours after quitting a bad 5/10 game or while waiting for 5/10 to get better then the 100bb game is fine. The hourly may be a bit lower (though based on the play I've seen I'm starting to think the gap is not as big as I used to believe), but losing 30-60 minutes to go to another casino and get on a game there would eat up the difference in hourly pretty quick.

There are so many 5/10 regs (most of whom are decent) at the B such that the games are rarely good outside of big sporting weekends/conventions/rodeos/Wsop/etc imo.

Most of the time I walk by the games, I recognize at least 6 or so players at each table.

Impressive thread I just stumbled upon. You seem like an insightful dude with a good mind for the game and perhaps even a better mind for maintaining the right mindset and habits for what you do. Subbed. Ever play at Aria or Wynn?

cushlash, also new to the thread. congrats on making it. some basic arc type questions. could you describe the timeline you went from 1/2 to 2/5 to 5/10? have you been a winning player your whole time in vegas? How has your game changed? what's your current win rate playing? Looking back and looking forward do you imagine you will keep playing poker? thanks!

in a year and a half... never.

Yea this is a fair assessment. Its pretty hit or miss.

Thanks man. I've played at Wynn twice for a total of maybe 8 hours. Aria I've played much more because during 2012 WSOP I played PLO and Aria was in my rotation of places that had games. Then for a month after the series that year I played the PLO game there every day. I've also played a half a dozen 5/10 sessions there.

Well most of this stuff is embedded in my updates over the last year and a half but since you're new and I feel like writing here are some cliffs:

I never played 1/2 in Vegas, just a little bit during college in Wisconsin. My last summer in Madison I grinded a little indian casino where they only had those pokertek tables and had 1 or 2 tables of 1/2. I was a break-even player there.

In Vegas I started right at 2/5 once the WSOP ended and I realized that PLO games aren't consistent enough during the rest of the year. I still flipped back and forth between 2/5 and PLO for a bit, not really starting to focus on 2/5 until last September. I grinded V 2/5 pretty hard (this is where my game changed a TON) and took my first shot at 5/10 late last December. I never got comfortable at 5/10 and even though I wasn't losing, I wasn't winning either so I never made it very long before going back to 2/5, where at this point I was super confident.

From then until maybe a month ago I played both games, but probably with a 90/10 distribution in favor of 2/5. I was rolled for the bigger game but never felt ready to play it because whenever I would take a big loser I'd always want to play 2/5 the next day. So I'd only play if it was really good and since I was playing at the V I just didn't play it much. This kinda changed recently. Going through my 3 month break even stretch some how motivated me to want to make a real go at establishing myself at 5/10 instead of just taking shots here and there. Since the begginning of last month I've played mostly 5/10 and taken a handful of hits that usually would have sent me back to 2/5 (not for BR reasons, but for mental reasons) but now I just feel like I'm ready to weather the storm more than I did before. I still play 2/5 and 5/10 but now instead of going in with the plan of playing 2/5 unless 5/10 is really good, I play 5/10 unless its really bad.

I was probably a minuscule winner when I came out, and my game really developed during my time at the V. Over this whole period my game has changed a ton and in so many ways that I couldn't really describe it without a specific topic. I'm always getting better though, especially playing in a new game now, it seems like every day I feel like there's something I still haven't figured out.

I don't discuss winrates on here so I can't answer that question.

As far as if I'll keep playing, yea for now I am. It's not something I want to do forever, but as I've posted about before, I want to work for myself and I like the freedom poker affords me. Right now I'm trying to build a nest egg that I can invest outside of poker and eventually the goal is to be able to live 100% off those investments. I've thought about starting businesses too but I'd need to find a legitimate idea that I was passionate enough about to do it right.

hey, thanks for the great response!

when you arrived as a minuscule winner, how long did it take you of learning at the V (Venetian?) to take your game to the next level?

I know it changes day to day table to table but if you had to say over your entire time, which poker room on average has the most fish?

Thanks!

Wow! I cant believe I missed this thread all this time. Will be goin through all the pages! Keep up the good work. Hopefully we might run into each other one day and I can learn something from you