Trooper said he could make $25-$30 an hour at 1-2 and 1-3 and was very confident about it.

And there are a lot of people that are less intelligent than he is.

You’re probably smarter and work harder than (at least) a decent percentage of the population though. There are a lot of really dumb people out there.

I will say my view has changed a bit on this topic though. Recently I read the 2+2 book on small stakes, played a few sessions of 1-3 and the games were easier than I expected.

Sure there are some regs but there are still some horrible players in the games that give their money away quickly. There are still a good number of horribly played hands and even an obvious nit can get action.

I avoided playing mornings like El Diesel though.

Trooper said a lot of things, and look where he is now.

No there isn't.

Trooper is saying alot of really dumb shyt, so i woudnt put much weight on the stuff he used to barf up on a regular basis.

That being said i also believe Vegas 1/3 can be beaten for a really high winrate over a large sample, but i dont think it is as easy as someone describes it to be. Yes it is possible,but that doesent mean alot of players is capable of doing it in practice.

You just need to have some very good basic skills developed such as being able to play alot of hours without tilting, exploit each table relentlessly and understanding that fancy play syndrome isnt needed to crush these stakes+ winning money against clueless fish as well as regs.

A good tight aggressive style is a nice baseline, mixed in with lots of exploits, some well timed light 3 bets, light squeezes and be capable of pulling a big postflop bluff if a good spot presents itself against the right opponents.

So, who is starting the Council Bluffs Poker Player Vlogs thread? I feel invested in the El D train wreck at this point, but not enough to actually watch his videos myself.

That was my experience too back post Black Friday when I first started to play live. The only* above ground New England games meant driving 2 hours to Foxwoods or Mohegan which were pretty reg infested (*I never even bothered to find the old Rockingham game north of Boston as it was purported to be even tougher and reggier). But I'd fly to Vegas and play at Aria 1/3 and the games were soft like butter.

Perhaps. It used to be, I assume, that anyone good at NLHE in Vegas would move up to at least 5/10. I'll concede that at some point so many rec/semi-pro players around the country realized, like I did, how soft Vegas was, how there always was a game running, how you didn't have to drive three states over only to play in a tough game, and moved out to Sin City and became a troop of low stakes misregs. (Surely they don't all have vlogs.) My last Vegas trip was in 2017 for 10 days during the Series and I still made about $50/hr at 2/5. All I had to do was flop two pair or a set and get it in because people don't fly all the way to Vegas to fold an overpair.

But who still flies to Vegas for poker? (This is a rhetorical question, guys.) As I've become older and wiser, I've realized a lot of my poker edge is just not paying off the nits. Thus, any game with an endless flow of splashy tourists will be good for nut peddlers, but... I just drive to Everett now. Or Nashua NH. Or Lincoln RI. Or if I really want to mix things up, Springfield. All games that weren't there a decade ago. That's been true for a lot of the country.

The one thing I would not do in Vegas or any where is run around looking like a homeless guy. I could swear I win less money just wearing a hoodie versus a polo shirt because people do try and guess who the nits/pros are and you really want to fit in. If you look like you have your net worth on the table, only the most oblivious tourist these days is going to pay you off light.

Your last Vegas trip was 7 years ago.
Games are way worse there now.

If my only objective in life was pure profit from poker I would never go to Vegas.

Covid was bad for games in general too, right? The Shutdown here in New England gave regular donators a forced ~6-month time out or more and must have made a few of them realize how much they had been losing and that there were cheaper hobbies out there. The 2/5 and 5/10 games never run anymore at Gate City (formerly Boston Billiards) out the outskirts of Nashua. Encore Boston Harbor gets one 5/10 running (sometimes!) in a fairly well-heeled metropolitan area of 4 million people.

So it's a tough racket anywhere these days... but maybe El D will waffle crush all comers (corn-ers?) in Iowa given his years of Vegas knowledge. We'll see....

Herbs and Rye continues his past in time chauffering of ELD and states that ELD has horrible jokes and answers a litany of viewer questions. Herbs and Rye reports he is Diamond plus and Gold but ELD is Platinum tier at Wynn which beats Herbs and Rye's Red tier.

This has always been true but even more so now.

The challenge this thread should do is take LDV, dress him up in clothes like Diesel, add a backpack, hoodie, maybe headphones too, and set him loose in some 300 cap Vegas games and see how he does.

Then we take another player, who is not as good as LDV, but still a solid small stakes winner and give him fake neck/hand tattoos, dress him up as white trash and see what his win rate is in the 300 cap games, which I’m sure will be higher than LDV’s.

You can see an example of this in the Marc Goone $100/hr at 2/5nl challenge. He says it’s possible for lots of people to make that much but then you see the videos and his tats are prominently on display and he has very good/funny table talk. Table image, not technical strategy will help the most to win the challenge.

The Resorts World 1/3 games that Magikarp Poker play in seem to be the exact opposite of the 1/3 games Diesel kept running into - but I imagine the higher BI limit/lack of comps and free rooms made him turn his nose up at it

Diesel is the premier Vegas poker expert. Poker in Vegas is dead. No good games anywhere. He played like 1500 hours last year in Vegas and I don't think he played a session at Red Rock or Resorts World or Wynn. Definitely under 50 hours combined. I think a handful of sessions at South Point. Probably less than 100 hours after 11 pm.

I like how he finally realized these hours promo rooms create the worst games or maybe he knew that already but has to play them cause they were worth so much of his hourly.

But ya, according to the Vegas poker scene expert, games are bad now. Time to play at Council Bluffs.

Im actually amazed when I see grinders who dont look like typical grinders not use it to their advantage. They could get all kinds of action but instead out comes the tablet and headphones.

The best is when he plays some 15 hour sessions to hit the hours for whatever 200 dollar promo is running in his dirt merchant games . Then he has to fold in the free roll for an hour or two at 10am on no sleep to receive his sweet bounty.


Imagine if he ever got dealt AA in one of these things, got all in pre and lost to get knocked out. That would be an amazing meltdown.

Diesel also started to go to sleep at an earlier hour that coincided with his lowered hourly. When he first started the vlog, he’d have videos where he’d be up at like 3-6am and say he just had a good session and will sleep in his car before checking into his Harrahs room. Over time he stopped playing graveyard and started bragging about checking into rooms super early and bragging about getting extra hours in the room for free.

so much this, i think a major reason why durr got so much action was he just perfectly mastered the room temperature iq active mouth breather look while playing poker

The other day I saw som total random. Blinged out in all kinds of jewelry. He later said it was his first time at Parx.
Guy puts on headphones and waits 4 hands for the big blind ,and doesn't straddle when everyone else is. Thanks for the free info.

Yeah but he would instafold AA. There's no incentive to playing a hand when you are literally waiting for one or 2 players to bust and everyone else gets the same payout. It's basically a game of waiting for the first 2 idiots who decide they are going to war instead of just folding like they should.

lololololol, poor dude has no idea if he just bought in immediately/straddled then half the table would call him down with ace high until they got that info the hard way



best advice i've ever given a player i was friendly with during smoking breaks (back when i smoked) was i told him to be more talkative and confrontational midhand when he was holding the goods if it was vs an unknown villain

he asked me why, I told him that he's a nit and I always call down super light vs sh@talking black men because those who are going to talk smack mid hand vs you tend to care more about pwnage and getting through sick bluffs and being the table captain than making money so i'll always call them down light if i don't have much else of a read on them - this a profile he hadn't noticed too much which my racist ass had noticed but he took my word for it and tried it anyway and low and behold kept finding people hero him in situations where they were now calling him down with top pair on very wet boards

Don't forget about GN, which he never once played at during his vlog. He recently threatened that he was going to play there as part of his Red Rock challenge but then of course he never did.

He used to give his "lifetime results" broken down by poker room, only for the years when he was actually a winning player (up to 2022) But I remember his lifetime hours at GN was the lowest of any casino. He's petrified of uncapped games, plus his entire strategy revolves around table and room hopping, which makes GN the absolute worst possible choice for a nit like him.

He's not petrified of uncapped games. Recs are scared of uncapped games according to him. One of his recent vlogs when he was crying about how Vegas games have changed for the worse, he stated he would be playing at a front table near the podium and saw how much fear was in the rec's eyes when they were told it was uncapped and would see that fear again when they sat.

The only reason he hates uncapped and the 1-3 $500 max buy in games is because if he ever gets his stack to $400, anyone can sit down and immediately cover him and threaten his stack.

Classic Rice. Projecting his nitty fears onto others just so he can make his point seem more legitimate and unbiased.

Just like how he wasn't worried for himself when they took away his free voucher drinks. He was only worried for the recreational tourists who would supposedly stop coming to Vegas because of it LOL

That being despite the fact that no one else had ever made such a big deal about them in the first place like he had. Not to mention that the only people affected were people like him that were abusing the system, not recreational tourists.

Do we need to add $.1754/hr to his win rate to account for the free hours he received?

because players are less bad?

Hey, the other day I found a dream Cats run play at Parx. Great games up there but not enough AP machines and all the buttons were so greasy, it was hard to check. Diesel would do ok in Philly/Bensalem.

Jenny D Poker vlog shows her pet eating some sort of condiment:

https://youtu.be/dwEx6fxkUxg?si=hK2i2tXxih2jxJho&t=14