Enjoying this one, keep it up

I'm here for pics not pecs.

Really liking this so far.

Personally speaking, if you find taking photos a hassle but enjoy writing (which you do very well), I'm happy to see fewer of the former and lots of the latter, but I'm pretty sure I'm in a minority so following this advice would probably be bad for the thread's popularity.

Thank you both! There was a time when I wanted to be a writer, until I realized it's painful work and I'm a lazy git. Fortunately I learned that early on, saved me a lot of angst.

My pic taking today was mostly a big fail, though some fountain shots are coming. The ones from the Rat Pack show all stunk, no flash allowed ofc.

Bellagio fountain (of course)

Thursday played an afternoon session of 2/3 NLHE at P-Ho. It doesn’t matter what age, color, or creed you are, where you’re from or where you live, weekday afternoon low-stakes poker is where you go when you’re waiting to die. Thank god the table was more than half Canadians, so we could talk hockey for a while. But once that was done, and the two clueless guys left, I was bored senseless. I raised every other pot for 2 orbits to amuse myself, then bailed. 1.5 hours, +55.

After dinner I saw The Rat Pack Is Back at the Tuscany Hotel just off the strip. The show was great, albeit a bit short (about 70 minutes). The music was all classic of course, and the banter between the guys was pretty funny with quite a few honest lol moments. The humor is aimed at the AARP/pensioner crowd, a bit off color but mostly within bounds. (Though the line, “We can say that, it’s 1960” was used to justify some jokes that should have been left on the cutting room floor. But old folks love homophobic humor, gauging from the crowd reaction.) But here’s one of the funnier bits, and gives you a sense of what it was like:

Dean Martin: I was walking into the theatre when I overheard this conversation. One guy walks up to another guy and says, “My wife and I are going to see this show but we got separated. Can you help me look for her?”

The other guy replies, “Wow, my wife and I are going to see the show and we got separated too. Maybe we can look together. What does your wife look like?”

“Oh, she’s beautiful. Blue eyes, long blond hair, 36-24-36. A real knockout. What does your wife look like?”

“Let’s just look for your wife.”

Post-show I headed back to the scene of the crime, Aria, for some more PLO.

But it's 2 am and I have to check out tomorrow and I'm farking exhausted. So your suspense will continue....

Great read so far!

Nothing worse than the emotional swing of "I'm finally in VEGAS!" to getting buried on the first night

Here's hoping you can turn it around!

If you are willing to relax your health consciousness slightly, Vegas has some great vegetarian dining. A couple off strip you may not have heard of:

Pancho's Vegan - their grain proteins are house made and freaking delicious. My favorite is the red enchilada with the soy chik.

Veggie House - standard 100+ item American style Chinese, except it's all vegetarian. Great service and super quick. I feel lonely knowing their chef special crispy soy beef is so far away.

Finally, if you're out all night on the strip the vegan chicken and waffles at the cafe in the Wynn is a perfect sunup bedtime feast (although I wish their potatoes were better).

Sorry for the derail, good luck with the rest of the trip!

You nailed it with this post. Many nights ive flown into town, and found myself spiraling in my first game that first night. Im there in late March, will do an extensive trip report which includes a next morning round at Shadow Creek.

When you get in at 730pm, grab dinner and then realize you are so happy to be back in your second home, it becomes way too easy to overplay and chase a big score that first night. doing so is usually ruinous.

I've got a (by my standards not entirely long-winded) write up about this, I'll post it once I finish off my notes on the Thursday PLO session. Sublime_fan, I promise you PLO porn is coming! I just need some time to run equities for a 4 way all in with 3 side pots.

Friday starts off with brunch with J at The Peppermill. Opened in 1972, it’s a combo 50s-style diner in front, and neon-encrusted lounge in back. It’s a throwback to the old days, and while it may still be something special in the late nights with its 64-oz Scorpions, at least at noon it’s a normal brunch spot...if your idea of normal is an omelette made with about 14 eggs. But it was tasty, I got the Margerhita cuz I can’t ever say no to fresh basil. Even if I only had 2/3 of it. The blueberry muffin it comes with was pretty good as well. Barely touched the hash browns. A Syrian refugee camp could have fed off of this meal for a week.



Then it was off to, you’ll never guess it, the Aria. I will not be vanquished! Friday at 2pm and the room was packed, with wait lists 10-20 deep for most games. I take the first seat they offer, at a newly opened 2/5 game. Lineup isn’t too bad, 2 Euro-pros, plus one jag off with a tablet AND 2 cell phones, AND mirror sunglasses. (Someday poker will embrace a Survivor model, where every hour players get to vote one ****er off the table. God we’ll all be better for it.) The rest are mostly MAWGs and frankly look like cannon fodder.

The play is standard 2/5 fare. Most everyone bought in for the full 1K (no one under 800) which made me happy. None of this nit **** with 300. I chip up to about 1100 when the only hand worth discussing happens.

Mr. Mirror sunglasses opens utg+1 to 20. MAAG rec calls in MP, he’s 3! 3 times in the last 2 orbits so I feel confident saying he’s capped. I look down at AQcc in CO and bump it up to 85. No one believes me (it’s the Jesus hair, or maybe the fact that I have a clown on top of my cards), they both call. Flop (260) comes 9xx with 2 clubs. Checked to me, I bet 125, maybe could have even gone a bit smaller like 110. Anyway, jag off folds, MAAG c/r to 275. I call, the turn is the glorious Tc, he shoves, I call, boom. Poor shlep had KJcc for an old-fashioned mob hit. Bugsy Siegel with his tumbling dwarves doing handstands on the carpet.

After about 1.5 hours they call my name for PLO, and now I’m faced with another decision. I’ve got over $2100, very solid image, the biggest stack at the table, and most important, an excellent seat. After a couple of other people moved/left, I’ve got MAWGs in all 3 seats to my left. I can do whatever I want, and with a bunch of chips, I can really start to open up and put the hurt on the table. This is how big sessions and epic LVL threads are made!

You know damn well I said yes to the PLO seat and booked the win. Hero needed it! +1165.

I also like taking pictures of Bluffy on a mountain of chips...except I forgot until I was mostly racked up! Oh well, he doesn’t mind....



Watermelon juice ftw. Thank you to LVL for introducing me to it!

Nice, very, very nice.

Should you have kept the seat?

Over to PLO, where I play for 4.5 hours and have an entirely placid session (by PLO standards). At no point was I ever up or down more than $200. It was a very tame scene, frankly boring but probably the PLO part of my brain needed a sesh like this. Decisions were generally inexpensive and non-dramatic. Most of the session I was up between $50-100, though the last two big hands I played were big wraps that didn’t come in. The final hand was one of those “someone’s gonna get hurt” hands, where I had J987cc (god I hate gaps at the top), I raised in MP and everyone then called a dopey potbuilder 3! from a guy who was doing this stuff often enough that no one gave him any credit. Anyway, on a QTxhh flop, a passive player leads from the blinds for pot, about 180 or so. I’ve got a 13 out wrap, but a whole bunch of it isn’t to the nuts. It was folded to me, and I elected to call when in retrospect this is probably a fold. Turn paired the Q, he shoved, I got away easy enough, if not cheap enough. He turned over TP, gutshot, and FD. Anyway, cashed out soon thereafter down basically the 189, basically that last call.

I’m sure some of you are wondering why I keep playing PLO. Fair question! Despite the results (about 250 hours, about -$2500 including all the so far embarrassing results at Aria), I feel like at least in my hometown, that’s where the money is. I have the bankroll to play with the ‘no gamble no future’ types who love sticking $200 in the middle as a 60/40 dog. And while I’m semi-bored with NLHE, I feel like PLO is providing me with a whole bunch of new challenges, both intellectual and psychological. (For example, tilt is never a problem at HE but I find it does happen to me occasionally in PLO. Let’s work on that!) I am actually excited to play and learn the game, b/c I know once I can clean up some really dumb mistakes, the game is crushable for a higher WR than the nitty and reg-infested 2/5 I play in. This may or may not sound stupid, but I think I make mistakes worth hundreds of dollars in equity almost every session, and that makes me optimistic! Fix that **** and then I can cue up The Immigrant Song, I am your overlord.

6.5 hours of poker and working off just a few hours of sleep every night for the past few days, I was pretty exhausted. So as the Friday night grind was ramping up for some, this boy of negligible Irish ancestry needed to put some ‘cation into the poker-cation, so I ubered my way to McMullin’s, an Irish pub near the Orleans. Fridays has live music and $4 pints of Murphy’s. Add a side of onion rings to the veggie burger, and actually yes, another pint does sound like a good idea, and there’s the pot o’ gold right there at me feet. The music was a mix of a couple traditional pub songs and covers of proper craic like Pogues , along with some filler ****e like covers of ****ing Oasis. ****ing Oasis. Anyway, it’s a great spot to hang out in if you’re in Vegas and need a neon-free experience. Sunday evenings they have an old-school jam session, I may wander back there.



Mission accomplished! And while idk if we'll have time to get to the vegan Mexi place, the menu looks freakin' awesome. If they ever want to move to Canada and need to crowdsource the expenses, I'm down for $500.

And here's one random photo from Aria. I just love these horse racing games. Seems way more fun than slots, if you're just looking for somewhere to yell with your friends while waiting on "free" drinks.

I love the trip report. But craic is a little pretentious, don't you think? Actually, I love that, too.

Saturday night my friends arrived from Seattle around midnight, but we’re lucky their plane took off at all. Snowpocapylse 2019 is hammering the Pacific NW, and as much as I wish the weather here would have been conducive to sitting in the sun for an hour w Hemingway, I’m glad to be here and not there. 3 inches of snow on the ground and Vancouver falls apart.

Sunday morning we wander to DT to see the Chinese New Year parade. My fair city is about half Chinese, so the parade and associated celebrations are both very large, and somewhat sterile, in that every corporation and political party wants a float to say how much they celebrate Chinese culture/money/votes. This parade was tiny, just a bunch of people who wanted to march, basically. It was kind of refreshing tbh.



We also walked around Fremont St, but in the daytime it’s just not the same. You really need the neon, the noise, the lunacy. (Or honestly, you don’t. YMMV.) DT is definitely the sibling who never recovered from all the alcohol and meth they did in high school. My friend C (who lives here) says that it has actually been cleaned up over the past couple of years. I do think if I get back to Vegas during a warmer time, I will come back DT for the zipline and the experience/Experience. As I mentioned about the Nugget, I like things a little bit frayed-at-the-edges. (My favorite poker room on the Strip is The Flamingo, for these reasons. I just wish it wasn’t so smoky.)

poasting to subscribe in epic bread

go Raptors

Nice work.

Enjoying this one!

Pancho's says they will sell you a franchise. Can I emigrate if I promise to start one?

Sorry I haven't updated in a couple of days. The end of my trip was a 'no rest for the wicked' marathon. I'm exhausted! And now home. And staring out at a sea of snow. I take it back, Stringer, I give af about 40 degrees!

Lots of poker porn at all levels to relate: O/8, PLO, 2/5, 1/3, as well as two shows to review. So I'll get going on that after a good night's sleep. Srsly, I need 4 days on a beach in Mexico to recover, though I'm certain after lying on the sand for a couple of hours, I'd wonder where the nearest game is....

Hey guys, I got back from Vegas with a vicious flu. The dreaded Vegas cough I suppose; to be fair to Vegas, I ran meself into the ground pretty much the whole trip, and I was almost certain to contract anything I came in contact with. And ofc having the flu sucks, but it has been doubly hard b/c since I came back, all I've wanted to do is get out and grind some more! Anyway, let me get this TR back on track. I promised a sick PLO spot from early in the week, this was during my 2nd PLO session on the 3rd day of the trip.

After The Rat Pack Is Back I headed back to the scene of the crime, Aria for some more PLO.

So at one point I was up about 200, still up but down to 550, still enough to cover the table (most of the money just walked away), when this hand comes up. This is NC-17 stuff, btw. Trigger warning: low-variance nits will freak dafuq out.

I’m in EP, AA54r. One limp, I just limp along cuz it’s not a great hand to play OOP. Some more limps, btn ($300) who has shown a lot of aggression pots it to 35. SB ($70, 3rd or 4th bullet) can have literally atc, calls. BB (about 300) raises to 90, not a psb which is frankly just weird. There is less than zero chance that this is a premium (not that it matters at this point). UTG limper (500) is on his 4th bullet, buying max every time, clearly on tilt, calls. At this point I can’t play this hand as a call, the pot is way too bloated and it’s likely to get shoved by OR if I don’t do it meself. Folding here is ridiculous; weak aces suck to play postflop, but they still a massive amount of raw equity if you can gii pre, which basically I can do. So close your eyes and hide the children, we’ve got a 5-way all in pre.

Board runs out K456Q, the OR had 9876 for the nuts, wins most of the money. The large side pot between me and Mr. Tilty, he had 8743 with a soot for 2nd nuts. Boo!

So let’s sort this out. Did I want to get $500 in pre with weak aces? Well, actually, yes, even 5 ways. (Even though that wasn’t the plan.) Sorting out preflop equity is always a bit dicey, but I got to see 2 of the hands and I can be reasonably sure that the SB was close to atc, while the BB was far from top 15%. So I can plug some ranges in and what I’ve come up with is that (using everyone at the same stack size for the main pot, just for ease) I had about 28% equity in a 5 way spot. For the $400 side pot, it was a 60-40 split. (Because their hands overlap, I was actually better vs their exact hands, but ranges are more important.)

If (again for ease) I say that everyone had $300, well in a 5 way spot I have about $420 worth of equity. For the largest side pot, I put in $200 but have $240 worth of equity. I could get more specific with the math, but I don’t really need to. It is a fact that this spot was worth well over $100 Sklansky bucks, probably over $150, and I’m just not turning that down, ever.

Spots like this is why I play PLO. Most players, even regs, are terrible with knowing their equities. In NLHE if you know a guy is on KK+, there’s no way you’d happily gii with a SC, but in PLO people will do it all the time. The winning hand here, 9876ss, it’s a great hand IF you get a high SPR spot against a V who can’t lay down a big pair, just like in NLHE. And on the other end of the spectrum, people also misplay AA by getting themselves in tricky SPR spots, which is why my plan had been to l/c a single raised pot and play very cautiously oop. But when you can gii and a big favorite, by all means I will.

Any-hoo, I ended Day 3 down 429. As a recap, day one was the -1200 affair, while day 2 was a small win a Golden Nugget. Day 4 Friday was the big 2/5 session (+1200) followed by another dent from PLO (-189).

WHY I’M BLOGGING ABOUT GETTING CRUSHED REPEATEDLY AT PLO

At brunch on Friday J and I had a great discussion about social media and its correlation to depression and anxiety. It’s pretty well established that looking at other people’s curated lives, it can be easy to think that everyone else’s lives are always rolling, and why can’t we get any traction in our own lives? (For the record, other than poker forums I have zero online/social media presence.) I think a similar process can sometimes play out in TR’s. While I’ve never counted, it feels like most TR’s say they finished their trips a winner, whether it’s a random solo for a week poker experience or a drunken BJ escapade. While I can’t speak to the veracity of every story in LVL, I feel like I can offer a counterweight. For everyone who gets so excited for the Big Trip, just to see their best laid plans gang aft aglay. you’re not alone. Even internationally recognized crushers like yours truly are not immune to having variance take a big dump on my parade. I can offer platitudes like small sample size and all that yadda yadda, but it still hurts and frankly is even a bit embarrassing to post getting crushed right out of the gate.

Since I’ve been back I caught up on Johnnie Vibes’ most recent vlogs. In one he dumped over 4K in one session of 5/5, and talked about some of the same stuff about the pain of the grind. I wish I had seen his vlog first, then I wold have known that someone was covering this angle and I could have saved meself almost 2K.

Saturday showtime: Le Reve (The Dream) at the Wynn

This entire trip was planned around seeing some friends, including one who is a synchronized swimmer in a show at the Wynn. We got three comped tickets, and since the prices for this show start at about $130, I wasn’t going to say no. (The fact that this was in Vegas where there’s a lot of poker, well OK, twist me arm.)

The closest comparison to Le Reve is Cirque’s O, their aquatic show. I’ve seen that one as well; it is my least favorite of the 3 Cirque shows I’ve seen, though tbf it is also the only one I didn’t pony up for baller seats. I really liked Le Reve, with the biggest advantage to this show over Cirque shows is that the Wynn is a theater-in-the-round set-up, so it is a much more intimate experience and every seat is great. As with all shows of this type, the acrobats are unreal, and here the synchronized swimmers add an extra flair to the production. If you want a Cirque style show I think this is a great choice. (I will say Mystere is still my favorite, though it was the first one I saw, so that could factor in. With any of these shows, pay for the best seats.)

After the show my friend took us on a backstage tour, and we learned about how everything works underwater. You’ve got acrobats falling/diving from 60 feet into a dark pool; it turns out there is a whole team of scuba divers down there dragging people around underneath the water. Meanwhile the syncronized swimmers spend a lot of the show underwater, goofing off with each other in between sets while breathing through tubes. Fun facts: every syncro was on their national squad/Olympic team, which makes sense given the scarcity of jobs for this skill set. One of the costumes for the swimmers has ruby red high heels, and the shoes get painted every single day. Final observation: if aliens ever come to Earth and abduct some human specimens to determine if we are worthy of existing as a race, I really hope they pick acrobats from a show like this. Chiseled gods and goddesses, all of them.