I suppose I will on here now, then on llsnl later...racked up to leave and V said "no dont go you did good" showed gdam J9...went with read and was right but am still iffy results aside, I think his range is way wide enough there to make the call even with the reads and I'm going to need to make more big hypothetically +EV decisions like this transitioning more into deeper 2-5 games...in retrospect his confidence/relaxation is often enough thinking hes dominating with a worse flush (though for reasons I explained I think flush is less likely) can sometimes be the Q10 and could frequently be AJ/QJ/10J thinking his trips are just awesome...very rarely could be one pair w/the bare As turned into a bluff but I think hes more likely to play that fast on turn. Overall I'm still pretty torn on the hand between ultimately being correct but in retrospect thinking, analytically, that I should have called based on his prior action and subsequent hypothetical range here. It's a weird situation really. I really should run some numbers for EV based on his range but it gets pretty complex with different segments of his range having various different likelihoods; I think I need to run it just removing flushes and maybe reducing the % of AsX by half to simplify things but leaving in things like bottom and mid flopped sets b/c I had yet to see him flop a truly big made hand so its possible he would check-call, altering his normal aggression. As you can see it was a complicated spot.

Hwang's first book (one in your pic) is a good choice for the full ring games you'll find live. His next few books are more geared towards 6 max. If you are playing full ring live, the later books are still worth reading but be very clear to tighten it up for a full ring game or you'll get crushed.

Unfortunately the Omaha action in Vegas is only good during WSOP. Omaha dies the rest of the year except for maybe Aria's 1-3 & 2-5 and Venetian 1-2 (which might be okay re: "Low Level Debauchery in Vegas" thread title). A regular Omaha game plays bigger than a regular NL game, so these are still kinda big. But you would have to be glued to watching the Bravo Poke Live app to find the rare bigger game.

Do you play on Ultimate Poker, if not throw some money on and get some hands in PLO there. The games don't run very often but it's a good way to visually see how some runouts can be( if that makes sense).

thx for the advice, yeah i really am only interested in smaller games right now anyhow...would like to play PLO and PLO8 mostly just for some live experience to apply to the better games around WSOP time and possibly some mtts in the future

iirc the Venetian 1-2 PLO is actually a 1-2-5 and plays deep with about half the stacks $1500+.

Got dragged into giving some girls a ride to the airport today so no mountain, also no poker tonight ...pretty sure it had future +EV...gonna hit the mountain tomorrow hopefully if all goes as planned...imminent heat stroke?

Working on reading that Omaha book last night and tonight, I'm pumped its got some actual cerebral content and not the warm fuzzy beginner stuff; I am, however, finding that it's taking longer to get through than I had anticipated...especially given I'm re-reading multiple sections to be sure I've fully absorbed everything. I would certainly recommend it thus-far as I already feel I've benefited from it in only the first few chapters.

Probably pretty boring in here right now I've been off-base/schedule to some extent this week. Should get some cool pics of the mountain up tomorrow w/a little write up if we survive the epic expedition. I'm not sure yet if I'll feel up 4 pokerz after, if not that only leaves me Fri-Sat-Sun to get any productivity this week...I'm feeling crappy about the low hours last week and almost no hours this week but the good news is I'm starting to feel back in shape from the gym/diet/fixing my sleep a little and getting hungry for $ again which always ends well for me.

Curious what you thought the Villain had here? Jacks? K10 suited?

I put him on AQ, AJ and make the hero call. It's a flaw in my game. Would others make the hero call for 260 more?

His most likely range here, given action is going to be trip 9s, trip Js, K10, QJ. I really don't see V turning showdown value hands like AJ into bluffs here with the !3 river, he also doesnt have AQ unless he floated flop with intention of taking hand which seems unlikely from the BB but not impossible, however its doubtful he turns this into bluff on river either. He also never has air donking out the $75 like that on river unless this is all some bizarre 3 street master plan from oop BB . 8-10s should also be included in this Vs range as played though less likely and 6-8 is possible IF V picked up flush outs on turn but very improbable and can probably be discounted. So $850:$260 on river and we beat 1 out of the 5 hands that would most strongly justify the action. Keep in mind this V is a competent reg and isn't going for re-value on this river with one pair hands and even top 2 seems optimistic for us to think. Sucky spot but easy fold I think...If V is good enough to induce a rr with a fake blocking bet with the intention of coming back over bluffing with a valuish !3 on the river then hats off I think we get outplayed here lol

rolf slotblooms plo book is good aswell i rec that one def

Enjoying the thread, cheese. It's interesting to read about the daily life of someone that lives and plays in Vegas.

thx will look into it.

thx

Well the hike/climb was a success, I haven't been out to this spot since Feb-March so it was really nice. 2+2'r 'crashwhips' had posted in LVL asking about doing something athletic and I had pitched a few ideas of stuff I do around here. He showed an interest in hiking/climbing a spot I like to go to around the back of Sunrise Mountain. There are 2 distinctive legs of the hike, the first being more casual, although intensive from the steep grade alone, and the second being a harder steeper climb on more degraded conditions but leading up the actual peak of Sunrise Mountain.

Hit some strip traffic and had to drop the gf off at Miracle Mile to go shopping so didn't pull up to the Vdara to pick up crashwhips until about 6pm. Having never met him in person, I could only hope he wasn't of average American weight and level of fitness. Not that we couldn't go do something fun if he were, but getting up the mountain was going to be a no-go. Fortunately a young looking lean dude walked up to the car and we were good to go. Sped off through N. LV to the spot, trying to retain as much sunlight in the day as possible. We parked off the shoulder and headed up to the foot.

Temp was about 104F starting out which was nasty but cooled down fast with a nice breeze from about midway up the first stretch. We reached the top of the first stretch which leads into sort of a saddle/plateau before the actual peak of what most people think of as Sunrise Mountain (the strip facing side). At this point it was clear that we would be unlikely to make it up the second stretch with sunlight remaining, let alone back down. With a 3/4 moon and clear skies we should 'hypothetically' have enough light to come back down comfortably, so we both decided we wanted to finish up the 2nd part.

We talked a lot of poker and women and such to pass the time. Topics of conversation included Vanessa Selbts, Dan Blizarian, Jean Ballande, Phil Galfond, Mexican hookers/stripclubs, online poker, and happy-ending massage parlors. We made it to the very top of Sunrise right as the sun was sinking (ironic? :P ) and were treated to what I still think is the best view in the entire valley (non-withstanding the tip rail at Palomino lol) Its a pretty sick view where you can see every corner of the valley. It was really cool being up there at night since on previous hikes I had gone earlier, uncomfortable with coming down by myself at night.

It was a little after 10pm when we made it back down to the car with the feeling of satisfaction you get from completing a physically challenging task and were confronted with a little problem. The car was no longer there...we walked back and forth over a large stretch and could only conclude it had been towed or stolen, neither of which made much sense in the middle of the desert 5-10 miles out of any semblance of 'town'; I wasn't sure about his phone but knew mine was very nearly dead and furthermore getting no reception. We tried to flag down a few cars for a ride back into town and were about to call up desert cab when we walked around a little rock point and BOOM...Car! Turns out we came down a sidetrail a few hundred yards from where we started in the dark, re were definitely 90% sure it was gone and thought we were looking forward to a much longer night than anticipated so finding the car was like a freeroll.

Picked the gf up down on the strip where she had been buying ridiculously expensive bras and headed to China town to a little 24hr Thai place I like to eat at. Gf wanted to stop in at the hole in the wall fully nude 'pussycats' just for the fk of it, which normally I'd be all for but I think we were both pretty beat from the hike. I can't recall the exact name of the Thai place but will post it if it comes to me. Food was decent, I recall it being better when I go later into the early a.m., maybe a different cook. Crashwhips made a good call ordering the crab rangoons which were very satisfying. I'd love to say we went on to crush a cashgame somewhere for 10k but like I said we were pretty wiped out so I dropped him back at City Center and went home to soak in the bathtub.

Today's excitement was when I woke up super late (3pm'ish) and went out to grab lunch. Pulled in to a strip mall with a Capriotti's and get harassed by a fat busted chick in front of an nadjoining smoke shop. "You got a cigarette or a dollar???" both of which I of course declined. I see this old hefty Indian/Pakistani looking dude walk up to her and they seem to be negotiating. I here him clearly say "yeah right over there by the tree" gesturing to about where I was parked so I decided to keep an eye on them. They go over between my car and a dirty red truck and he gives her a smoke. Between dragging at the cig, shes sucking face/ears/neck with this guy, then she casually slips a hand down the front of his pants and starts giving him a gdam handy! I get this image in my head of both of them plunking onto my car and rolling around and panic. Not sure what to say, I pop my head out of Capriotti's and end up just shouting "HEY DONT FK ON MY CAR!" across the parking lot. They get a deer in the headlights look and scamper off back towards the smoke shop. I wonder if she got a carton...a pack...or just the one cig out of the whole thing.

I'm probably going to be down at Ballys playing significant hours tonight-sun night. Hopefully will have some interesting hands/situations to report. If anyone's coming into town sometime and wants to do this or another climb/hike or something more casual let me know, though I'm trying to bulk right now can only physically do something like this maybe once every 2 weeks or so. Please keep in mind the phone camera utterly fails to capture any scale of the mountains here and makes them look like simple little hills when in truth they are pretty respectable.

The arrow pointing to the red circle shows the broadcast tower that is our ultimate destination


Cool shot of the mountain I had taken previously


The top of the first leg and then looking back after going over the 'saddle' before heading up the harder part



Sun going down


The second leg ahead...can see the tower there at the top


Top of the second leg, right beside the tower as the suns dipping out...highest point you can get to on the east rim of the valley and one hell of a view of the whole city

Sub'd.

Great thread. The cigarette story in your last post had me laughing out loud!

Nice thread! I have always noticed Wynn to have the toughest 2/5 games in Vegas. Bellagio might be a better place to transition from playing 1/3 to 2/5. With the $500 cap max a lot of the Vegas local pros play else where. Might be a good idea to play there to get your confidence up. If you're crushing 1/2&1/3 and have the roll, I wouldn't waist time, playing 1/2&1/3 when 2/5 isn't much more difficult.

Nice view on that hike, have to put it on my to-do list.

thx I would tend to agree with you...I'm drawn to Wynns deeper stacks b/c I feel that's where I excel, even against more difficult opponents. I will most likely be targeting Bellagio though to get more comfortable once I'm done with these promo hours at Ballys

80bb winner at Ballys tonight, still in the hole -$140 for the week ...cursing my lack of productivity (low hours) last week and this week...

Just came upon this. Nice writing, nice stories.

Re: Famous Dave's. Started in a small town in N WI called Hayward. Not the center of good BBQ for certain.

For those out there who aren't certain, IMO it's decent, but nothing great. For chain BBQ, pretty ok I guess, but nothing compared to the great small places in KC, Memphis, southern US.

There is a place in Santa Barbara called Woody's Bodacious BBQ. Another place I love in West Hollywood which is also great but slightly not as good called Baby Blues BBQ. If wherever you are talking about isn't on at least Baby Blues level then GTFO.

Woody's is the ****. Myself and a couple of poker buddies in college would buy their platter for like $75 delivered to our apartment and just eat ourselves to sleep.

its very adequate as a chain. the good little places are another animal, obviously superior. ive never gotten to memphis or any of the texas bbq places but had a few favorites when i lived in the southeast...in fact we had a 'rhythm and ribs' festival in one of my towns every year that had a pretty epic bbq ribs contest

nice thread whey...enjoying the pics....cant wait to get back to Vegas next Sunday 7/27 for a mini post WSOP trip,,,see its going to be like 110 each day though but I mostly stay inside lol

thx. don't blame you, the heat can be hard to adjust to

...well played 2 sessions at ballys last night, got out of the hole for the week though not by much, will post some details later tonight, heading out early tonight so have to go

Great thread so far. Subbed

Pretty uneventful weekend, I put myself in a hole to kick things off at 2-5 this week down -$300 and ultimately decided to grind out some hours at Ballys for that mtt promo. Picked up $160 Friday night, $135 Saturday, and $70 + $150 between two sessions Sunday night. Somewhat small but consistent wins, pretty standard for me at 1-2. Made the week a whopping +$215 with a dismal volume of 20 hours. Last weeks +$1870 was also over really poor volume @27 hours. Goes to show that skimping on volume fks up bottom line...I think it's fair to say the 2 weeks combined could have (should have?) been +$3000 or more based on the games I was in and solid play had I been hitting my 37 hour/wk average instead of the 20 & 27.

Sunday's sessions were split because the games were pretty poor after the first hour or so. I decided to leave for a bit and waste some time since I was out early anyhow. Headed over to the Palms to catch a movie. I ate a little place in the food court I hadn't seen before called "Chronic Tacos"...I was lured in by the interesting Day of the Dead style graffiti'ish art on the outside. As it turned out I should have taken those skeletons for the international warning to stay away. I was starving so expectations were low, I would have been happy with standard chain (Rubios/Cafe Rio/Baja Fresh) fare but was even let down there. The burrito sucked, rice was super dry and I hit a few inedible tendon chunks in the "marinated" chicken. The sub-par guacamole was the only thing that lubed this p.o.s. up enough to slam down my throat. So yeah...obviously not a food report, just a warning to stay away if you happen to be wandering through the Palms hungry.

Went to grab a movie ticket, only showtime left was for Transformers 4 or 5? something like that. I recalled seeing the first and maybe second one and them being mildly entertaining in a juvenile sense. Well...all the decent chicks in cutoff shorts, fast cars, and overboard explosions (all this usually appeals to my 12-14 year old maturity level) couldn't salvage this sh!#storm...I mean ***** Frasier was the villain!? I can confirm that this blurb from Rotten Tomatoes "Seemingly written by a thirteen-year old boy and directed by his walking erection, this one is nothing but a booming pile of rubble." does not even do it justice, as my 13 year old walking erection was NOT impressed. The random jumpy plot was only outdone by the horrendous acting; I'm a Mark Wahlberg fan but don't know if I can even stand looking at his face anymore after this fiasco. I'm just going to try to pretend he didn't give a #$^t and wanted a quick paycheck for hookers and blow. To make matters worse the thing is long...like really long. I tried my best to sit through it but just imploded somewhere like 2 hours in while some robots were high-fiving and sht and started riding dinosaurs...fml. On a positive note found a better game when I got back to Ballys. I think I got in a total of 17 hours at Ballys with at least 9 of those during the double hours time so should be about 26/100 hours or so into promo.


Last night (Monday) I was pretty burnt out on Ballys so hit a little 1-2 game at a lower grade location (no name at the moment because some really bad players were staying there and I might hit it up some more this week). Game was super fun, had a few drinks, socialized, and basically was reminded how much I enjoy live poker. I met an awesome Asian dude from a southwestern state I wont reveal, we'll call him 'Sammy'. Guy was a mid 40s mega degen who went on to regal me with his tales of degeneracy. In my wizened old age I've become a bit of a life nit so often live vicariously through such stories. I'll try my best to share some of his tales but I know I won't do them justice from the original, heavy Asian accent telling.

So Sammy is sitting on my right and he's about 9-10 drinks deep and playing super spewy. We have a few drinks together and get to talking...Sammy comes from a really wealthy family and got his financial planning degree at a Cali state school. While in school he and his brothers lived together for awhile and basically drank/smoked/did drugs on a nightly basis until his parents forbid them from housing together. One nigh Sammy does "4 speeds" because he's not feeling like they are having any effect (Wolf of Wallstreetish lol)...he and his brothers end up at a bar, get in a fight with some chicks boyfriend, and this is when Sammy discovers the strength/energy enhancing effects of large doses of Amphetamines when he lifts the guy up (he's a small Asian guy) and chucks him over the bar breaking his collar bone. After graduating Sammy crushes commercial real-estate in one of the hottest markets right before the bubble busts. He moves to Reno for a year but degens off 7 figures at Baccarat and Pai-Gow including $244,000 in one night before his family basically forces an intervention for him to move back south, he likes 1-2 poker now because "you can play however you want and only lose a few thousand in a night if you do bad". He also tells me he stayed married to his first wife for 10 years to win a prop bet with his brother who's been married 6 times; His father tells the brother now to just get hookers when he needs it b/c it's getting too dam expensive. Sammy heads out at about 1 A.M. wasted as $#%# b/c he needs to be up in 3 hours to trade the Asian markets haha. So yeah this guy was obviously epic. Despite the great table I only ended up exactly +$100.

I had noticed this ridiculously hot young blonde chick watching us (me?) play from the rail for the last 20 min or so; rocking the short Sophie shorts and a tank top letting the belly button ring peak out, shes clearly too young/clean to be a hooker, especially in this place. Pretty much a 9/10 -1 for no tits but +1 for tongue ring. I grab some food and sit down at an empty table and she wanders over. Sits down starts asking me about the game and how to play it, where am I from ect... Shes from Seattle and is here with the family who have apparently crashed for the night. Shes "bored" and "too young to play" ...says she just turned 18, I'm not about to card her. We talk for awhile and she agrees to go ride around the strip, maybe hit up China Town...I'm just brainstorming how to close this deal. About to get up to go and this angry looking guy (her father) comes down from one of the towers (rooms) gives me a dirty look like he knows whats going down and basically tells her to GTFUp to the room...whole situation makes me think the 18 thing may have been BS...either way I head out pretty blue-balled/frustrated and obviously sans young chick.

Not much going on today...up 10 pounds in 4 weeks on this bulk which is cool. Was a strange amount of decent chicks wandering around at Target (the store)...I must have exceeded some unwritten limitation though b/c the gf punches me and says "Seriously!? Anything with a vagina huh!?!?" in reference to my subconscious staring. I say something along the lines of "that's not true at all...a hot tranny could probably catch my attention in the right light"...the humor was not well accepted.

Sorry not much for pictures lately and no chip porn...I have a certain rule with chip porn pics; Your going to look like a **** regardless snapping pics of chips, so I try to refrain from doing so unless the chipstack is a minimum of 150%+ starting stack size...obviously I'd like to have more chip porn pics recently but been kinda flat. I do have a pretty awesome plan to get this thread back on track showcasing Vegas and pumping up the entertainment level drastically with a cool photo challenge idea...I'm still working out the details and am really busy now but will probably debut the idea in a few weeks. Sorry for the lack of females in thread lately, in the meantime here's some thread-saving eyecandy from my last Puerto Rico trip...



So yeah DONT eat at this place.


Tastes even worse than it looks...


And don't see Transformers...even if your crying 8 year old kid tries to drag you into it...





*** Shameless off topic threadsaver pics from last Puerto Rico trip ***

and subbed.

ps - still waiting for pr0n star stories

lol I had decided not to follow through with those since they aren't really LVL relevant...but per specific request...I suppose I'll type something up in the coming weeks when I get the chance to sit down and recollect