I’d love to take a piece of your ME

Nice trip report as always Dog - enjoyed it so thanks for doing it. Congrats on a profitable trip as well.

Thanks all for reading.

Good to know. You might get that opportunity!

Wasn't going to bump the thread again, but I do have a small update. Decision has been taken to expand the 6/23-6/28 leg of the trip to 6/21-6/28 so that I can fire flight 1C of the Nugget $600 Main (6/22) and flight 1C of the WSOP Milly Maker (6/23). I want to keep getting experience in quality events and hopefully put a couple more good results on the board. Then maybe at the end of June I'll try to sell for the Main. I'd probably be in for $5k and try to sell the other $5k at a very small mark up.

There are a few moving parts though, such as the stock market and how my June trip goes. If I get absolutely crushed, I'll probably tap out of July.

I'll update again in 2-3 weeks.

nice job on your trip and congrats on the pair of deep runs!

Congrats on the nice run and great trip report! It sounds like we have similar histories -- picked up poker when we were in high school/college during the Moneymaker boom and took a bunch of years mostly off before coming back. I'm heading to Vegas for the first time next week and I've been reading a bunch of trip reports in anticipation, and this was one of the best.

Good luck for Part 2 (and 3?)!

Hello again. The second leg of my summer poker spree is almost upon us. It's been a few weeks since the first leg and I'd like to say the time has passed quickly. It has not. I've been jonesing for the action, desperately huffing PokerGO streams, PokerNews updates, and 2+2 trip reports to approximate the rush of actually being in Vegas with chips in hand. It has almost sort of worked, but ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. Luckily the wait is nearly over. My flight is set to leave on the evening of the 21st.

I'll be carrying some momentum into this trip after solid results in leg one, where I cashed 2 of 3 events and netted a chunky 4 figure profit from my poker activities. I openly contemplated pumping that money right back into a $10k WSOP Main Event seat, but the level of bink-ness was ultimately not quite sufficient to justify such a big splurge. I'm not ready to risk $10k on one event. However, the newfound funds have allowed me to expand the second leg of my trip by two nights and add another great event to the slate.



My June trip was originally built around the modestly priced Deepstack Championship ($600) and Salute to Warriors ($500) events. Due to the surplus funds from the first leg, I'll now be adding two flights of the $1500 Milly Maker to the slate. I've never played this event, so I'm excited for the opportunity. I went back and forth on various permutations of my schedule before settling on this:

6/22 - $1500 WSOP Milly Maker 1B
6/23 - $1500 WSOP Milly Maker 1C (Wynn $1100 one-day if we bag Milly 1B)
6/24 - $800 Aria one-day NLHE
6/25 - $600 WSOP Deepstack Championship NLHE
6/26 - $600 WSOP 30 Minute Level NLHE Luckament
6/27 - $500 WSOP Salute to Warriors NLHE

This might be the best summer schedule I've ever been able to play, as I'll be able to hit three of the absolute best value NLHE events the WSOP offers (Milly, DSC, and Salute). Between those three and the faster 30 minute stuff, hopefully I can find at least one deep run somewhere. On days where I bust early, I'll be exploring nightly events and satellite opportunities (Wynn $3.5k looks tempting).

I actually tried to sell a thin slice of my action for this trip and received deafening silence from the staking forum, which is fine. It was never about needing the money or being scared of the outlay, but rather about establishing some connections to eventually sell for the Main in a couple weeks.

Based on the frigid reaction to my initial offering, that prospect looks grim. This Dog is a still an underdog, but hopefully one with more bite than bark. The current plan is to sink my canines into a full week of poker and see what the results look like when the dog fight is over. Then we'll reevaluate the options for a potential third trip in July.

I'll be arriving in Vegas late on the 21st. I'll spend two nights in the magical kingdom of Excalibur before schlepping over to the Flamingo for the remainder. The plan is to play good and run better.

Let's spin it up (again)!

GOALS (REVISITED)

Prior to leg one, I said I don't have any specific goals for the trip. That still applies. I don't think it's helpful to set specific goals in small samples of poker because you have such limited control over the outcomes. You can say, "I want to bag at least 200k after day one" in a tournament, but you might not get dealt the right spots to make that goal realistic. Having a specific expectation might actually lead you to force the issue when you are better off taking a wait-and-see approach.

Instead of pressuring myself to hit certain achievements or milestones, I'll try to be process-oriented again and hope that things go my way. I ran pretty good on the first leg. Looking back on it, I never endured any extended card droughts and often found timely pocket pairs and monsters when I was at risk of dropping into the danger zone. I rarely had tricky post-flop spots or coolers. By and large, the waters were clear. That's not normal. Any veteran player knows it's only a matter of time before misery finds you. You're going to be card dead for hours at a time. You're going to be dealt the wrong end of setups and coolers. You're going to take all kinds of beats in big spots when you're ahead.

All you can do is control what you can control. With any luck, good things will happen.

I'm not going to set specific targets, but that doesn't mean there aren't some cool milestones I'd like to unlock. I've never made a day three at the WSOP or even finished top 100 in a bracelet event. I've never gotten close enough to the gold to think, 'Hey, maybe I can actually win this thing.' That would be fun. I'd love to make a real, genuine deep run in a WSOP tournament. I've cashed a couple times at the World Series, but never gone deep enough to really dream.

I also want to take some time just to appreciate the opportunity itself. There are a lot of great poker series held around the world every year, but it's fair to say that the WSOP is the one that players anticipate above all others. I'm grateful for the chance to engage with it. Just being able to take the trip out there and play some of these tournaments is a privilege that I don't take for granted. I'll be "happy just to be here" while also avoiding the complacency that can come along with that mindset.

Beyond that, I want to take more pictures. Apart from the few pictures that I posted in May, my camera roll was nearly empty. This time around I want to do a better job of documenting the occasion, both for the sake of the TR and for posterity. Hopefully I'll have some nice snapshots to share. Expect gratuitous chip porn of my 0.333 starting stacks seven hours into various bracelet events. Expect exciting first-person perspectives from the defeated gambler staggering back to his hotel room.

Wishing you all the best.

Best of luck to the under-DOG!!!

A post-leg one reflection ahead of leg two...

NO GAMBLE NO FUTURE

I don't like to gamble. In poker, that's a bit of a problem.

Rewind to a few weeks ago. We're nearing the bubble to bag the Wynn $600. I've recently been moved to (yet another) new table. Top 500 GPI player (we'll call him Buzz) is a few seats my left. Buzz has over $2.5M in lifetime Hendon winnings and many impressive results. Tonight he's sitting on a healthy stack. One of the biggest at the table. He could easily fold into the money.

A big stack raises in early position. Buzz takes a moment before announcing all-in. EP calls and shows AK. Buzz has TT. He loses the flip and is out of the tournament. No reaction. No visible regret. He just gets up and leaves. Business as usual. If you asked him, I'm guessing he'd take that spot again. Sure, you'll go broke on the bubble sometimes, but often you'll win uncontested or win a big flip and be sitting on piles.

What would I have done in his shoes?

Probably flatted with TT and reevaluted after the flop, which is not necessarily a bad way to play the hand, but certainly a more cautious approach.

I had my own chance to gamble near the bubble in the same tournament. I'm in the BB with 88. It folds to Young Spaniard (YS) on the button. I've only been at the table with YS for a short time, but my early read on him is that he's a blaster. He has already pushed me out of a pot post-flop when I hit the A with a raggedy Ax from my BB. Sure enough, YS raises from the BTN yet again. I know my 88 rates to be far ahead of his opening range and also that will face a lot of tough flops out of position. I think the hand is too good vs. a wide range to play solely as a set mine, so I elect to 3-bet. Obviously YS does the typical young maniac thing and, after asking me for a count (I ignore him), 4-bet rips to put me all in.

I hem and haw here. I really think I'm likely to be good, but...I also don't want to flip for my tournament life so close to the bubble. Eventually, after a couple minutes in the tank, YS calls the clock on me. I reluctantly fold. I still end up bagging near average, but this spot lingers with me.

After we bag up for the night, I ask YS what he had. He claims to have been bluffing with A5. This might have been another bluff, but I'm inclined to think he might have been telling the truth.

Did I make a mistake in this hand? Did I make several mistakes?

Near the bubble, is it smarter to just flat and try to play a pot with the maniac? Was I correct to 3-bet, but wrong to fold to the jam?

I think I probably took the worst possible line. If you're going to play scared, keep the pot small and flat pre. If you're going to play a big one, you probably need to call off here against what should be a pretty aggro range. You may occasionally run into a bigger pair, but you're getting much more than the right price to flip and you may be dominating some semi-bluffs and smaller pairs. Sometimes you are going to lose here and be out of the tournament on the bubble, but we must remember Buzz's example. We are not nitting it up to squeak under the wire. We are trying to win all the chips.

One of the leaks in my game is that I'm not greedy enough. When I have a decent stack, I don't like to risk a good position to possibly end up in a great position. I'm too content to eek out a modest win or coast into the money. I've made a few terrible pre-flop folds in the past in spots where I really needed to be more willing to gamble. I've made strides in this area, but it's something I need to keep working on. If I want to make the ultra deep runs and not just posture for the min-cash, I probably need to be more willing to gamble for a big stack without the absolute nuts.

There are times in poker when it makes sense to play it safe. However, the purpose of chips is not to gather dust, but to gather friends.

In tournament poker, greed is (usually) good.



I vow to keep this in mind the next time I have the chance to call off against a maniac.

I think the difference in approach is of someone who does not play high volume and wants to protect a solid result versus someone who plays huge volume and embraces the variance so as to have the best chance possible of having a huge stack and going after the top heavy prizes in the prize pool. The former does not want to donk off all their chips and feel bad when they lose before the money bubble with 8-8 versus A-K. The latter doesn't care at all about the min cash and is playing for all of the chips.

Both approaches make sense given the differing perspectives. People have to decide which perspective is who they are and is more important to them.

I think you are right. The fact that me playing Venetian $1100 was contingent on me getting some kind of result at Wynn may have figured into the equation and me being somewhat scared money in that spot. I guess it worked out, but I think it was probably the wrong move from an infinite sample standpoint.

I had a similar spot last summer in a Wynn $550 that I played. Aggro guy opens CO near the bubble. I'm in SB with about 15 BB and ATo. Seems like this is probably a jam against a wide stealing range, but I folded. Bubble broke a short time later and I got my chips in AK < JJ aipf for a min-cash.

I'm not well-versed enough in ICM to know if we are actually supposed to nit it up in these situations, but it feels like "play for the win" types would be taking these spots.

Do try Einstein Brothers Bagels in the food court area at Excalibur. Also, I believe they offer some sort of resort food credit and is valid at the Italian place Bucca-de-beppo!