Hi All,

I am David from Holland, 34 years old. I will be playing poker full time in Las Vegas in September. I work in a regular job fulltime and have been playing poker on and off for about 14 years, with various success, both live and online. I enjoy live poker the most and think my edge is bigger live versus online. I want to experience 'live as a poker pro' for one complete month. The challenge for me is to find out if I am capable to play (close to) my A game during the full month. And make a profit doing so.

I like to catch up and share experiences with other poker players in Las Vegas during this month. So, I'll be happy to receive a mesage from players in Vegas during September who like to have a drink

My poker bankroll during the month is 7K. My plan is to play 2/5NL most of the month, with an accasional shot at 5/10NL. My (challenging) goal is to win 10K. I will post progress and complete profit / losses for who ever is interested.

Regards,
David

Too bad you didn't choose June.

Sounds like fun. Do you normally play 2-5 back home? Will be following your thread. Good luck.

I hear the post-WSOP period is the worst for poker in the entire year. Hopefully it will have picked up by Sept. Good luck!

Vegas will be busy again on 09/01. That's the Friday of Labor Day Weekend which also serves as the opening weekend of the College Football season. The NFL starts the weekend after that.

I feel like September is one of the best months of the year to travel to Vegas, all things considered.

I will be interested on what your thoughts/experiences will be on this. I was thinking of doing something similar around this time in 2018.

Cheers

I normally play 2/2 or 2/4 over here. So, will be playing a little higher then I'm used to. Maybe I will start of with some 1/3 the first day to get a feel for the waters. But certainly want so start playing 2/5 after the first days.

Sounds good. The venetian extravaganza 3.5 also takes place in September, so certainly some action there.

Playing 2/5 on a 7k bankroll? Good luck.

Doesn't require that much luck. Some players have skills (maybe you don't).
I'm sure there are guys here that can survive all month by just starting with $2500 (myself included).

14 BI should be plenty for live poker. If s*** hits the fan, he can move down to 1/2 or 1/3. And if that doesn't work out either, it's just not meant to happen and he can spend his time doing something else.

We're not talking about 2/5 Zoom on PokerStars where 10+ BI downswings are standard. The odds of that happening to a solid winning player in soft live games are very low.

8 hours/day for 30 days at 2/5 is 8.33bb/hr to make 10K. Sounds doable provided you avoid small-betting nitty games and have a significant skill advantage but I'm don't know anything about Vegas games.

it will be tricky, less likely to happen, but a reasonable outcome

You underestimate runbad. It's easy to lose 10 buy-ins in a row even. You can only bluff low stakes Vegas players so much. If you get bad cards, you're going to lose.

Let's say a solid winning 2/5 player averages (at least) $25/hour and plays 25 hands per hour. That means his winrate is $100/100 hands = 20bb/100.

If said player plays 8 hours/day for 20 days, he's getting in 4000 hands over that time. Losing $7k = 1400bb over 4000 hands results in a winrate of -35bb/100.

Is it possible for a 20bb/100 winner to run 55bb/100 below expectation over a 4K hand sample? Definitely. Is it very likely? Certainly not.

I would agree that 7k is too little to play 2/5 if that money is a significant percentage of a players net worth. But we are talking about a poker budget for somebody on vacation who has a regular day job in a country where it's basically impossible to go life broke anyway. Going broke into poverty is something the US has exclusively in the western world. If he loses the money, he goes back home to live his life 100% the same way as before.

Playing 1/3 instead of 2/5 to minimize the risk of ruin is also a recipe to minimize success.

LOL, I said it's easy to lose 10 buy-ins in a row. You aren't playing 20 days, you're not even playing a full weekend. My record is 18 buy-ins in a row over a full weekend. Never once made a pair or better with the cards in my hand.

If you don't make hands, you won't win in Vegas low-stakes games.

You should probably stick to $500 cap games with that bankroll. Deeper stacked games will increase your risk of going broke.

Where do these games run? In the Bellagio and MGM, right? Other places too?

Maybe if you play an ultra high variance style? My biggest online poker full ring downswing was less than 15 BI and I played a couple million hands. Have never lost more than 4 BI in a row playing live 2/5.
Are there any cap games in Vegas or do you mean games with a maximum buy in of $500?

Bellagio has $500 cap buyin for 2/5. Most of the other rooms are $1000 or higher. You can always buy in for less than the cap but bear in mind the deeper the stacks the easier it is to get felted.

That was my question. A $500 cap game is something else than a game with a max buy in amount of $500. You mean the latter one.

I agree with this analysis. My one worry would be that if he wants to win 10k, he'll be pushing it a little too hard and may find trouble.

I don't know if it's possible to beat 1-3 in Vegas--I haven't looked at their rake structures in several years.

Capped buy-in games tend to suck, imo, but it would all depend on how OP rates his big stack play. If he can play a big stack, uncapped games might decrease his variance rather than increase it.

grunch

posted this in another thread, which was a dead end. hoping for a better outcome itt lol.
been an online grinder for several years. sick of the lifestyle. i've never really grinded live though. i've played a lot of live in bay area casinos, but generally can only stand up to 4 hours of playing at a time. i don't like the way i feel when i play much longer than that. it gets depressing. maybe it's a bay area thing. i might be more stimulated about live poker in vegas where poker isn't an obscure "job" there, and grinders could fit in better. is there anyone who has grinded live in vegas, the bay area, and online, that could weigh in and discuss which you prefered and why?
thanks.

7k is plenty. I think some people may have overread the part where he says he works a regular job fulltime, therefore he's in no danger of going busto.

And Beasting sounds like you need some professional help. The poker rooms /casinos don't look that much different in CA or LV and nobody will appreciate what you're doing anyway, it's a not a job with a high social status, and that's putting it very mildly

Imagine you are a stripper. You've worked as a webcam girl for a couple of years, but didn't like the lifestyle. Then you've stripped a ton in Bay Area gentleman clubs but could only stand it for 4 hours before getting depressed. Now you want to move to Vegas because the city is full of strippers and you think you might fit in better there?

Did you ever consider a different career path? Maybe it would make you more happy or at least less depressed if you had a job that provided something that's a different kind of meaningful to society?

As far as "respect" goes, you earn that. If you made your way from the Tuesday day shift at OG's to Saturday night at Rhino's, you make very decent money and people respect that. If you make it to the Big Game in Bobby's room or date Kanye West, people will recognize you and think "wow, now they made it".

But having a job that generally gets little respect compared to other professions while not even being very good at said job (e.g. working Tuesday morning at OG or grinding low stakes poker) won't ever do much for you.