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Originally Posted by tooneylunes
1. Approximately what is your monthly nut? Tips on health/car insurance?
2. What do you normally do about buying cars/renting houses? Is having a well credited co-signer enough to get good finance on these issues?
3. For online background players: any advice for adjusting to the live arena? I haven't played live cash for a while in Vegas and am expecting the games to be very different from online 6-max zoom. GTO lines a thing or do we rely more on pure logic to exploit weaker players? Any type of advice is appreciated.
Thank you and will be posting updates here as I get started on this journey...
1. I don't have health insurance as I am single. I guess I'm 1 hospital bill away from a major financial crisis. Car insurance in Vegas is higher than the national average. Geico seems to always have been the cheapest option for me no matter how much I shop around. I'm currently paying roughly $1k/year for car insurance on a 2020 Hyundai Sonata typical coverage.
2. Just buy a cheap used beater car for cash. You're here to grind not show off your ride. As long as the AC works you'll be good. Recommend hondas or toyotas obviously. Seems like you're set on the house rent aspect from your friend though. 500/month is quite a good deal. The housing market and rental market in Vegas is quite hot recently. A typical decent 3 bedroom 2.5 bath house will probably be renting out for $2k/month. Use that as a loose reference point. Poker players can't get loans so you'll typically need a co-signer to buy.
3. Live poker is extremely different from online poker. PIO/monker theory lines are just not ideal in a live setting. The most common thing you'll notice is that online, raises are 2x-2.5x preflop and live its 3-5x. You'll see a TON of people who just open limp live as well. If you can beat 100z on pokerstars, you are more than qualified for 5/10 live. From my personal experience though, 5/10 in vegas is a bit reggy (especially at bellagio) so you should be pretty happy to play 2/5 NL to start off. Get to know the players, the regs, the whales. If a super whale is at 5/10 then take that opportunity to take a shot.
Live reads are pretty reliable and not as complex as you think. Just pay attention to primarily a person's personality which generally dictates their tendencies. They range from the typical gentleman who is proud of being honest and nice and will never bluff, to the wannabe try hard who is super paranoid and always thinks a reggy looking guy is bluffing them and over thinks spots and levels themselves into spewy calls/ bluffs.