been coming here for years and have said to myself I'm gonna try it this trip and never have. looks great though !

Yeah that lasagna looks Garfield worthy.

how are you today TJ...going ok?

Battling back, almost unstuck on the day

Picked up -195, which feels like a win because I was down to my last 500 on the day, in for all 1.5k I brought today.

The Vegas hockey team just won the Stanley Cup at home, so I’m thinking the Strip is about to be nuts.

I’m gonna try again after dinner.

The one thing that’s a big drag about the Wynn/Encore poker room is the food options are overpriced, even by strip standards.

I walked over to the Wynn, and got seated at the bar at their Italian place, Allegro.

I’ve had the lasagna and the rigatoni & meatballs here, and they’re both pretty good. I started with a half caesar salad:



I wanted to try something new on the menu… after talking to the barman, I decided on the pappardelle pasta with chicken. It’s house made ribbon pasta with chicken in a meaty tomato sauce. These are all things I like!



…that was right before I loaded it up with grated Parmesan.

It was quite tasty… for $59, which is whatever. That’s just what stuff costs at the Wynn.

If there’s one thing my experience at the Horseshoe food court taught me, if you’re gonna spend that much, at least get really good food.

18th on the list for round 2 of 1/3 tonight… let’s gooooo

Suuuuuuper frustrating session. There’s a drunk guy taking forever, showing his cards with action pending, trying to talk about hands to players in the hand, just generally being annoying. There’s another short stack hero buying in for $100 at a time, calling twice and taking forever to decide if he’s gonna fold for his last $40 on the river…. Then folding.

Obviously I don’t say much, because they’re good for the game. It’s just the agony that tests the patience and serenity of my table presence.

I steadily chip up, grinding and playing well, to about 900, then ran KK into AA 300 bb deep. I cold 4bet, he 5bet, and we got it in on a Q high flop. That same guy stacked another player with AA vs KK not an hour and a half before me.

So that’s ~$1300 from two pots in an hour and a half with AA vs KK at 1/3, and they both held. Just mind bending.

Some people run so pure.

I did not reload.

We’re gonna see if we can recreate some magic at Venetian tomorrow.

I know how mindnumbing it can be to watch other players run hotter than the sun, but try to regroup and keep focusing on the things YOU can control. Wich is making the best decisions possible when you sit down to play.

Keep it up, before you know it the variance can turn around.

lmfao we essentially ate the same dinner, at the same restaurant, at the same place (the bar) just 3 hours apart !

Sorry about the runbad my man, hoping it turns around for you

idk how long you're there for, but if you need to take a day out, go to Area 51, hit up the pinball hall of fame, wander around the major strip attractions, take a day off to reset your poke groove and then get back on it when you're refreshed

or don't if you don't need to, I'm not the boss of you

58 bucks for an allegro dinner is so much more palatable to me than for example two slices of pizza from Dom Demarcos at Caesar’s for 24 bucks. I never play at aria but their new upscale food court looks interesting.

As a side note, Dom demarcos claiming they have any affiliation with difaras which is legitimately a top ten nyc pizza spot is a total joke.

Keep up the grind tj, only advice I can offer is keep your brain interested, keep mixing up venues, schedule, meals, etc until you are back in your groove.

this big time.

tilting as fcuk when they are doing their best to give it up and just keep on spiking.

I personally call it opening a can of zen.

You cant force it.

This.

And if you feel like you need a lesson on winning at video poker, FaceTime me.

This is going to turn around.

"The only way to get out of the hole is to keep digging." - Boski, in his latest vlog

Yeah my main game has become Video Poker, which I can play almost perfectly (still make about 3-5 mistakes per 100 hands) but while overall I'm at a profit so far since arriving in Vegas in mid May I recently moved from $.50 max bet to $1 max bet and had a session where I lost $1200. Of course went into the pits after and miraculously recovered $600 on a lol 8 deck shoe (plus Caesars giving me $100 worth of credit on my players card). Stayed on the same machine the entire time and only had 1 four of a kind. So it can happen. Just need to play at a level you're comfortable with. Debating whether to move back down to $.50. Probably the smart move.

I knew this conceptually, but in case it bears repeating, the Venetian food court >>> the Horseshoe food court. It wins on having a wider selection, AND price/value.

If you’re in Vegas with friends for a weekend, sure, y’all want to go to a nice place and get a nice dinner. Venetian has that. Other times, you wake up in Vegas hungover, stagger out of bed, and just want to be full for $20-$25. Venetian has that too. The Wynn definitely does NOT, and it seems like that’s a deliberate business decision they’ve made for the clientele they’re trying to attract.

I went to Social Life Pizza in the V food court, and it’s infinity times better than the Sbarro at the Shoe.



I got the Mambo Italiano, which is pepperoni, sausage, garlic, mozzarella, and Parmesan. It’s a 10 inch personal pizza, made to order and cooked in front of you. That’s light years better than premade pepperoni pizza that’s been sitting under the warmer for who knows how long at 8 bucks a slice.

This meal was $23, including my $5 large Mountain Dew. Highly recommend.

downstairs food court, or upstairs? my mind is still blown that there's an upstairs one I've never seen there after all my stays at V

in other news...I'll be in town in 48 hours...hope you're running better by then. I'll drop you a PM when I'm there and looking forward to catching up

Upstairs…. It’s tucked away behind the canal shoppes.

It’s great, there’s recognizable chains in addition to Indian, Brazilian, Chinese, whatever you want.

As for running better, we’re making one last hurrah at 3/5 to start clawing back, and if we go busto…. It’ll be the Uber of Shame to my local Wells Fargo branch.

The moral of the story today is: play bad, get there, profit. Don’t leave out the “getting there” part.

3/5 and the straddle is on from the button, I open Js8s from UTG+1 to $30, 4 calls including both blinds. Flop 9s-3s-2d, SB checks, BB bets 40. A pretty small bet relative to the size of the pot, so I just call in position. SB now checkraises to 200, hmmm. Probably a little tilted, so I call. Turn is the 7c, so I pick up a gut shot, and he leads for 300, and I have another 500 behind that. Again, probably not the best, but I call…. And the river is the most glorious off suit Td I’ve ever seen. He shoves his loser set of 3’s into my stone nuts, and gives me a positively icy, ES&D look when I roll my hand over.

The other big hand was a 3-way 3bet pot i played with 5d4d. Flop comes 6s-4c-2s, SB checks, I check, and the 3bettor leads 80, SB calls. Well, if you’re gonna play 54s in a 3bet pot, it better be with the intention of playing a flop like that fast, so I c/r to $250, and they both call. We started the hand about $1800 effective. Turn pairs the 6… which is theoretically a good card for my c/r range. I continue for $375, they both fold, and I exhale.

Picked up at +840, feels good to finally put one back in the win column. Next, Grand Lux Cafe.

Grand Lux Café is kinda like the Cheesecake Factory, in that they don’t really have a theme, and offer a wide variety of dishes. Plus, they’re open 24 hours.

I got seated right away next to a nice pair of ladies from Wisconsin in town for the FiServ convention, which is apparently being held at Venetian.

I started with a mini caesar salad (not pictured) and looked through the menu to see what I felt like getting.

I decided on the Bourbon Street Chicken, which is three breaded chicken breasts, garlic mashed potatoes, in a creamy, spicy (not that spicy) Cajun sauce, topped with buttered corn.



Very good.

I hadn’t gotten dessert this whole trip, so I said why the f not, and got the deep, dark fudge cake.



It was as good as it looked!

The total came to $47, which is much better value than I got at the Wynn.

Now on to round 2 of the comeback tour today.

Was it the downstairs food court or the upstairs one?

Edit: Never mind, I saw the earlier answer.

Okay now that looks like some quality Pizza!

Sometimes you just gotta **** the ugly girl…
Way to get back on the good side of things!

Lol, easy to spot Las Vegas locals when some of us are drooling over extremely mediocre pizza lol, Ive been guilty of it myself when getting secret pizza even though it is very average.

my favorite part of this trip is you go to great places that are well reputed and popular so there is a long wait so you decide to go somewhere else nearby instead