It’s already scared me off. I’m from the UK so the increased strip prices for everything coupled with the poor GBP exchange rate means my previous annual trips are no more.

Man you showed people how to do the last day in vegas right!

Just wanted to give you a compliment. I have mostly lurked on trip reports and mainly offered food recommendations. There are a ton of guys that try to treat their Vegas trips as a professional poker player would. Inevitably good or bad runs of luck lead to -ev decisions, strong fluctuations from their A game, and habits that would make it difficult to ever play poker for a sustained amount of time. I feel like you mapped out a strategy for your two weeks that allowed you to maximize your ability to put yourself in +Ev spots whether at cash games or tournies, and I think you really brought the right amount of criticism towards yourself whether it was actual play or mindset before or while playing. Those are skills plenty of good players don’t have.

Additionally you gave an answer to someone that really impressed me. Someone thought maybe you should play a final tournament and if you have to be a day late it’s a good thing because it means you were guaranteed a nice profit. Your response was that your boss was already generous with allowing you to stack time off and you didn’t want to take advantage and show your appreciation. That sort of mindset shows me you are going to be successful in life, whether it has anything to do with poker or not.

I’m worthless at tournaments but have been playing and coaching 6 max cash for a living for close to 20 years so if you ever need to bounce a hand off of someone pm me. Good luck!

Thank you for the TR. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mmm that chocolate cake looked good!

Great TR, nice finish to the trip. Hope traveling was safe and quiet and you're at home now. Thank you for keeping us up-to-dat.

That's not a bad price these days, especially for a top tier place.

Isn't Leon always talking about some kind of booze he gets comped at Wynn that he pours into a flask so he can take it home?

Grand Luxe is awesome but total fish order over the buffet!

Glad you had a fun trip.

Next time definitely do Golden Steer!

wishing you a retroactive safe travels TJ.

Thank you everyone, and thanks to Balbomb, for those very thoughtful comments!

I got home by 5:30 am, and was pleased to find my car and my apartment in the state I left them. I wasn’t able to sleep at all on the plane, and my body was very confused what time it was, so I went to bed when I got home.

Woke up at 1 pm, took a nice, dark green creamed spinach dump, then got some chick-fil-a, and fell back asleep until just now.

That important preamble that you all need to know now out of the way, let’s recap this trip!

Tournament hours played (including breaks): 41.1 hours
Buyins: -1750
Cashes: +2500
Net: +750
(3 cashes on 5 bullets)

NLH, $3 big blind:
28.8 hours played
+584

NLH, $4 big blind:
3.4 hours played
-573

NLH, $5 big blind:
61.8 hours played
-3471

1/2 PLO:
9.1 hours played
+885

Grand total from just poker:
-$1,825, in 103.1 hours of cash games, and 41.1 hours of live tournaments

The kiss of death was that rough patch I hit last week, where I dropped 4.7k in 3 very bad days, that I never could recover from. All of that at 2/5.

Happy to finish on a rally, and I think if I stayed another week, I could have gotten unstuck at just 1/3 and PLO.

Hard costs:

Flight: $505
(I probably could have done better here if I worked harder at finding and waiting for the lowest fare. I just wanted to find something that worked with my time off and my schedule, and get it booked)

Airbnb: 17 nights for $1,835
(I must have calculated the rate wrong or missed a fee somewhere. That comes closer to $108/night instead of $81/night. In any event, my place was absolutely perfect for my needs. It was clutch to be able to walk to Denny’s or IHOP for an off-strip breakfast. I did two loads of laundry twice during my trip, so that really paid off.)

Food: $1,342
(Happy to be spending less than I thought I would here.)

Uber: 40 trips for exactly $600, an average of $15 a ride. I also tipped every Uber driver a $5 bill, except for one time I tipped $10 to make a stop along the way. So $600, plus $205 in cash tips.

Of note, I did request an Uber at 12:15 am on the Saturday night after the Stanley Cup parade, and with surge pricing that one cost $35. So to keep costs down, try to avoid riding around peak times.

And, of course, the final, all in grand total for how I did in Vegas:

100-dollar bills I brought to Vegas: 70, plus 20 more to reload for my last weekend.

100-dollar bills I put back in the bank this afternoon: 69.

(Niiiiiiiice)

Very clutch to finish on a rally and be leaving on an optimistic note.

So nice of you to say.

We should all have better planning for next year. All have a nice dinner and an epic game.

Seriously does yardbird ever miss? I have been there 20+ times, just seems to always have the perfect food and atmosphere to make everyone have a great time.

Totally.

Poker is whatever…. You win some, you lose some, but at the end of the day it’s just money. Sometimes a lot of money, one way or the other…. But just money.

When I think back on this trip, the people and the meals are what’s going to stand out.

Some final thoughts on Vegas poker in 2023.

Something prairiebreeze first said to me, that I very much agree with, is that there’s a huuuge difference in skill between the average 1/3 table, and the average 2/5 table.

At most 2/5 tables, some people are looser or more aggro than is optimal, but you’re very frequently going up against 8 other experienced live poker players. Most people playing implicitly understand that if they’re committing significant percentages of their stack to a hand, it’s better to be betting or raising, rather than calling down.

That’s not to say no money, everyone’s solid. Regs and even pros are exploitable. The big adjustment that must be made, though, is you’re going to be 3bet much more frequently preflop, and you’ll often be 200-300 bb effective, or more.

I think I did a bad job adjusting to increased preflop aggression. You need a better, defined plan about which types of hands you’ll defend 3bets with, vs which opponents, heads up or multi-way, in or out of position. If you just say “fk this guy I cawl,” too often you’ll completely miss and have to fold, or run into a dominating, value 3bet range.

There’s none of that at 1/3. Sure, there are some aggro 3bet monkeys, but they aren’t 3betting a balanced range, and they tend to be easier to play against. If someone’s an inexperienced player who will make big-equity mistakes, they’re much more likely to sit in at 1/3 rather than 2/5.

I also think I should work on my PLO game more. There’s definitely more degen gambling, and people making huge mistakes, at low stakes live PLO in a way that people just aren’t at NLH. For this year between now and my next World Series trip, I want to put more hours in at online PLO, and really nail down my fundamentals to that game.

Good summary. And spot on regarding PLO. Many players dont punt in NL like they do in PLO,its just how it works.

an fyi- there is a HUGE difference in play b/w 1/2 plo and the 5/5 rock games at wynn/aria. i haven't played 1/2 nl in well over a decade so i really can't speak to the differences b/w 1/2 and 2/5 nl these days but I'd bet it's a much bigger gap. In 1/2 plo 95 percent of the player pool is SUPER nitty or utterly atrocious.

There are also 1/2 plo games where they're absolute torture with nobody raising pre at all and games with people going batshit crazy with garbage which become really profitable games once people get deep. Aria and Wynn 1/2 plo games tend to play differently ( partly bc aria has 500 cap/wynn has a 1000 cap) so you'll also see which one suits you better.

That's not universal though. There are quite a few 2/5 players trolling the 1/3 tables, especially in Vegas.

it's like some of Ed Miller's books, even his most recent ones. "You never see xxxxxxx in 1/2 or 1/3", to which I say "You aren't playing where I am".

Did you ever play 2/5 NL at Caesars Palace on this trip? If I’m not in the mood to play deep 2/5 and not be put to the test too much I like to play there. The $500 cap draws more recs and less pros and people seem to punt off a full stack more often in spots where they’d probably fold being 200+ bb deep.

I didn’t play any 2/5 at Bellagio or Caesar’s Palace, both places that have a 500 cap. Those games probably play much differently than it does at Resorts World, Wynn, Venetian, or Paris, which have 1.2k, 1.5k, 1.2k, and 1k caps, respectively.

With all the straddling, lots of those games effectively became 2/5/10 anyway.

It would probably make for easier, more straightforward decisions at lower stack depths.

Hello again!

I really love that I made this thread, and diligently kept it updated while I was in Vegas this past summer. In quiet moments, I must have re-read through this thread dozens of times… whenever I want to re-live my trip, or when I daydream about poker, Vegas, and tournament poker glory. Which is, often.

So since this thread has become my de facto live poker blog, I thought I’d share that I’m making a trip to Harrah’s Cherokee for the WSOP Circuit Event after Thanksgiving!

I did my trick at work where I front-load the first week, and back-load the next week, to get 6 straight days off (without having to take any PTO!) I’ll have five 12’s in a row (ugh) Saturday through Wednesday, then an early Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s house Thursday afternoon. I’m leaving straight from there to make the 4 hour drive to Cherokee. Right to bed Thursday night, then cards in the air Friday morning!

Many casino-goers don’t know this, but according to public stock filings, Harrah’s Cherokee is actually Caesar’s Entertainment’s best property. It’s got golf, outdoorsy stuff in the mountains, a convention center, and all the amenities a casino resort should have. The reason it does so well, though, is that it’s the only option in a veritable casino DESERT. Cherokee is the ONLY casino east of Mississippi, north of Florida, and south of Baltimore. Every time the WSOP comes to town, they get a BIG turnout from folks in Atlanta, the Carolinas, Tennessee, all over the southeast. It’s so lucrative that Cherokee is the only casino that gets FOUR Circuit Event stops during the year between the main WSOP in Vegas every summer.

As such, I’ve made Circuit Event trips before, and I’ve gotten down the rhythm of the schedule. The event runs Thursday through the next two weekends, with a slate of tournaments every day. The biggest tournaments, though, are the two weekend 2-day events. The final weekend is the $1,700 Main Event ($1.5M guaranteed), which I haven’t played. The first weekend is the large-field, best value option, four starting flights of a $400 tournament, $500k guaranteed. Historically, they comfortably cover the guarantee, with anywhere from $100k-$130k up top.

Harrah’s Cherokee assiduously sends me mailers, but I won’t be staying at the resort (“$5 free slot play!” go **** yourself). I stay at the Econo Lodge a couple miles down the road. As when I’m in Vegas, I don’t do much in the room besides shower and sleep, so a clean, comfortable room is all I require. Unlike in Vegas, I’ll have my car, and free parking at the casino isn’t an issue. Sadly, the food scene in the middle of nowhere, western NC, is somewhat lacking compared to Vegas. There’s an okay Italian place, and a Ruth’s Chris in the casino, but I usually get by on recognizable chain franchises on the reservation.

I’ve put a lot of thought into my game plan for the poker this trip. I’m trying to learn, adapt, and grow from previous trips. I’m staying Thursday night to Tuesday, and the only tournament I’m planning on playing is the $400 weekend event. There’s two flights each day, Friday and Saturday, at 11am and 4pm. I don’t like re-entering later in the same flight if I bust, so I’ll want to start at 11am each day. If I bust the first flight, I’ll re-enter the afternoon flight fresh (IF I still feel confident and focused). I’m budgeting for up to 3 bullets.

The cash game strategy, anyhow, requires more nuance. See above, the previous discussion about 2-5 and 1-3. I think I can beat 2-5, but judging from my results, I have to be honest and say that I’m not a favorite to win lots in EVERY lineup, and table selecting is harder. I think my winrate is bigger, and my hourly will also be bigger, if I stick to 1-3.

However, I think it’s very possible that my hourly could be even higher at 1-2 PLO. I just think there’s so many players that are positionally clueless, playing raggedy trap hands, making HUGE postflop mistakes, and stacking off light, in a way that people just *aren’t* at no limit in 2023. If I was gonna stick to just 1-3 NLH, I think I could get by with a smaller roll. But if I want to play $500 cap 1-2 PLO, that game will naturally play bigger, and have much higher variance, necessitating a larger roll.

So the number I’ve decided on is to start with a $5k roll. Up to three $400 bullets in the donkament, and four or five $500 bullets at PLO. If both of those go badly, I’m not too proud to lick my wounds at 1-3 NLH the rest of my time… because I truly enjoy playing live poker, and don’t get to do it every day.

Anyway, that’s the plan! I’ll probably re-read these posts too many times on my meal breaks at work the next nine days, to keep me focused on the goal. This is what I work for.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and we’ll be back in action next week!

Let’s goooooooooooooooo