I think it's a well-established fact that I'm a ****ing idiot.

So this is kinda interesting. I like the idea of a vlog, and they're seemingly popular, but I have three hang-ups about it. Neither of which have to do with the cesspool of a dumpster fire that is the vlog thread:

1. I'm still a working stiff. And I'm just not sure how my employer would feel about vulgarity-laced tirades with my face attached to it. I figure with the pseudonym and keeping my face out of things will keep my feet out of the fire.

2. Video seems like a ****ton of work and I just frankly don't have the time for it.

3. I've always just kinda preferred radio as a medium.

I'm leaning more towards podcasting at the moment. I've had some really quick and high-level talks with Bike about doing something, either vlog or podcast. Like I said, it's all way up in the air right now. I've actually got an idea

I wouldn't call Mandalay Bay slummy, but I get your point. I find places like Aria, V, B, Wynn, and etc., have too many "Captain Poker"s and/or too many pro grinders who won't even tip $1 for a ****ing drink. Games get tight and players are good (well, better). At the fleabag spots, players are more likely to drink, have a good time, have pure GAAAAAAAAAAAAAMBOOOOL in them, and laugh away stack after stack. Plus the dealers are more appreciative of tips. I just seem to have a better time in those kinds of places because people look at it as entertainment and not ****ing life or death.

That makes sense. Thanks for the response! Maybe I'll mix it up and try one of those locations. I'm flying in tomorrow, and staying until the 16th on a solo poker trip. I had intended to just play at the Aria, but you've inspired me to try a new location.

I have always found Luxor to be a fun, easy room to play in..both tournaments and cash.

Probably my new favourite small room to play in, now that Monte Carlo poker room has gone tits up..

I agree with your assessment but I do offer one counter-point:

The likelihood of a very deep pocketed poor player is much higher at the high end rooms. I see the 4-6X reloaders at the V,B,A and W where the rec players at the more casual rooms tend to walk away after dropping 1-2 buy-ins. I have made as much as $1,200 off a single player at the V last WSOP playing 1-2 NL.

Excellent! The games/room will have such a different vibe. And believe me, Aria is a fantastic room and you'll definitely enjoy yourself there. Creature comforts are fantastic as well. But there's just something about a game when three drunk friends are throwing in $20 pre without looking at their cards because "LOL VEGAS DUDE!"

The loss of the Monte Carlo is unfortunate. The tournament structure was holy **** bad, but I adore that room and the decor.

Completely fair and accurate point. Reloaders are a beautiful thing, especially when buying in for the max. The fleabag rooms will have more of the people buying in for the min or for $100, then reloading once and heading out. So yes, you can make more money off of one specific fish at the better rooms. But I think you could make roughly the same amount, spread across multiple fish, at the dive joint.

Speaking of, I've got my solidified idea for a podcast. Haven't talked to Bike yet since it seems like he's heading to Florida, but I'm kinda giddy with excitement over it. My nipples are like diamonds. Details to come...

I'm not dead. MASSIVE update with a boatload of pics coming soon (I've taken ~100 since the last post) with at least two major life events, cashing about 50% of my last 10 tournaments, and I had a bunch of the folks from the poker chat room over for a home game.

Here's a teaser of some new equipment in my office:



Stay tuned...

Mandalay Bay slummy? I've stayed in real slums that make Motel 6 look like a suite at the Wynn.

I also like the smaller venues. The dealers at Orleans will treat you like royalty for a $5 toke.

Spike - I've just dropped back into this thread after an absence and pleased to see it's still going great. Definitely one of my favourite threads on 2+2. Keep it up.

Where to start, where to start...

It's been quite the busy time at the McAwesome residence. Though we did take the occasional break for:



The wife wanted to try a new farmer's market up in NLV off of Craig. We found this place that does the best peanut brittle I've ever had:



I wonder if they've ever given out their email address @aol.com and someone said "You use AOL? That's a really smart move". There was another stand at the market that had these garlic roasted pistachios. We are officially obsessed with them. Unbelievably good. It's a hike from the Strip, but well worth it.

Joboo and I wanted to try a new restaurant so he suggested we try "that new thing in China Town. The one with all the bright colors and ****. For all I know it's a ****ing furniture store, but maybe it'll have food". Sure enough, it did:




It was delicious Korean BBQ, but not all you can eat. But seriously, every once in a while, you gotta:



My doctor's office closed down and someone vandalized the sign:



I liked this dude's ride. The hair, not so much:



Did anyone watch the show Flipping Vegas? Two lunatics buy houses, stage a bunch of useless crap to make the previous owners look like mental patients, clean it up nice and sell it at a profit? Anyway, it wasn't really worth watching, but they are Vegas locals and their office was right next to the Buffalo Wild Wings not too far from my place. Swung by there the other day, and they had packed up shop. No idea if they just moved or if they're gone for good, but it seemed strange to close the office space like that:



Did I mention my wife liked the Kroger-brand Cranberry Lime seltzer? Yeah. She bought 20 cases:



Which brings our total for the house to 26.5 cases, or 3816 fl oz. We're going to need a bigger fridge.

If anyone watched the latest Vegas poker vlogger, Bikeking19, he talked about a home game he went to during the week. Yeah, that was at my place:



Really fun turnout and we're definitely going to do this again in the near future. It was a dealer's choice game, and basically anything goes. We had people making up games on the fly, adding twists to old games, and teaching people new games that may not be that well known outside of some super hardcore gamblers.

If you remember the first few posts of this thread (aside from talking about my ex-wife and her extra curricular activities), one of the missions of my time off from work was to check new construction around the area and try to find a place for the wife and I to purchase. We put our search on hold last year, but started again in earnest not too long ago. We found a few communities around town, and some were okay. Nothing really stood out for us. Until we found...



Skye Canyon is a brandy-spanky new master planned community in the north west part of the valley. I mean the extreme north west. I mean so far north west, my GPS thought we were in the desert. It's so far north west, the weather app on my phone thought we were in Russia (seriously). Check out the map: https://goo.gl/maps/FwpJxgfYQGP2 It's so new, there isn't a single completed housing community, and only a total of 200 homes in the area (of a planned 9000+ when complete). And it was there that we found THE house. We had looked at all the builders up there, and narrowed it down to three choices: Woodside Homes, Payson plan; Century Homes, 3231 plan; Pulte Homes, Parklane plan. After going back and forth and trying to figure out what we wanted vs. what we needed vs. what we were willing to pay, we went with the Pulte home. Quality looks good, floor plan is not too big or too small, and the incentives were pretty spot-on. So we signed for a plot of dirt:



For this facade:



We've got an appointment with the design studio next Tuesday and it takes something like six months to build. By the new year, we'll be in a new home. To say I'm excited is an understatement. In fact, I should be filling out the final mortgage application now instead of entertaining all of you, but meh.

Thursday night was a little surreal. I've semi-joked that after I finish my PhD, I'd go back for a degree on broadcasting. Thursday, I got a little glimpse of what that would be like:



There's an hour-long show starting at 10pm Thursday nights that focuses on sports betting. I was invited on to be a hockey "expert" because their last hockey expert could only name one PLAYER left in the playoffs - Ovechkin. I was able to bull**** my way through an hour without dropping an F-bomb (yay, no delay or dump button) and had an absolute blast. So I went out and made a couple of rash purchases:




The episode is up on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/eye-on-gaming, and look for the episode called "Hockey and hoops dominate the discussion".

I've been talking to Bikeking about possibly doing a podcast. Now that I have the equipment, I'm debating if it should be one or two. There will definitely be a focus on the daily tournaments around town, and I run enough of these ****ing things to know what's good and what ain't. It's just a question of splitting that segment out into a separate podcast or keeping everything as one. Time will tell. Once my finals are done next week I'll have a better plan.

Speaking of those daily tournaments, I've run ten in the past two weeks, and cashed four of them. They are, in order...

Sam's Town 10am $23 mixed limit daily
Santa Fe Station noon $45 daily
Harrah's 3pm $65 daily
TI 10pm $75 daily
Rio 1pm $75 daily
Suncoast 6pm $60 Friday-Saturday
Excalibur 1pm $45 daily
TI 10pm $75 daily again
Luxor 11pm $45 daily
Mandalay Bay 3pm $65 daily

I took detailed notes on each tournament, grabbed a structure sheet (when available - looking at you, Excalibur!), took pictures of the starting stacks and rule sheet, and really tried to get as much information as I could. I'm going to try and standardize some aspects so I can score these things better, and give tourists (and locals) a better idea what they may be getting in to before they drop money on an unbeatable ****show donkament. Maybe it'll be fun. Or maybe not.

nice one.

about the daily donkaments though, people will still play them for ****s and giggles.
all somewhat thinking poker players know they shouldn't play them.

would like to see the conclusion of this research

I'm probably missing something here but what's the point of them staging this? Isn't it likely to put off possible buyers

You are, my friend. All the BS for the cameras is just that - for the cameras. Perspective buyers don't see this drama when it's happening, they just see the house well staged for Open House and then decide to buy it or not. Months or more after the house has been bought these episodes air for TV viewers entertainment.

After doing this for 2-3 years and having it aired on TV it looks like these hustlers have wisely closed up shop and moved on to a new market or a new hustle.

For some reason, my wife always liked watching Flipping Vegas. It's off the air now, but there is a new show which is basically exactly the same thing. It's called "Flip or Flop Vegas".

I would say that I don't really get it... but my wife has already hit "record the whole season" on the DVR, so obviously there is an audience for it.

Ah, got it.

Women like Flipping Vegas because of the bickering. They couldn't care less about real estate. You could put on a show about lacing tennis shoes as long as there is bickering in it.

I caught a glance of this at the doctors office and it did look like the same show but maybe a different couple? I didn't really get a good look at it.

Flipping Vegas pissed me off when I got stuck waiting for room service to come to my room a couple of Vegas trips ago and it was on reruns I think.

The couple (and their production crew) badly staged a house to look like the previous owners had squatted and were trashing the place and leaving threats written on the walls as messages for the Flippers. They even tried to stage that someone was in the house and snuck out while they were there but it was so obviously all fake to me it was painful and then pissed me off that they were doing it.

So this is a little embarrassing. I used to shame myself for not updating after two weeks. This time it's been damn near two months. I ****ing suck at this internet thing.

The past eight or so weeks have been absolutely nuts. I spent a week in Ann Arbor. The new house is coming along. I've played a TON of poker and been running like absolute dog****. And I started two podcasts and posted introductory episodes for both. Let's get to the pictures, in no particular order...

Ann Arbor!

It was my first time visiting Michigan. I have to say, I kind of really dug it. Ann Arbor is a great college town, but the roads were clearly laid out when it was less populated. One lane in either direction for a school that supposedly has 30k employees, let alone students, on-lookers, and the whole thing. But I got to spend a week at:



ICPSR! It's like space camp for social science nerds. I need four methodologies courses for my PhD (even though my dissertation won't use any kind of analytical or quantitative analysis). I decided to go for the Bayesian data analysis class. It was highly recommended to me, and I got it for about the first four hours. The next three and a half days, not so much.

The overly-overly simplified version is this: A right fielder in Major League Baseball has a career average of .200, hitting 1 for 5. A pitcher in Major League Baseball also has a career average of .200, hitting 1 for 5. Who will have the better career as a hitter?

Simplified data analysis would say that it's impossible to tell - both players have the same number of hits over the same number of at bats, and that the sample size is too small to really make a determination. Bayesian analysis says the right fielder should have the better career, since we know right fielders are usually better hitters than pitchers. So by updating the problem using prior information, we can come to a conclusion. Simple, right? There was a 945 slide power point that went with the class, that ended up showing us things like this:



... the ****?

Somehow, I passed:



Basically everything in Ann Arbor pandered to the UofM crowd. I can't blame them, really.



Everyone in that town wears the UofM colors, except two kids I saw walking around wearing Ohio State stuff. I asked a buddy of mine from Columbus about the rivalry, and his response was "When someone asks us how to get to UofM, we tell them go west until you smell it, north until you step in it". Lovely.

One night, there was a fifty degree difference between Ann Arbor and Vegas - 65 to 115. I guess that's 18 to 46 degrees in weirdo degrees.

I flew with Spirit Airlines, which I've never used before. Thinnest seats ever:



And smallest trays ever:



The week I was away was the week the Vegas Golden Knights had their expansion draft and unveiled their jerseys. Since I wasn't around to get a pre-order in, my wife, the worst secret-keeper on the planet, managed to sneak over to the VGK store (called The Armory) and pre-order one for me and keep the secret from me until I got back from Michigan. Hell of a broad, this one.

In any event, I've gone full Golden Knights fanboy:



Plus six t-shirts, a hoodie, a 3'x5' flag, a banner, a puck, license plate frame, and can coozy. Yeah...

The house!

It's sort of exciting to see how this is progressing. We went from an abstract concept and a model home, to words on paper, to an actual lot, to a plumbing trench:



To the frame-in for the foundation:



To today, where we discovered an actual frame:





We spent about six hours over two trips in the design center:





(Ignore the paint color in the 3-ring binder sleeve; we changed that). All cool grays and whites. Not a stroke of brown or beige in the house. I can't wait for this sucker to be finished sometime in early fall.

The poker!

I've been getting my ****ing teeth kicked in this entire world series. Probably the worst I've ever run since I started playing with any kind of study or plan behind it. The games have been great, I just can't get there. Only played cash twice, posted small losses both times. One was after my AA got it all in pre v AK and TT, and there was a T on the river. My last two tournaments, I busted out with JJ by 65, and AA by 75. But like I said, there's been a lot of tournaments:















That's about half of them. The ONLY cash I had was at a WSOP nightly:



My first ever WSOP tournament cash, by the way.

It's a short stack semi-turbo tournament, so if you don't build a stack early, it's tough to move too deep. I tripled up in the first level. AA v A9 v KdJd. Flop was AcQd9d. Got it in with top set v two pair v straight flush draw and held.

The TI decided to run a freeroll for tournament players. The winner of any of their tournaments for the month of June got a seat, and you could get extra chips for extra wins. I didn't win/cash a tournament, but I did play one where the winner didn't want the seat. The floor just gave it to me. It starts in 11 hours, so hopefully I'll have an update on that sometime before October.

Random bull****!

I like this art on the side of the Plaza:



REALLY good food:



I think this is Neeme's favorite bar downtown (or one of them).

The wife talked me into making barn quilts for the new house. I think they came out pretty good. I made the white one:



The podcasts!

Yeah, I decided it was time to get in on the action of actually producing content rather than just being a sponge. And because I can't do things the easy way, I decided to do not one, but two podcasts:



You can see Bikeking_19's chicken legs in the shot here. He and I are running Seat Open in Sin City:



We're focusing on all things relating to the Vegas poker scene: news, rumors, tournaments, room openings/closings, specials, promos, etc. We're going to try to get people to come on, like dealers and floor personnel, professional players, other characters around town. Hopefully we can make this thing work.

The other one is just me. It's called Poker School Dropout:



Poker School Dropout is going to talk about and review the daily poker tournaments all around Las Vegas. I'm trying to gather as much information as I can about these things by actually running them (hence the giant number of donkaments I've run lately). I'm also going to talk about thing related to tournaments, like tipping and chopping and such. There are enough of these things to keep me busy, that's for ****ing sure.

Both podcasts are being put out under the Vegas Poker Network label:



It's just something I made up a) to make life easier so I don't have to switch back and forth between accounts and b) in case there are other shows that want to climb aboard, whether they be podcasts or vlogs or whatever else. I figure that once VPN builds an audience, I can expose a new personality to a ready-made audience right away.

Everything is being uploaded to the YouTube channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-J...Jp2ribmOsLQ5Jg

And SoundCloud here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-826011957

iTunes and Stitcher to come.

I'm also posting pics on Instagram here:

https://www.instagram.com/vegaspokernetwork/?hl=en

I guess that's enough for now, eh?

You need to start a Vegas hockey podcast that caters to VGK fans and those new to the sport. Or make it a segment of one of the others.

Definitely not a bad idea. There are a couple of good ones already but they're mostly from sports guys trying to get into the game. I'm a lifelong fan so maybe that different perspective would be interesting enough to warrant some kind of segment. Good call.

I am currently the only person from my office and the only person on my hall to actually come to work today. Time to figure out what tournament to play tonight. Leaning towards the WSOP 5pm $185. We'll see.

The branding looks slick, I'll take listen when I get a chance. Look out Joe Rogan!

The 2 pm $235 is much better. Not just because of the bigger starting stack, but because there are 4x the entries with much bigger prize pools.

Let's calm the **** down with the Joe Rogan references, but these are a start, for sure. Actually ****... I should PM you. We should get you on as a guest for one of these things.

Completely agree, but I had to work until 3:30ish, give or take. And there's just something I hate about late reg'ing a tournament. But the 5pm is a much better deal than the 9pm.

Not that it matters. I ran the 10pm at TI because I'm a glutton for punishment. One dude at the table ran hotter than god and I ended up dumping 1/3 of my stack to him, so I ended up kinda short for this hand:

Blinds 200/400
Hero: BB ~12k stack
Villain 1: MP 20k stack
Villain 2: BTN 16k stack

At this point, any time I had raised pre, I ended up showing a pocket pair (88 and TT). When I called a raise pre and got to showdown, I had things like AJ, ATss, KJ. Villain 1 was pretty tight reg. Villain 2 was a Euro tourist.

Villain 1 raises to 850 from MP. Villain 2 calls from the button. SB folds. I look down at two red Jacks and try and get cute with it. I call.

Flop is KJ6 with two spades. I check. Villain 1 bets 1250. Villain 2 asks for a count of my stack so I show him. He calls. I now check/raise to 3800. Villain 1 hesitates but calls, Villain 2 folds.

I decide Villain 1 isn't going anywhere, and this smells like AK, AJ, KJ type hands, maybe flush draws. Doubtful he has something like QT here, but who knows. So before the turn comes out, I decide to shove dark for my last 7k or so.

Turn is a T.

Villain 1 happily calls.

And shows AQ for the turned Broadway.

He did not have spades.

GG.

I'm sort of kicking myself for not just check/shoving the flop. I know that sounds results-oriented, but in my mind, I'm going with this hand no matter what. Yes, I'm probably scaring off some flush and straight draws where I'm way ahead (and will still have outs to a boat if they hit), but I could just as easily take down a ~13BB pot without too much push-back and get myself almost back to a starting stack. Bah. I hate this ****ing game sometimes.

The worst part is that I busted out right as the Cirque show was finishing up, so the parking garage was a nightmare, and a Lyft driver coming from the Mirage ran the stop sign at the four-way intersection and nearly caused an accident. Perfect end to this night.

Good to see an update Spike!
Check jamming the flop is best for sure here. Unlucky though.
Will check out the podcasts for sure. I'm from Dublin, Ireland so might pass on the hockey bits

Sent from my GT-I8200N using 2+2 Forums

I listened to the first pod, enjoyed it. If you are doing more on the daily donkaments I would love to hear some input on the tournaments that run all over town that does not have the best structure, but might be good to play still? I find myself always trying to find those with 30 min levels and good starting stack but keep thinking I am probably missing out elsewhere.

I think we should almost always 3! the JJ from the BB here and lead out on any flop. No matter how tight/nitty V1 is, V2 will be calling with most of his range and if V1 clicks it back you can always fold and still have 20bbs+ for a better spot. Pretty bad play from V1 anyways. Your check/raise screams strength and chances are he's at least up against at least KJ. I'd rule out AK since that will be 3! pre and he doesn't have any blockers to the flush. I'd put you on 66s or KJ in this spot and snap fold, esp with V2 making a weird speech play.

Nevermind, listening to the new podcast now. CP it is.