St. Louis trip report!

-Location: From my very limited experience, St. Louis has a really curious dynamic of games. There are 4 casinos, two on the west side, two on the east side; the west and east are about 30 minutes away from each other. The east side casinos are River City and Lumiere, both are full of fish throughout the day, the lifeblood of St. Louis poker. The west side casinos consist of Ameristar and Harrah's. Harrah's has the most games going at any time, but the profitability was horrible in the ~5 times I went. I saw blinds getting chopped regularly in a 10 handed table, which happens like once every 4 days in the east side rooms. I would advise any pros that regularly play at Harrah's to drive the extra 30 minutes to the east side. Then there's Ameristar...

-Time: Ameristar was pretty much the equivalent of playing in the morning: hard to get a game, might not even be 1 full table when you do, but due to these conditions, you are extremely unlikely to run into any other pros (or even decent players!). I think I played with an average of less than 1 pro during my morning and/or Ameristar sessions. Later on in the day, there are a few pros but there are also more tables and probably bigger fish to balance it out, but playing at a table without a single other decent player is highly underrated IMO. You don't have to devote any of your mental energy towards thinking about what you've been doing, what your image is, etc., something that is probably necessary even if there are 2 remotely good players at the table.

-Pygmy ribbontail catsharks: I ran into some very good players. However, I also ran into self-claimed pros with very big leaks, and I'm assuming they're making at least enough for them to keep doing it. I used to think 2+2'ers posting winrates like $75/hr at LLSNL were exorbitant and only possible in the short term, but to be honest they don't seem far out of reach at all to me anymore after seeing LLSNL pros with sooooo many big leaks and still being profitable enough to live off it. I mean, hell I am just a beginner too! I'm fairly certain that I could have been up a few thousand more dollars in STL than I currently am if I made obviously better decisions in certain spots- and I'm just talking about spots I'm aware of in the sense of saying "damn why did I do that" 30 minutes later, there could be many more that never even crossed my mind.

-Getting bored of poker?:NOPE. When I first got here I remember playing 8 hour sessions, going to dinner, then yearning to play even more. While I'm not doing that anymore and my more recent sessions have been about 4-5 hours, I have still gladly made the trip every day to the casinos. I kept telling myself I should take a day off since I've played I think roughly ~30 days straight now, but every time I get up in the morning I'm like nahhh I'm in the mood for some poker.
OK I wrote most of this post in STL, since then I've played 1 day at Indiana Grand Casino near Indianapolis (made $321 in 5 hours, not going to write much about it- one funny thing is I freerolled their new player promotion for $5 but you have to deposit money into a slot machine to activate it, I deposited $1, played their free $5, then withdrew my $1- and yet people still call me a gambler...), now I am staying in Cleveland to visit old friends and have had no close access to poker for a few days now. Horseshoe Cleveland opens in 2 days though!

-Money: My total for STL cash games was $6104 in 133 hours, for a winrate of $45.89/hr over 28 sessions (I added Indy in for easy bookkeeping). Almost all the play was at either 1/2 or 1/3, I lost ~$1000 at 2/5 in 15 hours and won ~$2000 at 5/10 in 2 hours. Out of the two tournaments I played, I lost ~$800 of my own money and then some more for people who bought action (sorry guys ) in the circuit main event, and won ~$300 in the other one. The 2+2 STL thread told me the games suck here, but the east side games seem just as profitable as Oaklawn did (if not more!) and I'm pretty sure the 2+2'ers were just trying to hog all the fish to themselves and drive away another pro. TSK TSK! I understand, though. The volume of games is pretty low so a single extra pro can be a significant cut into another's profit.

-Life: I've lived in St. Louis for a few years when I went to undergrad at WashU. I also still have some friends here who stuck around, mostly for graduate school. Hell of a good time. I'm quite fond of the city and would very seriously consider settling down here at least for the near future.

GL

Nice run in STL bud!! Glad to see you crushed $5/10.

Get your ass to the west coast!

Couple of my non-2+2 buddies on Skype:

[1:35:53 PM] LegALReyz: if there's one thing i learned from reading this
[1:35:55 PM] LegALReyz: aesa is mean to people
[1:36:00 PM] LegALReyz: he calls everybody names
[1:36:09 PM] Shayn Davidson: villians
[1:36:13 PM] LegALReyz: nits
[1:36:18 PM] LegALReyz: donkeys
[1:36:22 PM] LegALReyz: fish

Ru fi o

Great Read, Going to follow. Best of luck friend

First post most def a lie, but gl

just curious which part do you think is a lie? no pics of ex sorry

Great thread so far! Keep on living your dream!! Haters gonna hate, ignore them.
Good luck and keep updating !

Finished second place in the Badugaha Hi/Lo tourney, busted when I ran into the monster hand below (has a badugi, the nut low, and full house). Badugaha is like Badugi and Omaha Hi/Lo combined, each winning hand is worth 1/3 of the pot and you can redraw part of your hand before each street (flop, turn, and river) are dealt.

OK so I have some funny stories to share about Horseshoe Casino in Cleveland, Ohio's first casino. It opened last night, was way too packed for me to even THINK about going in. I got there at 10 AM this morning and no line at all.

Staff was all nice but very, very inexperienced. The floor guy told me the minimum buy-in was 10% of the small blind, I thought I misheard so I asked again, he was like ya 10% of the small blind. That made my day right there dealers were hella slow, one time my BB got mucked when some guys called with a red chip and I tried to check. NOPE MY CARDS GONE. I was like "wtf" to the dealer but let it go because it wasn't too big a deal.

For the actual poker, play was horrendous, like wow so bad. My first cue to this was witnessing a hand where some guy bet trips on the turn, some other guy folded, and he was like I had to bet, I had about 16 outs to the full house. LOL. Every hand that I wasn't involved in (i.e., all of them because I was so card dead) played like a limit hand.

Guy bets $5 on flop, 3 callers.
Bets $10 on turn, 3 callers.
Bets $10 on river, all fold. I rofl (in my head of course!)

Lost a decent pot when I tried to 3bet bluff a guy with A2s who had been opening a bunch of pots to $7, I made it $25 and he called and led out for 1/4 pot on 667 so I raised flop, he called and it got checked down. He shows KK, sigh.

Also this guy to my right could barely move (I pushed in his cards/chips whenever he bet/folded) and he never tipped, I saw some other guy at the table tip after he won a pot so I started doing it too. I am a life nit so I won't make a habit of that though of course.

One funny thing about my specific card table, table 19 for anyone who plays there, is that the air conditioning blows seat 7's card off the table like 1/10 times the dealer deals it (happening over the span of 4 dealers).

I'm sad they had no higher stakes than 1/2 running when I was there. There were 6 people on the waitlist for 10/25 when I started driving and I really was in the mood to take a shot at that.

Nothing in the casino enticed me food-wise, so I walked out at noon. There was a line wrapped around the block. OOOOOOOPS. Guess I'm not getting back inside.

Cleveland total: -$96 in 2 hours.

There are a ton of better places for food in downtown Cleveland than casino food. Take a walk one block up Euclid to E 4th, try out some of the great dining there. Or walk one block down Superior to W 6th, or W 9th. Granted this means leaving the cozy confines of casino land, but why have an O.K meal when you can have a great one?

That sounds like a juicy game, it looks like your toughest opponent is going to be the dealer.

Keep it coming man!

Great stuff!

Thanks for the comments everyone!

So today I got there at 2:00 PM and at the front door, there was a monster line wrapped around the corner and down a couple blocks. FUUU. But wait! I remembered a super useful 2+2 post from the Horseshoe thread that there's another kinda-hard-to-find entrance from inside the mall and made it inside in a timely manner.

Heard a guy mention 2+2 at the table, this is uncommon to me but apparently this place is filled with them. Maybe not density-wise, but the venue thread here racks up tons of posts from different people. Interestingly enough, the manager reported that at some point, it was the 2nd most crowded poker room in the US behind the commerce. That new casino hype!

I didn't even sign up for 1/2 today. Straight to 2/5 and 5/10. Ran really, really card dead for 4 hours- but above EV thanks to a single hand, funny thing sometimes, poker. I didn't play many hands or get into interesting spots, but I'll post a couple hands I do remember although they are kind of boring.

Hand 1 (5/10 NL): Hero tries to take advantage of his image from folding so much, raises Q8o from CO. Both blinds call.

Flop J53
Checked to hero, I bet 75%, some guy shoves 4x my bet. I fold. I don't even know why I posted this hand it is so standard/boring but since I went through the effort of writing it I'll leave it here.

Hand 2 (5/10 NL): 2 limpers in EP, SB calls, Hero raises to $50 with AA from BB. Everyone calls.

Flop T83
I bet $130, EP limper shoves for $405 total. I think for a short bit and call, flipped my hand over. He announces "flush" on the turn and flips over Q7, river saves me though.

+$406, 4 hours.

Cleveland total: $310, 6 hours.

So what kinda bankroll/liferoll do you have right now?

I played almost all 2/5 today. I have been really card dead in terms of preflop hands, but also part of the reason I'm feeling extra card dead is the dealers deal like 30% slower than in STL. Anyway I don't mind running bad in terms of starting hands as long as I get paid off big on at least 1 hand and run above EV anyway.

Somewhat aggressive villain opens from CO to $20, I 3 bet to $60 from button with 89 (I disagree with most of 2+2 that this hand is profitable to flat 100bb deep vs an unknown you will never play against again, so I put this at the top of my folding range = great to mix into my light 3-bets, although I usually prefer Axs and Kxs). Very loose fish from SB calls, CO folds.

Flop J44, pot $150
SB leads for $50. I raise to $165. He calls.

Turn 3, pot $480
He checks, I bet $200 (~$250 behind), he folds.

Standardddddd.

+$433, 3 hours.

Cleveland total: $743, 9 hours.

Over 50k in savings, my living expenses are low so I don't really ever think about bankroll when playing poker. Although, there were 8 people on a 50/100 NL list today (didn't run AFAIK)... that would have been too rich for me

Thanks for comment!

Dude, did you have an update for yesterday? This is a great story.

Yes! No poker though.

I spent most of yesterday dealing with paperwork. My former employer really wants me back- I was really hesitant to have anything to do with a non-poker job anymore considering how easy+fun poker is, but the offer was $25k per year for doing basically "on-call" work for technical writing. I can work from anywhere in the country, I just get emailed a paper and edit it. I'm estimating this will be roughly 20 publications (20 pages on average, takes me ~4 hours each) a year so yea do the math, crazy sick offer, I couldn't resist. Will barely even cut into my poker time- in fact it'll actually be good for poker, since I can be more aggressive in taking shots.

Oh also I've been playing Diablo 3 a ****ton. I'm a DH and just killed Butcher in Inferno.

Yea maybe you wouldn't guess from this blog since I prefer a colloquial style but I'm actually pretty sick at technical writing, I've edited hundreds of publications for peer-reviewed scientific journals and have a 100% acceptance success rate. /brag

Anyway it is time to go play POKER.

having a backup job, especially with few hours and a lot of flexibility, sounds like a great idea. it'll give you peace of mind and allow you to play your A game even in downswings

i hear you on the writing style man - some people just have the art of writing conversationally to a tee. whenever i try and write a blog it always ends up very formal and stiff

Today I went with a friend and played for 2 hours. Signed up for 2/5 and 5/10, 5/10 went off almost immediately (started the table) so I played that.

I mostly played my A game. Anyway here's two of the more interesting hands:

I open to $30 from CO with 66, button 3 bets to $75. Folds to me, I call. We're ~150bb deep.

Flop K43
check/check
Turn 8
check/check
River 5
I check/called a $75 bet. He shows J8. I think this is a fold here if villain checks behind ace high or a pair of 3's, 4's, or 5's. Meh. It's very close, I'm not worried about it.

Another hand, 4 or so limpers (very rare for this table), I raise from SB with AQ to $65, only the CO calls.

Flop AK3
check/check
Turn J
check/check
River 3
I check/called a $250 overbet. He shows 52. It didn't work out for him, but I like that play. I keep telling myself I want to incorporate my overbets into my game, but I never get around to it.

+$549, 2 hours.

Cleveland total: $1292, 11 hours.

Good on ya for taking $5/10 shots! Back-up job is a good idea. Life balance + bankroll support.

Lookin good brotha