So I drove out to Las Vegas and played and stayed at The Venetian in my car for two-and-a-half weeks. I played $1/$2 and lets just say my experiences at play money didn't really help me except for open raising a lot preflop and paying people off thinking they just have air. Yeah, before this, my only real experience playing poker was full tilt play money not real money. I lost $2100 in 166 hours at $1/$2. I don't know if that's bad, good, or just variance but even at the time when I left to go back home I remember feeling I had played good on this trip and that it was just variance but on my twenty-hour drive back home I realized it wasn't variance and that I had actually played bad… very bad.

Part of me was embarrassed to realize this because it was my first trip out to really give this a shot and prove myself but another part of me was actually happy because I could see the mistakes so clearly and that this game could still easily be won at if you look back over your hands and analyze them and that it's not some game where even if you play great for two weeks (like I thought I did) that you could still lose. While that may be the case sometimes I don't think it was here.

Of the hands I can remember (only the hands I lost of course) I'm going to post them here and analyze them. As for this thread, my adventure is not over. After I build up another bankroll working another depressing god-awful job like I did before I drove out to Vegas I'm going to go back and hopefully from after realizing my leaks from after writing in this thread I can go back and finally win. I'm not going to quit. Lets start with hand one.

Hand 1

These hands aren't going to be in any order except for which I recall first. None are going to be hands that were coolers but only hands I feel I made genuine mistakes on that I feel I could have fixed.

Blinds are $1/$2 and there's a straddle. Player UTG makes it $10 or $12 I think and I can't tell for sure if it's the kind of player that does this with 89-suited as well as also with pocket pairs. I think stacks were somewhere between $200-$300 effective between me and UTG which should have been an indicator to my decision on the river as a clear fold and I'm not saying I played this hand good but I'm confused why I did the things I did when it should have been so obvious to me back then what I should I have done and yet doing something so completely different. Anyway back to the hand:

There's a straddle. UTG makes it $10-$12 and in the CO I have AJ. Usually my line of thinking would be to make sure not to go broke in this hand and to only play two-pair, the flush/flush-draw and straight and that all one pair hands to only stand two-streets of betting. Lets just say I did not follow this line of thinking. I call and the straddle calls and we're three handed.

Flop ($39): J84

Straddle checks, UTG bets $10 (???), I make it $30 obv, straddle folds, and UTG makes it $60. I call.

The turn ($159) is blank. UTG makes it $60, I call.

The river ($279) is K and UTG goes all-in for like half-pot or something and I call. I can't even understand my play except for the fact that it looks very ******ed and the only rationale I can have for it is that after I called on the flop I just wanted nothing more than to just see a showdown. My mistake here is calling that $60 on the flop as UTG is probably never doing that with a flush/straight draw or Jx. It's really only sets or over-pair. I guess it's just a situation I'm not used to (being three-bet on the flop live) and I feel it's because I called the flop that I called the river.

Looking back on it, I don't hate my preflop call nor my flop raise. What I hate is my flop call vs that 3-bet. It's not something I had a plan for when I raised and it's definitely not something I'm experienced with handling. Online I'm almost sure I would have just called the $10 on the flop given he raised UTG and was repping an overpair but who knows. Maybe this is just that $300 mistake I had to make to be sure never to do it again. I guess when this happens again I should just get it in on the flop or fold just like I would if we were playing HU but I guess the $60 just threw me off. Oops, I'm embarrassed, I hate myself, lets move on to the next hand.

Hand 2

This hand is more about not having balls than making a bad play. It's about not bluffing when you need to.

Blinds are $1/$2 and villain is young kid who is probably the 2nd or even best player I had played with in the whole time I was in Vegas. He just knew when to bluff and just seemed to know where he was every hand. He only played on the weekends and was a student and a local. Anyway it folds to him like UTG+2 or something and he makes it $10 (could be doing this with all suited-connecters and better), someone calls, and me in the CO with 45 makes it $40. Stacks are like $500 effective between me and young-raiser. I had made it $40 similarly like this a few hands before I think versus the same kid but with KK and so finally wanted to have a three-betting experience since no one ever raises enough preflop OOP light enough to make light 3-bets (IMO) profitable, but I'm a fish so what do I know.

I know villain calls but either the player who called the $10 after calls or the BB overcalls and he folds. I don't remember but I know it was three-handed and I was in position vs. two other players and one of them being the open raiser kid who was the kid who played on weekends and was the genius.

Flop ($120): 37K

God, what a good flop for my hand, especially the freaking king. I didn't know whether to bet half-pot or three-fourths pot since I was inexperienced in these sorts of spots where you three-bet and get two callers in position. Looking back on it I feel I should have bet $90 but I bet $60 and only got the one kid to call who was the original raiser.

Turn ($240): T I believe. This is so a blank and if I were to bet it would be $150. And I knew if I did I would have had to bet big on the river which I knew I should have done but since I figured I was just going to miss my draw I didn't want to fire the turn knowing I had would have had to shove the river. But lets look at the math (and here's why I feel my check on the turn was a mistake):

If my opponent has AKo, which I feel is his average best hand here, I have 26% equity. The question then we need to ask is, if I’m risking $150 to win $240, how often do I need to be winning to break-even?

If I win five times in a row, that's a profit of $1200 and to lose that I'd have to lose eight times in a row ($150 x 8). So…

1. +240
2. +240
3. +240
4. +240
5. +240
6. -150
7. -150
8. -150
9. -150
10. -150
11. -150
12. -150
13. -150

I only need to win 5/13 times to make the bet profitable, or 38%. And considering I already have 26% equity against his hand that's never folding to a turn bet, I only need 12% fold equity and considering sometimes he's folding weaker kings, draws, and lesser pairs, and not just always AK that would make a bet here extremely profitable and really the only reason I didn't was because I didn't have balls and didn't want to lose my whole stack on the next street and that's not what poker should be about.

As for the hand was played, I checked the turn, the river came a 4 and genius value-towned the hell out of me with a $35 bet with Kx. Looking back on it this is just such a clear bet on the turn that I knew even then I should have done but was just too chicken to do and now I even have proof that I should have bet. He had like K2 suited or something and would most likely have folded the turn and especially the river if I had bet. Even if I make my hand on the river after checking, this is still a bad spot to check. Online I would have bet (play money lol) but damn live poker is hard sometimes. It really is just the idea of blowing all your $600 that you worked 9 hours for on a stone-cold bluff (which is why I checked) and you really shouldn't think of poker like that and really only think of the math.

Hand 3: king-high flush in limped pot
Hand 4: middle pair against 1/2-1/3 reg (ELL) who had flush
Hand 5: A377 with KJdd
Hand 6: QQ oop vs 3bet by live donk
Hand 7: KK on J634A

to be continued...

Hand 8: J6 on A638
Hand 9: Q9 on QT6

Hy man, I just found this while browsing.

What's the update so far? Live poker is a different animal. Sometimes it feels like you are playing tight live but you are actually playing loose. 30 hands/hr is extremely slow.

From a GTO perspective, actually playing properly FR is equivalent to folding AQ utg in a tough game. Are you raising non-premiums at all and open limping low pps? You are playing too loose. Are you cold calling 3x or larger opens with anything other than huge suited broad ways and large pps? These are considered mistakes but in live poker everyone is making them and the entire waiting process takes forever, but playing too many hands is losing, and esp if bankroll is too low and if u feel your edge on the field is not solid.

If someone were actually playing tight poker as they would online, it would appear obsenely tight in live. Sometimes only 1 real hand every 2-3 hrs. And as I recall u would multitable a ton online which allowed u to adhere to your hand selection. Live poker is mostly about making a ton of reads and folding and watching loose fish donk each other out. And btw, anyone sitting at your table is likely a fish and a pretty bad one, because if they didnt have any obvious leaks, they would all have probably moved up to higher limits. In the entire world, there might only be a handful of 'pro level' live 1/2 players. It just doesnt make sense to make a living there for longer than a few months.

I hope you are doing well. Sleeping in the parking lot for 2 weeks is def a try in my books. Playing live for the first time is scary, esp if the stakes are much higher than usual. Sometimes high variance plays are necessary but they should be avoided. For example, by 3betting 45s, this line of thinking already means you are willing to take these risks. However, with a low bankroll, high variance plays are not recommended in general.