Online, short handed, or versus a rando, I'm calling. My read on him was that he was a good reg opening UTG at a full table, so his range pre is going to be limited. I could be talked into adding 3 hands of non-diamond A9s and 1 hand of Ah4h, but I don't think that would move the needle much. Going from the flop, I think he's only shoving with hands from that pre range that have some equity, if he hasn't already flopped it.

The word on the tip of my tongue that I couldn't think of was



Funny how the brain keeps working on these things long after you consciously give up.

Yesterday I lost focus a few times and made some calling mistakes pre. Pre is rookie stuff and mistakes there are not acceptable. One $40 mistake in a 3-bet pot likely cost me $30 in EV. That's nearly a whole 2-hour session's worth of EV shot to hell in 10 seconds of distracted non-thinking.

Ballys, MGM, Orleans - 8 hours:
+$204

On the good side, I did earn a buffet at the Paris for playing 4 hours at Ballys. I haven't eaten there in 12 years, but it was very good back then. I've decided to take a half-assed shot at the Atkins low carb business, and my love of buffets should make that pretty easy.

I always sigh call that one...

Bellagio and Wynn - 3 hours: TT<KQ on a 9TQQK board, with all the money in on the turn. Anyone from BBV can spot my obvious mistake there.
(-$413)

Tomorrow marks the beginning of my first full week at the new job. The goal is 40 hours, week in and week out, so ragequitting 3 hours in the midst of any given day will not be an option going forward.

Random sports-skimming thought: Do mullets on MLB pitchers have a practical purpose? Can they help gauge wind speed and direction, as well as give feedback to the neck and face on the consistency of pitching motions?

aaaaand stomach flu, or something like it. I won't blame the Paris buffet when the food seemed high-quality and well looked after. Though I wash my hands a lot during the day, I'm still handling plastic chips taken from hands from all over the world. For my last job, I worked in an office with the same 3 people for 12 years, so my overall immunity is going to be sketchy for a while.

My stuff and furniture arrive today. I'll give it a 35% chance that I **** myself at some point while moving it in.

My stuff showed up. I ran good and did not besoil myself; however, I did almost pass out from heat stroke or whatever they're calling it these days. It was 104°F (40°C), so it was not ideal conditions for someone with a stomach bug to be lugging heavy furniture and boxes through a narrow set of doors set at right angles to each other.

The last time I lived out here, after a few summers, 104° was nothing. At this time of year a day like this can be as much as 14°F (10°C) hotter. Nowadays I'm not yet acclimated to any real heat, so it wasn't long before the familiar dizzy black pixels of looming unconsciousness started working their way across my field of vision from stage left and stage right.

I sat down in the middle of the move for 10 minutes and rested and drank as much water as possible. Then I got on with it. Now I have boxes and boxes to open and sort. I'll do that piecemeal over the next days and weeks. For now the most important things are up and running.

You playing fallout?

Expected to see sex swing.

Disappoint.

The line about MLB mullets possibly serving as a functional wind gauge was pure gold, gl SJ love your tales.

War never changes, and neither do my playing habits. I love me some Fallouts 3, New Vegas and 4. I will be playing my first MMPORG(ish) game when Fallout 76 comes out.

I'm not mechanical enough to set up a swing that wouldn't auto-unerotically asphyxiate one or both of us. I'll have to wait until I bink something big to have one built for me.

Thanks Hank!

Nice! I fell deep down the rabbit hole in fallout 3 and vowed never to return to the wasteland after that. Right now I’m big into PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) on PC and Xbox. Battle Royale is my new thing and I hate the look of Fortnite and refuse to play it.

My Mouse/Keyboard muscle memory is severely lacking from my Counter-Strike days (my mouse aim is really really bad). I may buy Counter Strike Global Offensive: CS-GO to refine my mouse aiming, though I’m not sure I want to spend the time.

I’m hyper competitive so I have a hard time balancing only playing a couple hours a day vs getting better when it comes to multiplayer games. I don’t play online poker anymore tho so I gotta get my competition in somehow

I LOVE this thread!!

I don't have the vision or the reflexes for e-sports, though I like the idea of people getting paid for it. It's no less of a valid profession than billiards or darts or bowling. No question that there's going to be more money in this business as time goes on.

Thanks Rexx! I made this thread partly as an accessory for staving off loneliness as I've moved away from everything and everyone I've known, so it's always good to hear from you.

Downtown Run:

A dealer at Bally's told me there were no caps on buyins downtown. If someone wanted to throw down $15k on their spot at $1/$2 at the Golden Nugget or Binions, that would be perfectly fine. I checked it out.

At this point I don't trust myself with >200bb. Ten years spent as a casual online tournament and SNG player means that 95% of my hands have been played with a 1-100bb stack, with the majority of those at less than 50bb.

With a deep stack, I'm going to be folding to 3-bets and 4-bets too much, and stacking off too lightly. Both of these things are EV disasters. I will adjust; I just need time to shake off a decade of ingrained playing decisions.

The Golden Nugget is a comfortable and friendly room. I think the biggest $1/$2 stack was around $1500, so not terribly out of line. I'll be playing there more often, I think.

Binions, on the other hand, has an appearance of having gone downhill. They tore out the poker room for renovations, though it's supposed to be back at some point. The place had about one third of the player density as the other properties on Fremont at the time, and they were skimping on the air conditioning. It was probably around 78° (26°C) in there. To me, that's always the first sign that a property might be in trouble, though it may have been a maintenance issue for all I know.

I wanted to catch a movie at Neonopolis, but the theater is long gone. The place is nearly empty and moribund in the middle of the day.





Neonopolis was a big idea in the early 2000's to help revitalize the Downtown area. It failed on its own, but the sensibility was well-meaning, and on average the rest of Downtown does look more vital than it did when I was living out on the Stewart Avenue barrio at the turn of the century.

I left Downtown and played out the rest of the day at Orleans. On weekdays, I'm starting to lean towards locals>Strip regs, while reserving the Strip for the weekends and the prospect of more tourists at the tables.

I took my share of bad suckouts: as you do. I was only mad at a bad $20 call I made on the river from being inattentive and putting my opponent on a hand instead of a range, and thus completely missing the flush.

Towards the end of the run, the Bad Beat Jackpot hit at the Orleans. I wasn't at the table, but every holdem player sitting at a table at the time will get a small share. I'll be picking that up today. The consensus estimate on my share is $100-$150. I won't add it to the tally until I know the exact amount.

Gold Nugget and Orleans: 6 hours: ($-295)

Today I showed up at the Orleans to pick up my share of the bad beat jackpot. The lady at the cage sized me up and said to me, "We're only offering congratulations at this time." Then she laughed. Solid trolling imo. I received $142 for the bbj and tipped the cage $5.

Later at the Excalibur, I followed a $40 flop bet with a $100 near-zero equity bluff on the turn and was shoved on, and I had to fold with not a lot left behind. A half hour later, after a round of drunk straddles produced a $150 multiway pot on a flop of KT7r. I was in the SB with KJo and $250 behind, and I donked $100, using the same motions and whatnot as my turn whiff from the earlier hand. Folds to an observant but moderately intoxicated meh reg, who shoves over me for almost $250 with ATo.

I hold and stack him. As he got up, he told me that he had spazzed on that hand due to seeing my earlier bluff. And that is a short and basic primer on the power of aggression.

Orleans and Excalibur: 6 hours + bbj payout:
$+389

Enjoying the hand updates, suitedjustice. Keep up the grind. Rooting for your success in LV!

Don't you find the setting a bit depressing in the long run? I also loved Fallout 3, but lost interest in New Vegas somewhere in the middle; haven't looked at Fallout 4. I could play stuff like KotoR or Mass Effect all day long. I want it bright and shiny!

Thanks robert! Your kind words are just the thing at the end of a long day.

On a clear (in game) day, the Boston of Fallout 4 in its decay, seen from the top of any of a half dozen accessible skyscrapers, or from stretches of the 100 meter tall highway overpasses, is quite lovely. They did a beautiful job with the assets, and the colors pop a lot more than in FO3 or New Vegas.

So poker cosplayers are a thing. I've run across an even half dozen of these odd creatures so far. Its likely that I'm not the first person to coin the term "poker cosplayer," seeing as how it seems so apt.

Poker is a hobby; so is cosplay. Why not combine the two and get yourselves decked out in backpacks, designer shades, expensive headphones, (and hoodies and scarfs, I'm sure, once the weather grows colder) and head out to where the cards are in the air to show everyone your cool ass look?

The puzzling thing is that every last one of these guys is just plain awful at the game. I stopped giving them any initial respect after the third cosplayer, and that turned out to be a +EV move in all subsequent cases.

Not many hands of interest today. A good reg exploited me over two hands for being a tagfish and c-betting in position too much. I made a plan to adjust which involved checking back the flop and raising his likely turn donk on most boards, but we didn't have a chance to tangle after I'd made the plan.

One hand for the road, from MGM $1/$2: There's a limp from EP, I pick up red Queens in MP and make it $12. An okay reg calls from the button and EP calls.

Flop ($39) 823

EP checks, I bet $20, okay reg raises to $60, leaving $180 behind. EP folds.

I thought the sizing worked out right for me to get the last word in on the hand, so I shoved and okay reg tank folded his black queens face up.

Edit: Almost forgot the tally.

Golden Nugget, Mandalay Bay, MGM Grand: 8 hours:
+$80

How often do live players show the cards when not required to do so? Idk why that vil showed the black queens. Is it to build a weak tight image?

Not to speak for SJ but from my experiences for a variety of reasons:’pride and ego mainly though. They want to somehow show they had a reason to be losing those chips

Yeah what Nat said imo. It's emotion talking and poor strategy. I think he was saying, "Look everyone, I didn't raise him with nothing. I had something, see. Respect my raises."

Let's talk about the good things that would have happened to villain if he'd put in a small 3 bet pre. We'll assume that EP goes away after the 3 bet.

1) I make it $12 and okay reg makes it $40 to go. I 4 bet to $100. Okay reg shoves, making it $240, and putting me in a spot. I'm calling here and we're chopping effectively, and that's a better result for him, and a few bad nits are even going to find a fold in my spot--a great result for him.

2) I make it $12 and okay reg makes it $40 to go. I call.
Flop ($85) 823
I bet $55 and okay reg shoves, putting me in a spot. On the original hand as played, my range was uncapped. I could have had aces or kings. Okay reg didn't define it because he only flatted me. On this iteration, my range is capped (as I would have 4 bet with aces or kings, and I didn't) and okay reg's is uncapped, as he 3 bet and I only flatted.

I don't really understand people showing their cards although I love it when they do. I don't see how it benefits me at all so choose to take a blanket approach and never show.

I think it could be used to put somebody on tilt, but I'm not advanced enough in the live arena to attempt it.