Thanks Sheep! That would be the ideal short term outcome. That's some solid GTO thinking

The rungood continues. My main problem now is that I'm being lax with hours. I pick up a few hundo and I'm ready to go home for the day. That's not how this thing works. It's all one long game, and I'm not playing enough of it atm. I'll have to make a New Year's resolution/hard schedule.

One hand today that I think I butchered: Villain acted out of turn and It seemed to throw me off my game. LMK if you think I bled some Sklansky bucks here, or if I'm being results oriented.

Bally's $1/$2:

EP opens for $10. I pick up 65 in the CO and call. BTN calls and both blinds call. I have $300 behind and cover everyone. BTN has second highest stack with $220 behind. BB has around $200 behind.

(Pot $50) 5 players.

Flop 78K

Checks to me. As I'm reaching for betting chips, BTN on my left bets $40 out of turn. Dealer points it out and BTN pulls his bet back.

I check. BTN goes ahead with his $40 bet. SB folds, BB calls, EP folds. I call.

(Pot $170) 3 players.

Turn 2

BB checks. I shove for $180 effective.

(Pot $350) 3 players.

BTN folds and BB folds.

Bally's: 4 hours:
+$355

Rungood is awesome, 'bout time imo.

wrt the HH:

Imo, playing flush draws and made flushes profitably vs randoms is to play your ranked hand as if you are not holding the flush suits. So, you could have bet the flop with a straight draw, and check the made flush on the turn. This way, you always leave your muppet opponents the opportunity to bluff "representing" the flush draw or the made flush, which you are in fact already holding.

I like to call it a Negreanu, when one player is repping what the other player is holding, since Daniel unfortunately did this several times on television.

Just my 2c, thanks for living out my Las Vegas fantasy life!

Yours is the best plan imo if you have an aggro fish on the line. I'm not saying that Daniel's an aggro fish though

Daniel's vast advantage comes from hand reading.



You can only deny him full information by stationing down if he's barreling, and of course he gets to have a pure value hand just as often as everyone else.

I forgot to classify the two players in the hand, which was not very helpful of me.

BB was a passive station and BTN was a straightforward player. BTN definitely had something on the flop, thus his eagerness to get in a near-pot sized bet out of turn.

I was going to lead the flop, but after BTN .8x potted it out of turn and was forced to pull it back, I thought that a checkraise would be better than leading and getting raised. The former would make it more likely that the station in the BB would put his $40 in.

Then I whiffed the checkraise. Then I spazzed with a pot shove on the turn when I did hit.

Neither of these 'plays' had much thought behind them, other than fear--fear of a better straight or flush draw on the flop vs my baby flush and dummy end straight draw, then fear on the turn for a set or a higher heart calling a smaller bet and getting there on the river.

I needed to be deliberate and courageous in this hand and be willing to risk a beat for a higher EV, and I wasn't.

All right, upon further review, I have an objection to my bolded statement.

Negreanu is not allowed to have a pure value hand as often as everyone else, due to the fact that he plays more marginal starting hands. If you are a TAG, your potential EV comes from having a better hand than Daniel on average, both pre and post.

His value comes from being a better hand reader, and thus either making you fold better hands or denying you value when he folds good second best hands.

Opposite play, if it melds with your range and the board, is normally a good strategy against good LAGs: it screws up their hand reading. But Daniel seems to have an uncanny ability to know when people are playing opposite. That may be due to so many players trying it against him.

Tonight the rungood came to an end with a KK<AA AIPF hand for 210bbs effective. It's been almost forever since I've run into that spot live; so I have that going for me, which is nice.

It was a nice run indeed, quite fun and almost scary in places. Tomorrow, I'll get back on the grind.

Harrahs: 7 hours:
(-$459)

It's 4:38 AM. I'm at Ellis Island Casino having dinner/breakfast.

AC/DCs It's a Long Way to the Top (if You Want to Rock n Roll) is playing over the sound system, and it's a perfect moment.

I think you lost a few Sklansky cents preflop by not folding (unless you know your opponents well and are a very good postflop player, I guess).

"I wanted to play a 4 hour session, but after 3 hours my mental state was veering wildly up and down, from having winner's tilt in one moment, to playing scared money from wanting to book a big W at my first $2/$5 session in the next moment. That situation was not conducive to optimal play, so I wrapped it up early."



Protip: Never end a session at a high point. If you only quit sessions on micro-downswings you will callous yourself to losing. This will also help you add hours and you won't be capping your wins and left thinking "what if I had stayed?" It doesn't have to be a significant sum if you really wanna leave, just wait at least until you lose the next raised pot. I got this from Barry Greenstein's book.

A very kind 2p2er gifted me Greenstein's book, and it's one of only a few pre-2010 books that still holds up. I may have to look into quitting on small downswings, as the predetermined timed endings are affecting my play towards the back end, and that's causing me to lose EV.

Last night I forgot to bring my buyins with me, and I got knocked down early to a hundo and had to hit the ATM. I use a casino ATM once or twice a year, and on every single visit I am cut off by Bank of America.

B of A texted me, asking if I was trying to take $400 out. I replied yes and was then texted that everything was fine, and told that I could go back and try the transaction again. This time I tried $500, and I was denied. I have $10k in that particular checking account.

I texted B of A a long screed with a lot of F words in it, one of them being Fargo, as in Wells Fargo. They replied that I had already replied to them, and that any further texting would be useless.

I have a Chinese knockoff Android phone from ZTE. It's actually a great phone for everything except for making and receiving phone calls: the speaker is too dim, and there's no way to adjust it. I was in Planet Hollywood at 2AM, which is the opposite of a quiet place.

I played on for a little while with my eensy hundo stack, until I was close to steaming. I could feel my face getting red, so I hopped up and cashed out.

2p2er FWWM (aka Fire), a Bavarian and a gentleman, was playing at another table at PH. I told him I'd take him out and show him how the locals get their drink on at 3AM, and he was amenable. While he was playing his orbit out, I was able to find a small cone of relative quiet near the bathrooms. I called up B of A, ironed everything out, and got $500 out of the machine.

Off to Ellis Island Casino and Brewery, where Fire and I drank pints of every one of their house brew offerings--priced at $2.50 a pint--with the single exception of their light beer because **** light beer.



We had a good talk and finished drinking them all around five-ish, maybe?

Now here I am on New Years Eve afternoon. I've expressed some interest in this blog around playing tonight, to see if people tighten up after midnight as Mike Caro has asserted, but after hearing a dealer describe what the 2019 version of New Years in Las Vegas will entail, I now have zero interest in going down to the Strip for it.

My last New Years in Las Vegas was with my bookstore friends in 2001 or 2002 or...2003--it's fuzzy. Las Vegas Boulevard was closed to traffic, there was a banging fireworks show coordinated from a half-dozen properties, and we walked from casino to casino, even once catching a glimpse of Huey Lewis throwing the dice at Caesars Palace. It was a good night.

According to a dealer at Harrahs, this year they're barricading off the casinos; you'll need to show your room key to get in. Who wants to walk up and down a single street with barricades on both sides?

Harrahs and Planet Hollywood: 4 hours:
(-$378)

The thing that gave me wood today was the chip stack from 2/5.

It ain't all sunshine and rainbows, but you do have a few patches of brightness shining through that make me believe in the run-good.

Lonnnnng time 2p2 lurker, but subbed here... just read your rules for the challenge. Rooting for you for the rest of your challenge hours!

GL.

Did the casinos really lock people out?

It was freezing!

It was more like 6am, the AaaaAaAaaaa was strong with all the different beers and my standard HK poison the ol' long island iced tea in the end. Def topped the NYE drinking, Suited is a very nice guy and very knowledgeable all things LV and gambling.
I played at the Golden nugget. No post-new years nitting up observed. There was an AI and call right at the year change, I wasnt in the hand though. You couldn't get on Fremont though, unless you bought some 45$ pass lol.

Once again I let you down, Sheep, by not giving the stack size of the EP opener. He had around $300 and I covered. So, our remaining stacks were around 29x the size of the opening bet.

Small suited connectors can be fine in this spot, if you're in position and you plan on only sticking around if you either smash the flop or pick up a good draw that you can use to apply a lot of pressure. No getting sticky with a crappy 3rd pair no kicker there.

Still, even with the above considered, 65s is the bottom of my calling range there and is likely to be just a few Sklansky pennies to the good, depending on sticky Villain is with top pairs and overpairs, and on how I play post.

Going with AC/DC here...

Gettin' robbed
Gettin' stoned
Gettin' beat up
Broken boned
Gettin' had
Gettin' took
I tell you folks
It's harder than it looks
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll

Thanks SherlockHomie! I plan on being back at the Red Rock $2/$5 on Friday or Saturday for the next challenge session.


I can't confirm this because I didn't go. FWWM heard something similar regarding barricades, but he wasn't planning on going to the Strip for New Years either.

Yeah, Las Vegas is 2000 feet (600m) higher than LA. It can be slightly chilly here during the winter. Nothing compared to New England, tho.

It’ll be freezing tonight though! Splitting hairs but I thought LV is 2500 ft above sea level? Maybe some parts like Summerlin or Nellis and North LV are and others like the center of the valley are a few hundred feet lower?

Just making stoner conversation.

I just typed the **** into google and took the figure they gave me.

It's 2k without weed. At least 2.5k for Natamus

By the time you get up to Red Rock Canyon, it's about 3800' (1160m). So like Nat said, it depends on where you are and how many gummies you've taken.

Fire is right I’m always 500 feet above the rest of the population. It’s why I’m always talking down to Sammy and Tuma

Denmark's highest point is 6 feet.

This is gold

SJ,

Good news everyone! The condo association approved us which is the last step in moving into this building. You can get approved on everything else but if the COA board don’t like you or your application to join they can deny you. This seems against equal housing laws in my limited opinion but since we got approved I don’t really care one way or another.

Move in is like start of February and we have to get adjusted so not sure if I’ll make the super bowl games this year but I’ll be in for some conference tourney and March Madness action!

You know what SJ I’ll start my own Vegas with Blackjack and Hookers... what? They have all of that and more and pro sports? **** it me and the wife are moving to Vegas, baby!

Welcome Nat! Well played in the real estate game. Make sure you bring a jacket. It was 27F (-3C) this morning. I know that's standard winter in most places, but not here.