Today at Bally's I sat next to a remarkable woman in her early thirties. She might be a pro grinder; if not, she's a very talented amateur with good card sense, a great handle on ranges and uncanny live reads on everyone. Fierce, loud, fearless, whip smart, funny as hell and with endless gamble in her, she had amassed two almost ridiculous stacks of blacks and greens when I sat down--chips which she hilariously demanded be completely colored down to reds so she could build herself a massive red $3100 pyramid.

I fell in hopeless love with her almost immediately. I got over it, as her look seemed carefully designed to let everyone know that she was not interested in boys, much less in an old geezer like myself.

She was a blast to play with, in any case. And that made the session fly by. She had a dynamic going with another gamble happy lag on her right, and the two of them were on my immediate right, so I was able to intercept chips for myself in good spots when one or both of them got out of line.

Bally's, Flamingo and Treasure Island: 8 hours:
+$321

Putting someone on tilt is a good reason but anyone that way inclined can probably be put on tilt with some well chosen words anyway.

That last session sounds like fun

It was, Rexx. Hell, even a bad day at the tables, like today was, is better than a good day at work ever was.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before I ran into a strat-talking reg. Today was the day, and it tilted me far more than I ever thought it would.

Part of that rage, I think, comes from the old days, when I was a blackjack card counter. Back then, I had good cover, which is more than half the battle. I dressed like a local. I drank like a fish, and I never sat at third base (i. e. last to act) as that was where counters were supposed to sit at the blackjack table, in order to gain a few hundredths of a percent EV, at the cost of having their covers blown. I would always be doing fine on the cover front until other counters would show up: nerds in button down shirts, splitting up at the edge of the floor and sitting down at various third bases on different tables, and ordering water. JFC would that get the floor's dander up, and that was never good for anyone trying to hustle up a buck at 21.

Flash forward to the present, and this nerd reg is keeping up a steady stream of one-way 2+2 strat talk with a bad 50bb gamble reg sitting next to him, the latter of whom has the presence of mind to tell the twerp to can it with the strat.

This shut him up for about a minute and a half, when lo and behold his twerpier mini-me shows up to sweat his play, sending him into full-on nonstop coaching mode, impossible not to overhear, at a table full of loose-passive locals.

There was one other decent reg at our table, on my left. And he asked me, "You getting all this?" referring to the chattering game ruiners.

"Yeah," I answered while racking up and giving the strat boys a 7/10 middle-aged stinkeye. "I think I've learned enough for today."

Today was long and eventful, and I booked a chunky loss. But the loss would have been $200 more had I not been involved in the strangest hand I have ever seen. I still don't believe it, and I was there. It happened to me.

I'm tired as hell and I can't do the hand any justice right now. I'll write it up tomorrow.

Red Rock Casino, Mirage, Flamingo: 8 hours:
(-$508)

You would think a reg would know better then to talk strat at the table. It's mind numbingly boring for one and it makes the fish think more about their play. So you're basically boring the table while at the same time making it less fishy. It has to be ego and a total lack of self-awareness that makes people do this. I'd have given him a 9/10 dirty look for sure, gotta save the 10/10 ones for emergencies!

Great updates, Suited! I just caught up with this thread.

It's true. I will almost certainly stay in Poland, trying to find a new office job. I'm not old enough to become a live poker pro.

Hopefully I didn't oversell this.



I don't know what tech convention was in town--it seemed to have some sort of IT/military/government contractor theme--but I can't find it on the google machine.

Most of the guys at the Mirage $1/$2 table were attendees, and the chips were flying around thick and piling up. $20-$25 opens were getting called in 4-5 spots, and 3-4 way all ins on the flop were the norm. If you've ever checked out action at the lowest level of an online play money game, it looked quite a bit like that, but with real nl200 stack money that turned into nl500-sized stacks before long.

I was utterly card dead, despite being willing to relax my standards quite a bit: K8s? Sure. ATo? Absolutely.

I did not get even these marginal cards much, and I picked up zero good hands, much less premiums. The few times I did pick up marginal hands and tossed in $15-$25, it turned into all in pre 2-3 ways by the time it got back to me. I kept track of each time I tried to get in
"cheap" pre with marginals, and saw that I would have been dominated by 1-2 hands in every spot, and would have lost every one of those gambles, had I thrown my stack in.

Finally, after two long hours of sitting at the feast with no plate or silverware, I picked up KK in ep and tossed in $20 to go. Seeing as how I was the Old Man Coffee at the table, I got folds around to the biggest whale in the blinds, who tossed in chips without looking at his cards.

Pot ($41)
Flop J73
I bet $30 and the whale called.

Pot ($101)
Turn J
I bet $50 with $200 behind (having just topped up to $300) and the whale minraised to $100.

I had seen him do this exact thing a number of times in this spot with any piece or any draw whatsoever. I deployed the stack-pushing thumbs East and West and oriented the index fingers forward for a full and complete shipment.

"Don't do it." said the whale.

That stopped me. I hadn't heard him give a speech before.

"I have a boat." he said. I froze in confusion, as I more than half believed him.

He asked to the dealer, "Can I show him?" The dealer indicated that he could show his cards if he wanted.

Pot ($251)


A complete stranger showed me his cards and saved me from shoving $200 with 2 outs. I try to be genial and upbeat at the table--throwing a stinkeye at the strat-talker from yesterday is by far the nastiest I've ever been--and I chat and joke a moderate amount in a lighthearted way--but I hadn't said a word to this guy, and he decided for some reason that he didn't need my $200.

He had around $1200 in his stack, hadn't rebought once, and was getting ready to rack up, but damn: who doesn't like money? Who doesn't like winning another big pot? I'm still flabbergasted.

Poker is as much about personality as money. He would literally regret stacking your KK with J7o.

Long live live poker!

Also, being resident OMC has some perks, obviously!

I actually witnessed something similar in one of my rare live cashgame sessions; it was actually in Vegas in the Stratosphere Tower. I don't remember the details of the first hand; essentially a guy made a bet on the turn or the river, and the guy to his left contemplated what to do. After a while the bettor casually flashed his cards to the tanker (who was to my right so I saw the cards as well) and said something like "yeah I just made my straight" (I think it was a wheel) with a shrug, after which the other guy folded.

Some time later there was a similar situation; this time definitely on the river. The same guy who showed his made straight before made a bet on a paired board and the player to his left (which I think was someone else by that time, but I'm not sure) was really tanking. Again, the bettor flashed his hand after a while showing he got trips and saying something like "yeah I just have trips".

Immediately after the bettor showed his hand the other guy pushed his chips in the middle. The bettor (who was covered) thought for a short while and called, lost to trips with a better kicker, and immediately left the table in disgust.

Awesome blog so far. Really enjoying it! glgl

Live poker can be an astonishing new world after years of online play. Being present, sitting together at a table seems to bring out more opportunities to be a bro (or a sis).


That's an interesting spot for the guy with the better hand. What would you do there?

Thanks WorldzMine! I appreciate hearing from you!

Yesterday was a day off. Today is supposed to be a day off, but I'm feeling antsy. I think I'll head out soon, get something to eat, then hit the Bally's 3PM $100 2k gtd.

My experience, such as it is, comes from micro to mid-stakes online tournaments. I can hold my own at those levels, but I can't multitable to save my life, so I've never considered grinding online.

So why not make a career out of live tournies? Firstly, I don't have the bankroll for $500+ buyins. It would be necessary for me to make a name for myself and then to sell shares. Given time, I might even be able to pull that off, but for all of my adult life, I've been serving bosses and customers. I wanted a break from that, preferably for the rest of my life. Once I start selling shares, I'll have customers all over again.

How about grinding $100-$200 buyins? I'd estimate my ROI at those to be around 10%.

Why so low? Well...



It seems to me that the average stay at a tourney (for a single player, buyin to bustout, not the complete tourney) with 20-minute blinds is somewhere just North of 2 hours. I'd be interested to hear other estimates on that if you know that's wrong. So $5-$10 an hour EV for $100-$200 buyins. Not sustainable.

So I have established a no tournaments rule for the work week. Any tournies will have to be played for fun on my day off.

Yeah, I mean a decent/good player can prolly do 20-30% EV in these tourneys despite the steep rake because most peeps are just incredibly awful, but then again, I don't really think there are too many good regs in these tourneys because there's just not enough money to be made.
You always struck me as more of a tourney player, but hope you can make it in cash regardless. The variance in live tourneys, where you can just play like one tourney a day tops on average is just brutal, if you do the math. As a 20-30% EV player you could easily go on cold streaks for months.
I recently looked at my stats from this year (first time lol) when I started tracking again, and playing just slightly below $1-$3 on average I was able to carve out just slightly short of 50 US$/h over a somewhat reasonable sample size (160h). This is not a brag, it's not a lot of money actually, you know where I live, but it shows that you can do better in cash and with less variance for sure. And almost all of that was in a high rake environment (Europe and Asia) and mostly with nonexistent table selection opportunities, you gotta be able to do better than that in Vegas.

$50/hr is a very good wr for $1/$3, Fire.

I don't expect to make anywhere near that while I'm transiting from tournadonk to live cash grinder. The goal for July and August is to learn the ropes and get to where I can start mixing in some $2/$5 sessions by the beginning of September.

Bally's switched up their schedule, and they weren't running their $100 $2k gtd at 3pm yesterday. Nearby at 4pm, the Flamingo had a tourney with most of the same features, but blind levels there were 15 minutes, which is basically the live version of a hyper. I don't mind hypers per se but I can't countenance dropping a hundo on one. All it takes is a few minutes of being card dead and you're effectively playing bingo, but with, say, the free space cut out.

Today I ran into something that Bart Hanson covered in one of his old Crush Live Poker articles, in which he posited that your table image is affected by whether you're winning or losing, and that the effect of these short term win/loss results is just as strong on others as is how you're actually playing the game.

First session at the Orleans, I could not get anything going. My lower equity c-bets were getting checkraised on dry flops, my turn barrels were getting bombed and my thin river value was getting shoved on. Even the passive players were ****ing with me. Hanson says get up and find another table in this spot, even if conditions are otherwise good. I picked up and went to lunch.

After lunch I sat down at a new table, immediately made 2nd nuts with AA on a 448AK board, and got paid all the way. After that I basically ran the table for an hour, getting folds on my c-bets and turn barrels and whatnot. Then I went card dead and my image went back to neutral.

Now the first issue to address here is lol sample size. But Hanson, being the first who I've seen to report on the win/loss image phenomenon, has ostensibly played a ton of live hands. I'll be keeping a closer eye on this winning:image correlation going forward.

Orleans and Flamingo: 8 hours
$+475

Very interesting SJ. This could be further support for the advice from Barry Greenstein about ending live sessions. He will end a live session when down at a normal time and extend his winning sessions longer. Possibly this is because of the more powerful winning image. He also starts with half a stack so that his opponents are always chasing their own money.

Is that from Ace On the River, robert? I've been meaning to buy that. It seems to be one of the few poker books out there that didn't come with a two-year expiration date. Just before I moved here I donated a pretty large sum of 2002-2009 dated poker books to the local library. Someone from in my previous town in New England is going to be well-read breakeven player.

He had two epic live YouTube interviews with ChicagoJoey recently, and gave lots of poker and life strat.

I don’t have Ace on the River, and it is out of print which is why Barry no longer gives away signed copies.

Definitely I recommend those interviews for some wisdom on live poker as well as life in general. Barry is one of GOAT good guys, imo.

SJ, if I remember correctly you used to play BJ.
Did you ever use this "winning image" table perception in BJ tournaments?

I will check those out for sure if they're still around. I don't agree with starting out with a half stack though, at least at the lowest levels. I've doubled early in three different sessions this week, with 100-150bb in hand each time--once at 1/3 and twice at 1/2. If I had bought in with 50bb each time, I would have ~$650 less in my current bankroll.

I always played bj in the pits, where looking like a loser to the floor was the profitable move.

I only ever played one bj tournament, at the old Lady Luck casino downtown. There was no need for a table image, as everyone was playing against the dealers.

As with the pits, card counting was a positive EV move for the tournament, though pure tourney strat applied more and more at the event wore on.

One of my blackjack heroes, Stanford Wong, had devised and published a rather complicated blackjack tourney strat. I cribbed it and tried to work it in with the card counting. But trying to deduce a combinative algorithm between counting and Wong's tournament strategy on the fly made my brain want to leak out of my ears and slither off somewhere quiet and unseen.

Add to that the fact that the pitboss running the tournament had decided that I was trying to stall for advantage or what have you, and he was birddogging my ass throughout the whole event trying to get me to act faster. I went out just before the bubble.

Some crude late 90's internet research on my part had led to the suggestion that Stanford Wong was not actually man of Asian descent; instead that his real surname was Scotch-Irish.

So, when soon after I busted out of that tourney, a scholarly looking reddish-haired gentleman of about Mr. Wong's age, dressed in a button down shirt, approached me and told me that he'd thought I'd done a good job with the tournament, I felt a bit like the kid at the end of the old Mean Joe Green commercial.



I thanked him but, regretfully I did not have the balls to ask him if he was or possibly knew my hero, Stanford Wong.

Had a guy with what seemed to be severe Alzheimer's at the table today, leading to bad behavior on the part of one of the other players. Details tomorrow.

Flamingo and Bally's: 8 Hours:
+$64

I really enjoyed Greenstein's book but I am with SJ that buying in for the full amount is the way to go.

To be fair, I neglected to include getting stacked early in one session for $400, when it could have been for $150, but that still puts us ~$400 ahead overall for having full stacks.