Quote:
Originally Posted by LEMONZEST
Great thread Like. I am interested to hear more about your Las Vegas experience if you don't mind sharing it.
Thanks.
So like I said before, I was out there for like 10 months. I was more into poker at the time and was playing 20/40 limit at the bellagio (I was out there when they moved all their limit games from 3 chip to 4 chip games; 15/30 to 20/40 and 30/60 to 40/80 which was a big deal). I loved the bellagio, it was like what you think a LV poker will be before you get there. Little ostentatious, old but not run down, awesome tables... you have doyle brunson playing poker 20 feet away from you like its no big deal. I played there a lot and eventually more Aria whose 8/16 game was crushable and way more fun. I made one really outgoing friend (asian mark aka tuna, bet people know who he is) who really showed me around and I became part of his group of all these people, none of which were from there. Literally not one person was actually from nevada. And people would just come and go all the time...one time theyre there, then theyre gone. I asked mark about this and he said thats just the way it was. People constantly come and go. One guy even stole from him! Pretended to be his friend, got some money for golf clubs and then just upped and disappeared. It was strange for me since my friends and I had been together since middle school and everyone else around here that I knew was the same way. It seemed like no one had any roots in las vegas. It seemed no one was attached to anyone or anything, really. And I think maybe this is more of an east coast/west coast thing, but people were really weirdly fake nice and fake sincere out there. People you just met act like theyre your best friend. It sounds kinda nice but it isnt. Its hard to explain. I just remember feeling loneliness and desperation from people (but who knows, maybe I was projecting. I certainly felt lonely).
As for betting, I really couldnt make it work for me out there. At first I would just go to a sports book and looks for off market straights or stale parlay cards, what have you. That didnt work. These books werent just handing out money. So I tried with props but even that logistically didnt really work. Because you have to do your work at home beforehand and you dont even know what the bets will be. So Id do projections for games and bring my little piece of papers with me and go to books and ask for their prop sheet. Most of the time they had nothing, if they did it was usually stuff like NBA team to score first with -120 both sides. Then Id finally find a prop sheet and there would be a few bets here and there. But then Id think how is this any easier or better than betting online? It wasnt, of course.
One thing I di do tha kinda did work was that I found out about these little off the strip sports books. Theyre almost like the PPHs of las vegas. Theyre these tiny little run down casino/bars with sports books in them that are way off the strip. They would have off market stuff from time to time. But you have to physically go there to really look so again, logistically it wasnt great.
The best were "stations" casinos. They were off the strip but barely. Theyd have college basketball totals that were like a point or two off from pinny. Id go there almost every day and chase steam. One time I was betting and could see a guy off to the side on a comp very obviously listening to me and the clerk talking. I got my first couple bets in and after that everything I said the clerk would go to put it in and say "oh sorry the line just changed." The guy was listening to me and changing the lines right before I could bet.
Eventually I figured I was at best breaking even at poker and betting was way more trouble than it was worth so I stayed home a lot. The strip itself can be draining. Every single thing is designed to get as much money from you as possible, as fast as possible. By the end of the lease I couldnt wait to leave.
I think a lot about how many things Id do differently now. I could have been way WAY more professional about betting and made it work for me if I tried really hard. I could have done better at poker. I never did any work at home or anything. It was really more of a year long vacation/adventure than a 'career move' and I was like 24 or 25 at the time so I dont regret it at all. But I do wish I had either taken it way more seriously or not serious at all.