*** TJ's 2024 WSOP Trip! ...That Might Turn Into A Move?

nice job

Woke up, packed up, and checked out before 11. Ubered over to the Horseshoe, and dropped my bags at valet, then needed to get something to eat.

I hadn’t had good pizza all trip, so I went upstairs and got some Giordano’s Chicago Deep Dish. Went with the 10” meat, and more meat special.

My scorching hot take: Chicago Deep Dish is definitely SOMETHING, but it’s not pizza. You don’t eat pizza with a fork and knife.

Detroit style, NY style, New Haven style, even Hawaiian style… those are all pizzas.

Chicago Deep Dish is more like a lasagna, or meat casserole, in the style of pizza.

Still very good, to be clear. But not pizza.

I started off eating everything, including the crust. That plan fell by the wayside about halfway through… then I tapped out with 4 or 5 more bites left for the last slice.

It was yeoman’s work. Now, I’m gonna head back to the WSOP, and play PLO til my flight tonight.

You have a late flight and chose that for your lunch? Seems like suicide without a place to sleep in the afternoon.

Have a fun last day!

Yeah that may have been a mistake, I’m moving MUCH slower than when I first woke up.

It was good, though!

As a proud Chicagoan, I take no offense with your take.

I think Chicago deep dish is quite good, but it's very different than the other styles you mention.

I do think it is pizza in the same way that Badugi is so different than No Limit Hold'em and Omaha. They are all poker, but completely different forms of poker. In that same way I think Chicago deep dish is pizza, just an entirely different form of pizza than the various thin crust styles of pizza.

Another resident chiming in: I definitely would call it pizza, but a lot of people (especially from the places mentioned) don't consider it to be. Some even call it a "casserole". Doesn't really bother me though either.

Good luck with PLO today and have a safe trip back!

New Haven for the win... you're welcome!!!

I lived in CT and NJ for three years and I wanna move back just for the pizza.

everything else sucks compared to the tri-state area pizza.

NYC Pizza is divine. I don't think I could ever enjoy Chicago Deep Dish.

Caught my flight back to Raleigh, and I’m home safe and sound.

It’s a relief that my car and my place were found in the condition I left them… but I have something of a science experiment going on for the milk I left in the fridge 18 days ago.

Per usual, I wasn’t able to sleep on the plane, plus with flying east, my body is very confused as to what time it is.

So I’m gonna take a little nap. When I get up, I’ll write up my last day, and recap this trip.

Thanks for taking us along for the ride, and congrats on a successful trip!

welcome home.
hopefully: nice to get away, and nice to be back

I’m from New Haven and live in chicago. That deep dish stuff ain’t pizza

THANK YOU!!!!

As I mentioned, it may have been a mistake to try and eat a whole meat deep dish pizza by myself for breakfast.

I (very slowly) walked back to the WSOP, and sat in a PLO game, and just felt awful. I didn’t quite have the meat sweats, but I was feeling lethargic and very unfocused.

I drank a black coffee, then a Red Bull to try and snap out of it, but I don’t think that actually helped. Made a bunch of bad decisions, and called off other people’s shoves with very meh draws, and bricked them all.

$1200 later, I realized I simply wasn’t playing good poker, and when I feel that way, that’s when I’ve learned it’s time to stop. Still with several hours to kill before my flight, I wandered aimlessly back into the casino, to try and figure out what I want to do today before heading to the airport.

After a full 18 days in Las Vegas, I was proud to say that I’d successfully stayed out of the pits the entire time. So I thought why the hell not, let’s take a shot at some craps, and see how it goes.

I buy in for $700 at a $25 min table, which thankfully wasn’t too busy. The first shooter’s roll is pretty good, and I’m up a couple hundred when it’s my turn to shoot.

My roll starts out really good, I remember hitting the 8 like three or four times. A guy on the other end of the table starts getting very excited, because I’m hitting all the numbers, and he bet the make ‘em all, plus the all talls.

Then I look up, and see I’ve hit ALL the numbers except 12. I say, “Oh, I guess we really need a 12 now, right?” The guy agrees, enthusiastically. Sure enough, my very next roll, boxcars for the 12! He had the boom or bust, which is ALL of them, for $25 at 151:1, plus the all talls at 34:1.

I’ll save you the math: that’s good for a payout of $4,650. He gives me a BIG hug, (but not a tip for me, or for the dealers), as the pit boss comes over to pay him 9 purples, a black, and two greens.

Obviously, it was a pretty great roll for me, too, and now the table is pretty full, after all the excitement of the make em all coming in. With all the noobs coming over and changing money, I can tell it’ll really slow the game down, so I take this opportunity to color up and call it a session.

In for $700, out with $1565. Not bad.

Well that was fun, let’s take my three purples over to try some (6:5, ugh) blackjack. I color down two of the purples, and keep the third in my pocket.

I try to keep count, but to do that effectively, you really have to practice, which I haven’t done lately. So I just keep it to $50 bets, and double it to $100 if I see a run of low cards come out.

Then it starts to turn south, and the dealer really begins to annoy me. Don’t ****ing slowroll me, bro. If I double down, and you give me the card face down, when it’s time to turn it over, don’t look at it, take your sweet time, furrow your brow, sadly shake your head, and THEN flip it up, so I can see that I lost. Rip the bandaid off and just ****ing run it out.

I should have gotten up for that reason alone, but I didn’t, and instead colored down my last purple, then lost that too. …At least I had my play rated, so maybe I’ll get offers from Caesar’s for it.

So that’s frustrating, to punt off all the white meat from a great craps run, PLUS my cost basis… AND I still have a few more hours in town.

Okay, let’s try pai gow instead. A great, low variance, time wasting game. Buy into a quarter minimum table for $400… and I’m the only one at the full table who’s NOT playing the side bets, fortune bonus, or envy bonus.

All the players, and the dealer, treat this as though it’s some major breach of protocol NOT to be playing all the horribly -EV side bets. They ask if I’m new to casinos. Well then. If I actually make a 7 card royal flush with no joker, I’ll just take my $25, thanks.

That $400 would probably have lasted me until the airport, at quarter minimum bets, but I was down so much on the day already, that it put me in a bad, chasing mindset. I gradually increased my bets, Martingaling when I lost, and busted that, too. At least I didn’t go any deeper.

Now I’m reminded why I dutifully stayed out of the pits this whole 18 day trip.

Can I please go to the airport now?

When I was grinding long hours in tournaments, or playing epic cash sessions, I told myself I can do it because I love poker. But after my last day, I began to think, for the first time, that maybe 18 days in Vegas is a bit too long.

To recap the poker, first the good: Officially won money at tournaments this trip! $3,340 in tournament buyins, and $3,390 in tournament cashes. Woohoo.

More seriously, though, I had not one, but TWO deep runs, for a shot at legitimately life-changing money. It didn’t happen for me this time, but I think if I keep putting myself in good spots, it could happen someday.

The cash games, however, (and the pit games, obviously) were decidedly less good.

I’m too proud to say the number out loud, but rest assured I know the exact number, and it’s a big number. Most of it came at 1/3, plus some at 2/5. PLO was close to even.

Don’t feel sorry for me, though. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’ll be just fine.

In the month before I left for my trip, I’d been playing in a private, online 2/4 PLO game (with no rake!) and it had been going about as well as it possibly could have. It doesn’t always run, as it depends on who’s flush for the moment, but when it did, I was up well into 5 figures.

I went from deciding how much of my emergency fund I could responsibly allocate for Vegas, to maxing out my Roth IRA for 2024, in a single transaction.

Once the dust settles on this trip, I’m fired up to take whatever’s left over, and add a bunch of VOO to my brokerage account. That’s Vanguard’s flagship ETF that tracks the S&P 500, at an industry-leading expense ratio of a paltry 2 basis points.

While I’m too proud to answer everyone’s favorite follow up, “But how much did you lose?” I can do a lot of good for the faithful readers of this TR to answer how much did I spend.

Flight: $545.

Very happy to get Raleigh to Vegas direct both ways. Also flew on Delta, which is a measurably better experience than flying Frontier or Spirit, whom I usually end up with. Free in flight WiFi should be standard on EVERY flight. The infotainment center with the flight tracker, or tons of free movies, was really cool too.

Airbnb: 18 nights at $84 a night, after all fees, for $1,512.

As mentioned above, it’s all about trade offs. I didn’t need a super nice place, and the place I chose was just fine, for what I wanted from it. I walked to a bunch of places downtown, and did two loads of laundry during my trip.

Food: $1,768.

I didn’t really splurge for any fine dining, but Vegas is definitely an expensive place to eat. If you’re planning a Vegas trip, $100/day is a prudent place to start. The most memorable meals of my trip were at Honey Salt, Shang Artisan Noodles, and Carson Kitchen.

Transportation: $1,127, plus another $205 in cash tips.

I took 41 rides with Uber, and tipped every Uber driver a $5 bill. A few times it was more convenient to just get in the cab line, and every time I regretted it. A cab ride was consistently $15-$20 more than an Uber would have cost, and they tax you another few bucks if you want to pay with card instead of cash. And when you’re paying up, the lowest suggested auto-tip starts at 25%. Rent-seeking *******s.

So I ended up spending more than the $2.5k I allocated for food and Uber. I’ll incorporate that into my planning for next time.

sorry about the poker results but it seems like you had a fun trip. Any parting thoughts on Vegas?

and thanks for the detailed and fun TR

Results are overrated. Glad to hear you're flush with cash and can lose bricks without breaking a sweat!

Thanks for taking us all along for the TJ Experience Ride.

Glad you were able to find some joy in the tourney streets. They can be a cold place, but uniquely thrilling when things go well.

Carson Kitchen is high on my list of spots to check out. I just haven't been in that area in a while.

I'm wondering if hotels would make more sense than Airbnb when you factor in the transportation costs. I'm guessing you could get a rate in the same ballpark at a CET property, though not for the full chunk of days. If you were willing to jump around a bit on the strip and move a few times, maybe. Being within walking distance to a lot of venues would cut down some of the Uberhead. If you specifically want the Airbnb vibe then it's a moot point.

Great trip report TJ! Appreciated the wrap up at the end.

Spent a few days there last month and definitely felt like it was more expensive lately (e.g. killing time waiting for a friend at the MGM and played some vp and hit my first royal flush for $600. woohoo!, Went to haagen dazs in the food court to celebrate. Figured it would be pricey. Got a single scoop in a waffle cone with chocolate/nuts around the edge. It was $22. I asked if that was correct and they said yes, then the credit card machine asked if I wanted to tip...). FWIW the Ben & Jerry's at the Horseshoe was much cheaper.

All In McLovin in NYC.

Thanks for a great TR, TJ, and best of luck as you consider moving to Vegas.

Yes, that is me exactly. :p

I thought I've had deep dish pizza before, and it was nothing like Giordano's. Which is more like a bowl of tomato and sausage soup.