Nitty by Nature 6: The Nit Stays in the Picture TR (5/23-6/28 and beyond?)

Is it too early to post this? Yeah, I think it's too early to post this. I still have 12 days until my trip, but I'm sitting here trapped inside on a Saturday with a mild cold and a growing case of poker fever. We're entering summer TR season. Reading through the other entries is getting me excited for my own annual sojourn to the desert, so please forgive me for the premature etripulation.

Honestly, I didn't know if I'd do a TR this year. When I first came out for the WSOP in 2018, it was my first trip to Vegas in 5 years and my first time EVER being in town during the series. It was a very special occasion for me. Everything was fresh and exciting. After five years of doing these, I've begun to feel a bit like the jaded old-timer. I've played over 100 MTTs in Vegas since that 2018 trip. I've seen all the sights and played all the rooms. I've achieved a lot of my initial (modest) poker goals.

What's left to do? What's left to see?

One of the ironic things about poker is the paradoxical diminishing and increasing returns. Hear me out. On that first trip in 2018, I played a $110 nightly at the Nugget. Low stakes, low pressure, low prestige, but...this was possibly going to be my first ever recorded live MTT cash (I had cashed a couple small untracked events at the local tribal casino in college). When we went on break near the money bubble, I was so excited that my hands were shaking. Now I can be sitting at a final table playing for a decent chunk of money and feel almost nothing. That's what I mean by increasing and diminishing returns. My skills have gradually improved with experience, while the excitement that I derive from the game has dropped. For the most part, the tense spots no longer affect me very much.

You can see how so many players fall into the trap of always trying to play bigger, like a junkie chasing that first initial high.

Ultimately though, bigger is not always better. While I do yearn to level up and play bigger (more on that later), I still find poker intrinsically rewarding, even if the adrenaline spikes have waned. Like a lot of poker players, I enjoy the puzzle and strategic aspects of the game. I've found that you can have as much fun in a $200 event as you can in a $1k if you focus on the process and not the extrinsic rewards. Likewise, the process of writing these TRs is enjoyable for me, even if there's not necessarily a lot of fresh ground for me to break. I like writing them. I like going back and reading them.

With that mind, I guess Nitty by Nature 6 was never really in doubt. Hence the title of this year's entry:

"The kid stays in the picture!"

Before I look ahead and discuss this year's plans, I'll start by looking back.

BACKGROUND

Like a lot of people in my age bracket, I'm a Moneymaker baby. I played poker sparingly in high school before catching the fever in college. The early WPT seasons on Travel Channel and ESPN's constant reruns of the 2003 WSOP kicked my curiosity into overdrive. I began splashing around live and online, first in LHE and then later moving on to NL. I eventually became a prolific 180 man SNG grinder on PokerStars in the late 00s. I wasn't winning a lot of money, but I was winning, over a huge sample size.

Black Friday hit, other life priorities took precedence, and poker took a backseat. I effectively quit the game for most of a decade, though I would still sweat the WSOP every summer with intense pangs of FOMO. Finally, in 2018, the stars aligned for me to visit Vegas during the summer and fire my first official WSOP event (the $365 Giant). I didn't cash, but I was hooked. I've been back every year since.

In the next entry, I'll take a quick stroll down memory lane, covering some of the highlights from my first 5 years attending the WSOP.