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

I’d love to take a piece of your ME

Nice trip report as always Dog - enjoyed it so thanks for doing it. Congrats on a profitable trip as well.

Thanks all for reading.

Good to know. You might get that opportunity!

Wasn't going to bump the thread again, but I do have a small update. Decision has been taken to expand the 6/23-6/28 leg of the trip to 6/21-6/28 so that I can fire flight 1C of the Nugget $600 Main (6/22) and flight 1C of the WSOP Milly Maker (6/23). I want to keep getting experience in quality events and hopefully put a couple more good results on the board. Then maybe at the end of June I'll try to sell for the Main. I'd probably be in for $5k and try to sell the other $5k at a very small mark up.

There are a few moving parts though, such as the stock market and how my June trip goes. If I get absolutely crushed, I'll probably tap out of July.

I'll update again in 2-3 weeks.

nice job on your trip and congrats on the pair of deep runs!

Congrats on the nice run and great trip report! It sounds like we have similar histories -- picked up poker when we were in high school/college during the Moneymaker boom and took a bunch of years mostly off before coming back. I'm heading to Vegas for the first time next week and I've been reading a bunch of trip reports in anticipation, and this was one of the best.

Good luck for Part 2 (and 3?)!

Hello again. The second leg of my summer poker spree is almost upon us. It's been a few weeks since the first leg and I'd like to say the time has passed quickly. It has not. I've been jonesing for the action, desperately huffing PokerGO streams, PokerNews updates, and 2+2 trip reports to approximate the rush of actually being in Vegas with chips in hand. It has almost sort of worked, but ain't nothing like the real thing, baby. Luckily the wait is nearly over. My flight is set to leave on the evening of the 21st.

I'll be carrying some momentum into this trip after solid results in leg one, where I cashed 2 of 3 events and netted a chunky 4 figure profit from my poker activities. I openly contemplated pumping that money right back into a $10k WSOP Main Event seat, but the level of bink-ness was ultimately not quite sufficient to justify such a big splurge. I'm not ready to risk $10k on one event. However, the newfound funds have allowed me to expand the second leg of my trip by two nights and add another great event to the slate.

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My June trip was originally built around the modestly priced Deepstack Championship ($600) and Salute to Warriors ($500) events. Due to the surplus funds from the first leg, I'll now be adding two flights of the $1500 Milly Maker to the slate. I've never played this event, so I'm excited for the opportunity. I went back and forth on various permutations of my schedule before settling on this:

6/22 - $1500 WSOP Milly Maker 1B
6/23 - $1500 WSOP Milly Maker 1C (Wynn $1100 one-day if we bag Milly 1B)
6/24 - $800 Aria one-day NLHE
6/25 - $600 WSOP Deepstack Championship NLHE
6/26 - $600 WSOP 30 Minute Level NLHE Luckament
6/27 - $500 WSOP Salute to Warriors NLHE

This might be the best summer schedule I've ever been able to play, as I'll be able to hit three of the absolute best value NLHE events the WSOP offers (Milly, DSC, and Salute). Between those three and the faster 30 minute stuff, hopefully I can find at least one deep run somewhere. On days where I bust early, I'll be exploring nightly events and satellite opportunities (Wynn $3.5k looks tempting).

I actually tried to sell a thin slice of my action for this trip and received deafening silence from the staking forum, which is fine. It was never about needing the money or being scared of the outlay, but rather about establishing some connections to eventually sell for the Main in a couple weeks.

Based on the frigid reaction to my initial offering, that prospect looks grim. This Dog is a still an underdog, but hopefully one with more bite than bark. The current plan is to sink my canines into a full week of poker and see what the results look like when the dog fight is over. Then we'll reevaluate the options for a potential third trip in July.

I'll be arriving in Vegas late on the 21st. I'll spend two nights in the magical kingdom of Excalibur before schlepping over to the Flamingo for the remainder. The plan is to play good and run better.

Let's spin it up (again)!

GOALS (REVISITED)

Prior to leg one, I said I don't have any specific goals for the trip. That still applies. I don't think it's helpful to set specific goals in small samples of poker because you have such limited control over the outcomes. You can say, "I want to bag at least 200k after day one" in a tournament, but you might not get dealt the right spots to make that goal realistic. Having a specific expectation might actually lead you to force the issue when you are better off taking a wait-and-see approach.

Instead of pressuring myself to hit certain achievements or milestones, I'll try to be process-oriented again and hope that things go my way. I ran pretty good on the first leg. Looking back on it, I never endured any extended card droughts and often found timely pocket pairs and monsters when I was at risk of dropping into the danger zone. I rarely had tricky post-flop spots or coolers. By and large, the waters were clear. That's not normal. Any veteran player knows it's only a matter of time before misery finds you. You're going to be card dead for hours at a time. You're going to be dealt the wrong end of setups and coolers. You're going to take all kinds of beats in big spots when you're ahead.

All you can do is control what you can control. With any luck, good things will happen.

I'm not going to set specific targets, but that doesn't mean there aren't some cool milestones I'd like to unlock. I've never made a day three at the WSOP or even finished top 100 in a bracelet event. I've never gotten close enough to the gold to think, 'Hey, maybe I can actually win this thing.' That would be fun. I'd love to make a real, genuine deep run in a WSOP tournament. I've cashed a couple times at the World Series, but never gone deep enough to really dream.

I also want to take some time just to appreciate the opportunity itself. There are a lot of great poker series held around the world every year, but it's fair to say that the WSOP is the one that players anticipate above all others. I'm grateful for the chance to engage with it. Just being able to take the trip out there and play some of these tournaments is a privilege that I don't take for granted. I'll be "happy just to be here" while also avoiding the complacency that can come along with that mindset.

Beyond that, I want to take more pictures. Apart from the few pictures that I posted in May, my camera roll was nearly empty. This time around I want to do a better job of documenting the occasion, both for the sake of the TR and for posterity. Hopefully I'll have some nice snapshots to share. Expect gratuitous chip porn of my 0.333 starting stacks seven hours into various bracelet events. Expect exciting first-person perspectives from the defeated gambler staggering back to his hotel room.

Wishing you all the best.

Best of luck to the under-DOG!!!

A post-leg one reflection ahead of leg two...

NO GAMBLE NO FUTURE

I don't like to gamble. In poker, that's a bit of a problem.

Rewind to a few weeks ago. We're nearing the bubble to bag the Wynn $600. I've recently been moved to (yet another) new table. Top 500 GPI player (we'll call him Buzz) is a few seats my left. Buzz has over $2.5M in lifetime Hendon winnings and many impressive results. Tonight he's sitting on a healthy stack. One of the biggest at the table. He could easily fold into the money.

A big stack raises in early position. Buzz takes a moment before announcing all-in. EP calls and shows AK. Buzz has TT. He loses the flip and is out of the tournament. No reaction. No visible regret. He just gets up and leaves. Business as usual. If you asked him, I'm guessing he'd take that spot again. Sure, you'll go broke on the bubble sometimes, but often you'll win uncontested or win a big flip and be sitting on piles.

What would I have done in his shoes?

Probably flatted with TT and reevaluted after the flop, which is not necessarily a bad way to play the hand, but certainly a more cautious approach.

I had my own chance to gamble near the bubble in the same tournament. I'm in the BB with 88. It folds to Young Spaniard (YS) on the button. I've only been at the table with YS for a short time, but my early read on him is that he's a blaster. He has already pushed me out of a pot post-flop when I hit the A with a raggedy Ax from my BB. Sure enough, YS raises from the BTN yet again. I know my 88 rates to be far ahead of his opening range and also that will face a lot of tough flops out of position. I think the hand is too good vs. a wide range to play solely as a set mine, so I elect to 3-bet. Obviously YS does the typical young maniac thing and, after asking me for a count (I ignore him), 4-bet rips to put me all in.

I hem and haw here. I really think I'm likely to be good, but...I also don't want to flip for my tournament life so close to the bubble. Eventually, after a couple minutes in the tank, YS calls the clock on me. I reluctantly fold. I still end up bagging near average, but this spot lingers with me.

After we bag up for the night, I ask YS what he had. He claims to have been bluffing with A5. This might have been another bluff, but I'm inclined to think he might have been telling the truth.

Did I make a mistake in this hand? Did I make several mistakes?

Near the bubble, is it smarter to just flat and try to play a pot with the maniac? Was I correct to 3-bet, but wrong to fold to the jam?

I think I probably took the worst possible line. If you're going to play scared, keep the pot small and flat pre. If you're going to play a big one, you probably need to call off here against what should be a pretty aggro range. You may occasionally run into a bigger pair, but you're getting much more than the right price to flip and you may be dominating some semi-bluffs and smaller pairs. Sometimes you are going to lose here and be out of the tournament on the bubble, but we must remember Buzz's example. We are not nitting it up to squeak under the wire. We are trying to win all the chips.

One of the leaks in my game is that I'm not greedy enough. When I have a decent stack, I don't like to risk a good position to possibly end up in a great position. I'm too content to eek out a modest win or coast into the money. I've made a few terrible pre-flop folds in the past in spots where I really needed to be more willing to gamble. I've made strides in this area, but it's something I need to keep working on. If I want to make the ultra deep runs and not just posture for the min-cash, I probably need to be more willing to gamble for a big stack without the absolute nuts.

There are times in poker when it makes sense to play it safe. However, the purpose of chips is not to gather dust, but to gather friends.

In tournament poker, greed is (usually) good.

I vow to keep this in mind the next time I have the chance to call off against a maniac.

I think the difference in approach is of someone who does not play high volume and wants to protect a solid result versus someone who plays huge volume and embraces the variance so as to have the best chance possible of having a huge stack and going after the top heavy prizes in the prize pool. The former does not want to donk off all their chips and feel bad when they lose before the money bubble with 8-8 versus A-K. The latter doesn't care at all about the min cash and is playing for all of the chips.

Both approaches make sense given the differing perspectives. People have to decide which perspective is who they are and is more important to them.

I think you are right. The fact that me playing Venetian $1100 was contingent on me getting some kind of result at Wynn may have figured into the equation and me being somewhat scared money in that spot. I guess it worked out, but I think it was probably the wrong move from an infinite sample standpoint.

I had a similar spot last summer in a Wynn $550 that I played. Aggro guy opens CO near the bubble. I'm in SB with about 15 BB and ATo. Seems like this is probably a jam against a wide stealing range, but I folded. Bubble broke a short time later and I got my chips in AK < JJ aipf for a min-cash.

I'm not well-versed enough in ICM to know if we are actually supposed to nit it up in these situations, but it feels like "play for the win" types would be taking these spots.

Do try Einstein Brothers Bagels in the food court area at Excalibur. Also, I believe they offer some sort of resort food credit and is valid at the Italian place Bucca-de-beppo!

PART 2, DAY 1 - 6/21

Well, I made it back. Flight was delayed nearly two hours, leaving no time tonight for anything besides checking into the castle, trekking over to Paris, buying my ticket for tomorrow, and timing the walk (30 minutes). The short-term goal is to get a reasonable amount of sleep before I wake up and try to bag this thing. I've decided that I'm only going to fire one bullet at the Milly Maker, so hopefully it will be a lucky one.

Full moon over the kingdom tonight...

SPOILER ALERT

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That's not much, but it's almost 2.5x starting, which we'll take into day two on Monday.

A fighting stack that we can hopefully steer into the payouts and beyond.

Go Dog Go!

PART 2, DAY 2 - 6/22

My first WSOP event of the year looms. Can we run up a stack in the Milly Maker?

My flight being delayed two hours was the first bad beat of the trip and I'm still feeling the effects. What should've been a 10 PM landing was pushed beyond midnight. That started a chain reaction of everything taking longer than I expected. I awoke on Saturday operating on fewer than 5 hours sleep. Not ideal with a potential marathon tournament session in front of you, but as on the felt, we play the hand we're dealt.

I cobbled together a makeshift breakfast of a granola bar and a canned Starbucks cold brew nitro. This is the type of extravagant meal that every trip report needs. I was so caught up in enjoying this 5 star feast that I totally forgot to snap pictures. Please forgive me.

Then it was off to the familiar environs of Paris to battle an ocean of wannabe millionaires. I'd like to tell you about my starting table, but there effectively was no table. We played the first hour or two very short-handed. Remember when the WSOP had a 4-max event? I do. It's called Saturday. There were times when we had as few as 4 players and a ghost stack, but mostly we hovered between 6-7 players at the table for the first several hours until finally filling up in the afternoon.

There were some interesting characters in my group for most of the day, including Fun LAG to my immediate left and a Belgian player who acquired the nickname "Coach" because he was wearing a patch for his training site. People began asking Coach for instant feedback on the hands they played. Was this line Coach-approved? What would Coach have done differently? Everyone was seeking Coach's approval. It was a running joke at the table throughout the day, which is not to say that Coach himself was a joke. He seemed like a strong player and built up a healthy stack before hitting a few bad levels and busting relatively late in the evening.

As for me, much of the day was spent bobbing and weaving through rain drops in a minefield. The table was relatively bad in the sense of everybody being pretty good, so I wasn't out there putting on a clinic and outplaying anyone. Mostly I just played a very ABC game and picked spots with extreme caution.

If I had to rate myself as a poker player like an athlete in a sports video game, there are some categories where my score could be a lot better. My hand reading and courage are not elite. However, I have nearly 99 discipline and 99 patience. Those are my best attributes in these tournaments. The patience was eventually rewarded with enough good spots to keep growing the stack. I don't remember all of the key hands. I actually have pretty terrible recall for spots in general, but I did make trip aces with AT in a BTN vs. blind spot against Fun LAG to get two streets of value from his KQ bluff. I won a flip with KJ against 66 in a critical pot when I was getting short. I was dealt AA late in the night and got two good streets of value from BB's open-ended straight draw. My peak for the day was about 75k, which is 3x starting. After some late-night musical chairs with multiple table switches, I wound up bagging 60ish when the music stopped.

That's not the mountain of chips you dream of, but it should give me a little bit of time to see orbits and pick spots on Monday. I think the Milly Maker has typically bagged about 25% of the field on its day ones, but this year the number has been down around 21-22%. Apparently there were 200-300 people who max late-regged during the dinner break in my flight, and I suspect that accounts for the especially high mortality rate. Thousands of wannabe millionaires bit the dust, while we instead bagged the dust. I'll try to perform some alchemy on Monday and transform that dust into a day three stack.

After a long session on the felt, I staggered out of Paris around midnight. I had crushed two Earl sandwiches on the dinner break of the WSOP, but was still hungry. I figured I'd march back to Excalibur and hit the always-reliable Shake Shack at NYNY on the way, but when I got there, the line was on the long side. Waiting in lines is -EV, so I just kept walking through NYNY until I found a sandwich spot upstairs with no line. I remember having a chicken cheesesteak, which was forgettable.

That's all he wrote for Saturday. Sunday will bring a hotel switch and a foray into the Resorts World $400 one-day. After a long day of slow levels, I think I'll enjoy putting my foot on the gas and playing a faster event where the blind jumps will hit quickly. Hopefully I can run like Formula One.

Great job on the bag!

Nice to sit back and watch how big the next flight gets, chips to return to on Monday, and a chance to spin up a daily on your day off.

Congrats on the bag. Next stop, the money!

Same, congratulations on bagging, GL on day two.

PART 2, DAY 3 - 6/23

Prior to departing for Vegas, I made a slight adjustment to my schedule and decided that whether or not I bagged the Milly Maker on Saturday, I would dedicate Sunday to playing the Resorts World single-day $400. This event jumped out at me for a few reasons. Resorts is one of my favorite rooms to visit. I wanted to give them some business this summer. This tournament has low rake, taking just $50 from the prize pool for each $400 entry (for the sake of comparison, the $250 1PM Daily Deepstack also takes $50 rake). Lastly, this was simply an opportunity to save some money and cut down the trip overhead. Firing this $400 instead of something like a Wynn $1100 gives me a lot more wiggle room to splurge elsewhere. Given that I'll be here for almost a full week, that made some sense.

Before I could actually sit down to play the tournament, I had to check out of Excalibur, drop my bag off at Flamingo, and then find my way to RWLV. I could've taken transit or gotten a ride share, but with a couple hours to kill, I opted to hike the full distance, knowing that I could avoid extended exposure to the sun by staying indoors for most of the duration. I did a circuit from Excalibur -- NYNY -- Crystal Shops -- Cosmo -- Bellagio -- Flamingo -- LINQ -- Harrah's -- Venetian -- Palazzo -- Wynn -- Encore -- and finally Resorts. Along the way I grabbed a latte at the NYNY Starbucks, which I only mention because the morning caffeine will be relevant later.

All in all, the circuit took about 80 minutes when you factor in the coffee break and the bag drop, leaving me just enough time to hit Junior's in Resorts World for a quick meal. As I studied the menu, the salad and sandwich combo looked appealing. I tried to order it before the waiter informed me that the salad and sandwich deal is only offered Mon-Thu. It's only my second real day in Vegas and I've already lost track of which day of the week it is. A bad omen? Instead of the salad and sandwich, I get a chicken salad sandwich. It's more good than bad, but not phenomenal. I'll say 7/10.

I physically arrive at my seat before the first hand is dealt, but mentally I'm not sure I ever show up today. I realize a short time into the session that I'm feeling tired and unfocused. I don't know if it's the after effects of the long walk or the lack of sleep catching up with me, but I'm so sleepy that I want to close my eyes and nod off at the table. Just a couple hours after drinking the NYNY latte, I realize that I'm going to need a second coffee, and much earlier than usual.

Second coffee seems to help a little bit, but doesn't save me from playing badly. I botch a spot with AQ by playing it passively against a maniac's open and one flatter, which results in me losing a biggish pot to a goofy hand that would've folded pre if I had 3-bet like I'm supposed to. It's one of my first obvious glaring mistakes in a while. The blunder actually serves as a much better wake up call than any amount of caffeine. After the frustrating misplay I find myself more dialed in and start playing better.

Unfortunately it's too little too late. I don't have many chips and I'm not making any hands. After dwindling down to ~25% starting stack, I jam my last 11BB with KTo from the SB against an aggro player's open in the BTN. I figure KT is enough hand to go to war with here since he should be opening all kinds of hands we're beating, but he makes a quick call with Ah7h and holds to knock me out in level 8. If it's a punt, I don't think it's egregious, but either way I'm unceremoniously sent back to the hiking trail.

Before I depart Resorts World and hit the pavement, I grab another veggie slice from Mulberry Street to see if it can match the caliber of the slice I had there in May. Sadly it does not. This one is the Q7o of veggie slices. It's just not my lucky day. I'm catching bad runouts even off the poker table.

I hike back to Flamingo in the sweltering summer heat. After a somewhat long wait to check in, I'm given a nice room with a strip view. It may not be a 5 star suite in the Wynn, but compared to my recent digs in Harrah's and Excalibur, it feels like the pinnacle of luxury. This will be home base for a few days.

I don't have the energy to track down the perfect dinner tonight, so I head across the street to my typical fallback spot, Giordano's. I'm surprised to find a line outside. I hate lines, so I delve deeper into the Horseshoe in search of an alternative. I end up making a pit stop in Flavortown, where there's no line (another bad omen?). I order the chicken sandwich monstrosity pictured below, which is saucy and tangy, but not especially great. I'm giving this one a 6/10. Factoring in the $35 price tag after tip, it's likely that my first visit to Flavortown will also be my last. I enjoy the Gen-X era soundtrack, but otherwise the experience is unremarkable.

That's about the extent of today's excitement. If you aren't as sleepy after reading this as I was in level 3 of the Resorts World tournament, I applaud your focus.

On the topic of sleep, the goal for the remainder of the day is simply to rest up for tomorrow's Milly Maker restart and get a good night of shut-eye to avoid a repeat of this morning's zombie poker. I'll have about 25BB to start the day, which is not piles, but not imminently desperate either. While a min-cash would be a positive result, the plan is to play my typical game and look to prioritize accumulation over mere survival if I have the opportunity to take good spots. We must think back to the lessons from Buzz in the Wynn $600. The ambition is not to 2x our entry fee, but to run ultra deep and win. If that sounds delusional then you must remember that I've barely slept in the last few days. I don't know what day of the week it is. Frankly, I'm not even sure I remember my own name right now.

Definitely get some rest, and be well-fed and caffeinated for tomorrow.

Suite looks comfy!!

How was your room at Excalibur, better/worse than expected? And were you in the Royal or Resort Tower?

Halfway considering Excalibur for my next trip as I only have good offers there & Luxor, and Excal is a much better location for maneuvering up and down The Strip.

I was in the royal tower, but I've also stayed in the resort tower within the past year. Overall I've stayed at Excalibur three times in the past 12 months. It's an old property that's beginning to show its age. It feels a bit worn and dated, but other than that it's a reasonable place to stay. If you just need a clean and safe room on the strip, it's fine. It's not going to blow you away with incredible luxury or amenities though.

Running like a rocket ship. We have this after two hours of play. Bubble will burst in the next level. Time to avoid coolers and punts.