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

Boom - phenomenal. Keep running well…the in the money period is long after the initial rush of bust outs after the bubble but you’ve got a great stack to accumulate and win some flips and races

PART 2, DAY 4 - 6/24

The big business on the agenda today is the Millionaire Maker restart @ 11 am. I wake up around 7:45 in the morning. This is earlier than ideal, but not a disaster. I've gotten enough sleep to feel refreshed and recharged. I go online and check my table draw for day two. I recognize two names: a tough reg who I've played with at Venetian in the past and another guy who won the WSOP Main Event once upon a time. Yes, I'll be in the company of WSOP royalty. The other names are new to me and I choose not to research them.

By this point in my poker "career" I've played numerous day twos after bagging chips, but the vast majority of those have bagged ITM, when you've already locked up at least a min-cash. My only other experience with bagging prior to cashing was last year's Monster Stack, where I nursed a nub to a min-cash. I'll be slightly deeper to start day two of the Milly Maker and even though a min-cash wouldn't be a life-changing moment for me, there's still a lingering anxiety: Will I be one of the unlucky 30% of survivors who bag, but crash out before the $$$? There's a creeping sense of dread.

Luckily the day starts smoothly. I win the first four pots I open. I'm not making monsters, but I'm facing no resistance. If I have KJ and raise, the flop will come ATx and the caller will fold to my c-bet. After making the big 88 fold at Wynn on my last trip, another fun spot comes up with 88. At 2k/4k blinds, Aggro Pro in the BTN opens to 8k. I look down at 88 in the SB. We're way ahead of his range and we cover his ~50k stack easily, so I make it 22k. To my surprise, a second short stack in the BB rips for about 45k. Aggro Pro folds and it's back on us. We don't love this situation, but it's a snap-call with 88 getting this price. Luckily we're up against overcards and not the overpair. We fade against AhKh and eliminate the BB. If you want to make runs in tournaments, you need to be good at winning flips. Practice makes perfect.

The bubble approaches after the first break, in level 14. By now I've run my stack up to about 200k, so I'm feeling no pressure whatsoever. We've faded this morning's sense of dread. I know that barring an absolutely insane cooler or punt, I'm at least going to cash this thing. The bubble comes and goes without any notable drama. Everybody claps for 5 seconds and the tournament continues. My table is broken shortly thereafter and I get a welcoming gift at my new table when a player with AQ 4-bet jams over my AA 3-bet. I hold to eliminate him, rising up near 300k before an absolutely insane situation comes up. It's such a painful spot that I don't even want to rehash it right now, but the basic gist is that I make a PokerNews-worthy procedural error that results in a negative swing of about 100-150k chips that would've been mine.

I can't believe what has just happened, but the best thing I can try to do is just forget that it ever happened. I still have a great stack with about 200k, so I just keep chopping away. I win a few pots to get up to 250k. Table roulette strikes once again and I'm moved from Horseshoe Blue to a new table in Horseshoe Red, where our friend from Saturday, Fun LAG, greets us. I hadn't seen him since getting table-swapped late on Saturday, but he's still here, and also healthy.

I spend the next several hours at this table, playing mostly ABC with the occasional swerve to capitalize on my choir boy image. The dinner break arrives. A dinner break on day two? That's a new WSOP milestone for me. I wolf down a burrito at Chipotle in PH and rush back to the Horseshoe. I'm hoping to have AA and KK for dessert, but instead I hit my first extended run of cold cards in this tournament. The $1.5k NL 2-7 starts tomorrow, and the hands I'm getting would be great in that. 5-2, 7-5, 5-3, etc. I keep looking for good spots to make moves, but past a certain point I'm handcuffed by the deck and my shrinking stack.

Prior to me being officially card-dead, a crazy spot comes up at 5k/10k blind level. I'm in LP with TT. Active Player UTG opens to 20k. Fun LAG UTG+2 flats the 20k. I'm planning to rip my 180k stack with TT...until Aggro Euro UTG+3 makes it 80k to go. Now I'm in a weird bind. TT is a great hand, but not necessarily a great hand to 4-bet rip with no fold equity. This is a tricky spot. Raises from the UTG seat often indicate strength, but Fun LAG's flat may invite squeezes from aggressive opponents attacking the dead money. Aggro Euro is indeed an aggressive opponent, but not an insane one. His range here is probably all the monsters and a thin slice of semi-bluffs like A5s. Considering that UTG and UTG+3 are uncapped here and that there's a slim chance Fun LAG flatted to trap with a monster, I think this is just too messy to 4-bet jam TT. I make a reluctant fold. Well, wouldn't you know it, UTG and UTG+3 get all the chips in with...wait for it...88 and 99. Literally the dream spot for our TT, and we miss the triple up.

If we're being results-oriented, this is a huge mistake. If we consider the spot against the generic ranges, I'm not so sure. I think 99 may be the one and only value hand in Aggro Euro's range that we happen to dominate. He plays JJ/QQ/KK/AA the same, as well as the big broadways like AK/AQ. So I don't know. A GTO Wizard can tell me whether we need to go with TT here, but I think folding is going to be right a lot of the time. This was not one of those times, and I missed a huge windfall of precious chips.

The blinds go up to 8k-16k in level 20, just two hours shy of bagging for day three. For the first time today, I drop below 10BB. It folds around to me in the SB. A funny side note here is that there have already been two occasions earlier in the tournament where it's folded to me in the SB and I've folded rags against this same BB player rather than trying to steal, only for him to show a strong hand. He had QQ and Ah5h those times. I guess I didn't take the hint because this time I decide that Jd7d is good enough. I rip for my last 9BB. He makes a quick call and shows a hand that I didn't want to see: QJo. We don't even have two live cards. I turn a diamond draw, but brick all my river outs.

"Payout, table 500."

After a brief wait, I'm ushered over to the payout station and given a paper slip worth more than $5k.

It's objectively a great outcome, but still feels bittersweet in the moment.

Before I depart the Horseshoe, I do what any obsessive self-doubting poker player would do. I search up a push-fold chart to see if my J7s jam was correct. The chart says it's 100% a jam from the SB on 9BB, which helps me feel slightly better. It was a cooler, dammit! They gave me KK vs. AA! Oh well.

I made a nice run today and gave myself a chance to go deeper, but ultimately it was not my turn to make a million.

Any multi-day cash is a huge accomplishment, nice job!

Nice run! What was the procedural error? Great job shrugging that off and playing for a number of additional hours.

Congrats on yet another fine run

Great run. Congratulamiserations!

It was a colossal f-up that I'll be hard-pressed to top any time soon.

The bubble has just burst and I'm at a new table. I have about 300k after stacking someone AA vs. AQ.

Kathy Liebert (~100k chips) opens from EP. I have AhQd a couple seats to her left and opt to flat. I think this hand can go either way, but I often like to play it as a flat when I'll be in position. Everyone else folds. Flop is a doozy: AdQhXd. I have smashed the board, with top two and runner-runner flush possibilities. To my delight, Kathy leads for 15k. I can raise here, but I figure it's good to give her some rope and let her keep betting. With the Qd in my hand and the Ad on the board, we don't fear the flush draw or many turn cards at all. Turn brings another low diamond. We now have 4 to the flush in addition to top two. Kathy continues for 25k. Once again, I elect to just call. River brings yet another low diamond, completing my second-nut flush. This time Kathy checks to me. With the 4 flush on the board, it's such a polar spot that I think we want to go big here. I slide out a full 100k stack, putting her all-in. She goes into the tank, meaning she definitely doesn't have the Kd in her hand (or she would've snap called).

I'm going to win this pot, so it's just a question of whether she calls off for her last ~40-50k or not.

While I'm waiting for her decision, I'm staring straight ahead, trying not to give anything away.

Out of my peripheral vision, I see the dealer reach out and drag a white card into the muck. Kathy has folded. I muck my hand and pull back my bet.

Only there's a problem.

Kathy didn't fold. The white card that I saw the dealer drag into the muck was actually the white seat change card from a new player who has just arrived at the table.

Now that Kathy sees I have mucked my hand, she tries to call the 100k bet.

We now have a proper shitshow on our hands. After a couple different floor rulings, what ends up happening is that Kathy wins the pot, BUT I'm allowed to pull back 95k of the 100k I bet on the river. The ruling is that I mucked my hand before she called, however I'm bound to the minimum bet, which is the 5k.

So instead of winning a pot worth ~100-150k in chips, I have to give up a certain winner.

Insanely frustrating because it was so avoidable. 99% of the blame is on me. I play fast and act fast. When I thought the hand was over, I mucked fast. I take responsibility, but...the fact that the dealer dragged the white seat card towards her in the middle of the pending action is what triggered me to jump the gun.

All in all just an insanely tilting incident that cost me maybe $4-5k in real life equity.

Like I said, the only thing I could do in the moment was just to pretend it never happened. I still had a healthy stack and played for many hours after the fact. I don't think this cost me the tournament, but maybe there's an alternate universe where that extra cushion in my stack propels me deeper. We'll never know.

One thing I can say for certain is that I won't act so quickly in these big spots in the future.

that's a good story

What a brutal situation. To not tilt off the rest of your chips within an orbit is a major accomplishment.

oof

It might tilt some dealers, but I always wait to release my cards until I see some chips are starting to get pushed towards me. This is precisely to avoid situations like this, just in case I have misinterpreted or missed something. I see many people start releasing their cards way too early, and not protecting themselves.

DogFace, was your cards not retrievable or were they buried deep in the muck?

PART 2, DAY 5 - 6/25

It's a new day and a new tournament: the $600 Deepstack Championship. In my view this is one of the best budget NLHE events you can play at the WSOP. Part of the reason why I picked these dates in June was to play this event. I've played it three times in the past and cashed it once, making a top ~7% run in 2022.

I make the short walk over to the Horseshoe, grabbing a croissant and Americano from Lavazza before heading to my starting table in Paris white. The first few hours of the tournament are largely uneventful except for one hand where I raise QdQs to 4k over a 1k open and a flat caller. Tilted UTG guy comes along and we see a ten high flop with two hearts. I c-bet. He jams his remaining 12k stack (we started the day with 30k). I call. He has KhTh for top pair with a four flush. He bricks his outs and I'm up to around 50k.

I spend most of the next few hours folding. I'm being dealt a lot of junk. With about 40k left in my stack, I finally get a premium at 500-1k blind level. There's an early position open to 2k and two flats behind. I make it 12k with QQ. Raiser and first limper fold. Second limper tanks for a while, asks for a count, and eventually jams with a covering stack. Huh? What type of weird line is this? The flat call-jam confuses me and probably skews strong, but with QQ in our hands and 25% of our stack already in the pot, we're not in the folding business. I snap call. She has AK and wins the race by smashing two pair on the flop. I'm felted in level 8, well shy of the dinner break, much less the money.

I suddenly find myself with an abundance of free time and no real plan, so I retreat to my cave in the Flamingo before plotting my next move. The new plan is to get a nice dinner and then play the 8 PM $200 daily deepstack at the Horseshoe. These daily deepstack tournaments were my introduction to the WSOP and even though I feel like I've outgrown them in a lot of ways, I'm excited for the opportunity to take a shot at one on this trip.

For dinner I choose a familiar blend of convenience and quality: Mon Ami Gabi. I go with the roasted chicken, which is pretty good, though perhaps not $35 good. I guess it's a small price to pay for the atmosphere. Once again I'm seated on the railing with a great view of the Bellagio fountain show, a calming sight as the sun is dropping down towards the horizon. After the dinner and coffee, I feel recharged and ready to tackle this 8 PM turbo.

I'm ready to make a deep run, but apparently the deep run is not ready for me. I go relatively card dead for an hour before getting it in against the table maniac with KQ vs. his AT. He wins the 60/40 spot and I'm out the door in level 4. I played okay today overall in my two events, but couldn't get there in the all-in spots. It happens. I've had my fair share of luck lately, so can't really complain about giving some back.

Before and after my cameo in the 8 PM turbo, I took a quick stroll through the Horseshoe Events Center to eyeball some of the happenings. I'm not much of a celebrity fiend, but there was a lot of star power in the building tonight. Ivey, Negreanu, Isildur, and the rest of the $50k PPC crowd were playing down to a bubble in one part of the room while Tom Dwan and Neymar were playing some type of private event in a different section. I snapped a few quick pics.

There was a cluster of about 4 cards off to the right of the dealer's hands, so it might have been hard to say exactly which two were mine.

Apparently this same thing happened at the Wynn recently (according to a neighbor at the table) and the floor there gave the guy a chance to get his hand back if he could name the exact two cards (including suits). I was not given any such opportunity. Maybe I could've thrown a fit and lobbied harder. I don't know, but it's all water under the bridge now. It was a strange and shocking moment, and afterwards I just told myself, 'Forget about it.' Life goes on. Lesson learned.

Wow, that's a shame. Glad you were able to handle it well and learn.

DogFace, there is one event like a survivor ($135 BI), starts at 10 PM at the Shoe. As you can see, the decisions in this event are binary, either you are in, or you are out!

Give it a try if the time permits.

I'm likely to play one of the mega satellites today instead of the 30-minute level $600, which doesn't appeal to me much. Let's see how well I can flip.

Tomorrow will be the deep and slow $500 Salute event. Already got my ticket for that.

PART 2, DAY 6 - 6/26

The plan going into this trip was to spend Wednesday playing WSOP Event 64, a $600 NLHE with 30 minute levels. While it would've been a fun chance to spin up a stack and chase a bracelet, I always looked at it as the most disposable of the bracelet events on my schedule due to the fast structure. It's a multi-day tournament, but really just a glorified 10-handed daily. That's not the prestigious WSOP feel we're after. I decided to axe it in favor of chasing some satellite money to use towards my Main Event seat.

The plan was to play the $240 3PM Mega Satellite. As it wasn't going to start until mid-afternoon, that gave me a lot of free time to spend in the early afternoon. I decided to throw down a small bet on one of the Euro soccer games, watch the match, and get lunch before my tournament. While looking at the slate of games, the Turkey-Czechia match stood out to me. My instinct was to pick Turkey to win, but I didn't like the price, so I took the "safe" play and bet $50 on heavy favorite Portugal over minnow Georgia for a meager payout that would barely cover the cost of a burrito. To make a long story short, my lunch today was a $63 burrito.

Around noon I made my way up to the Normandy Ballroom to buy my ticket for the satellite early. The line at the cage was mercifully short, but I encountered some trouble at the window when the teller informed me that they couldn't sell for that event yet because they hadn't allocated tables for it, and thus couldn't assign seats. I didn't raise a fuss over this, but had a creeping suspicion that it was going to cost me a lot of time.

Why? Because I knew the 1PM daily deepstack has been doing crazy numbers, and I knew that even around 3PM the line for that would still be going HAM. Sure enough, I came back at 2:30 and the line was stretched around the block like they're peddling Taylor Swift tickets. I spent about 5 minutes waiting in that line before I realized that I had zero chance of getting my ticket before 3PM, which is fairly important in a turbo structure satellite with hardly any play in the stacks. Time for plan B.

I decided to pivot and head over to Bellagio to play some 1/3 instead, which could be another avenue to spin up some extra funds. The Bravo app showed 13 people in line for 1/3, but when I got to the poker room, I was told that I would be #35 on the list. I wasn't eager to wait quite that long, so I pivoted yet again, went back to Paris, and was immediately seated at a game in the WSOP cash area. I won a few small pots and counted my profits at $69 after an hour, which seemed like a good sign to rack up. My $63 burrito has been paid for.

Part of the reason why I was content to hit and run on such a small profit is because I wanted to make it back to the Flamingo before the end of pool hours. I've heard the pool at Flamingo is one of the best in town, but I've never had a chance to try it before. As this was a day of high freedom where I wasn't tethered to a tournament table indefinitely, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a short dip. I don't have much to compare it to, but I did like their pool setup if you're looking for a party type of vibe. It's a sprawling pool with good shade cover. The water is only 3-4 feet deep in most places and too crowded to facilitate much in the way of actual swimming, but it's ideal for standing-and-drinking if that's the pool vibe you're looking for.

After the pool I popped back over to Horseshoe and spent a little bit of time watching the $50k PPC and the $2.5 mixed stud8/O8, where one of my former college classmates was at the final table battling for a bracelet. It was cool to see that and to witness the epic Ivey/Negreanu pairing on the main stage, but ultimately I'm here to play poker, not to watch other people play poker. I decided to make a second attempt at the 8PM $200 turbo daily deepstack after last night's belly flop. Once again I treaded water for a few levels before losing everything in a big flip, this time with TT against AQ. I've forgotten how to win flips the last couple days. Hopefully I can remember before tomorrow.

I was feeling very hungry after busting the tournament and decided to try an rppoker favorite: Nacho Daddy. I went for the enchilada nachos, a bomb of food that disappeared from my plate at record speed. I guess all these days of hiking around in the heat and skipping some meals left me with an appetite to rival an Olympic swimmer.

You get plenty of chances for exercise when there isn't a functional escalator within a square mile of here. It's becoming a running joke at this point.

I'm going to be so fit after a week of climbing stairs that I might try my luck on American Ninja Warrior if the poker career doesn't work out. In the mean time I'll try to be a Warrior on the felt in tomorrow's $500 WSOP Salute event. I've never played this one, and I'm excited for the chance. Let's try to add to the bag collection.

OUT of the Salute event in level 8. This might be the best low budget tournament you can play at the WSOP. You get a 50k starting stack and 40 minute levels. The field today looked more like a seniors event and my table was very, very passive. Often times this is going to be smooth sailing towards the bubble.

Unfortunately I kept running into the nuts today. My tournament can be summarized by three hands:

#1 - I've worked my way up to 62k at 400/800 blind level. Three limpers call and the SB makes it 3.5k. I have AKo in the BB and make it 11k. It folds back to SB, who shoves his covering stack. I don't think this is ever a bluff and we're in terrible shape against a value range, so I fold. After I bust the tournament, he claims to have had KK here.

#2 - I'm at about 40k after the second break. Player in EP opens to 2.4k. I call in the SB with 88. Flop comes 9s8s2h. I check. He bets about 3k. I could raise here, but we're so strong that I don't mind risking a free card. If he has an overpair, he's going to bet most turns. I flat. Turn is a brick. I check again. He bets about 6k. This time I shove. He calls with 99 and holds. I cover his stack, but lose 60% of my chips.

#3 - I've recovered to about 35k at 600/1200 blind level. UTG opens to 2.5k. One flat in MP. I have AKo again and make it 10k. UTG asks for a count and eventually shoves his covering stack. Now I guess we might be able to fold AKo here because this line looks so strong from the UTG seat, but...a bunch of our chips are already in the middle, there's some dead money out there, and I started the hand <30BB. Do we just need to go with AK here? I am unable or unwilling to make the hero fold this time. I call and am shown AA.

This was honestly a great tournament to play, but I just kept getting put in the blender and eventually they made a puree out of me.

I have an unexpected abundance of free time and might try to track down a good nightly event somewhere. I don't think I'm ready to wave the white flag quite yet.

For the night cap I decided to play "The Night Cap", the $200 7:05 PM at Resorts World.

I hiked up there and arrived about an hour early with the intention of getting dinner. I opted to try Junior's again. The first visit was pretty good and the menu had some other interesting options. This time I ordered the corned beef reuben, which was a big upgrade from the chicken salad sandwich. Solid 8.5/10.

By the time I finished eating, the tournament was about ready to begin. This Resorts World nightly is a vastly superior option compared to the 8PM turbo at Horseshoe. You get 25k chips and 30 minute levels compared to 20k and 20 minutes at the Shoe. There's a lot more play and it actually feels like a real tournament instead of a pure shovefest.

I hung around for quite a while before losing half my stack in annoying JJ vs. AcQc vs. 99 spot where the turn delivered the one exact card that would propel both opponents ahead (the 9c). I folded to a jam and call after losing half my stack. About 30 minutes later I busted in a hand that's only notable for the personal dynamics involved.

To set the scene, Mr. Arkansas is a blaster who overplays any decent showdown value post-flop. He ran up a stack tonight by hitting the gas pedal any time he had a decent hand, and sucking out on other players in the big clashes. It was only a matter of time before he punted it off. After nearly four hours of play, we're reaching the nadir of his arc. Mr. Lebanon is a bit more of a mystery. He's newer to the table, but has arrived like a hurricane. In the time I've been sitting with him, he has gone on literally the biggest heater I've seen in a MTT this summer. He's playing almost every hand, smashing every board, and busting people left and right. You'd think he's always bluffing, but he's just getting there every. single. time. We're only halfway through the tournament and he already has a Jamie Gold mountain of chips, a final table stack. Some of that has come at the expense of Mr. Arkansas, who is taking the losses personally and making comments indicating as much. He has dumped back most of his formerly 3x-4x stack and is now below starting. It's very obvious that he wants to play pots with Mr. Lebanon and will chase long odds just for the chance to deliver that sweet comeuppance.

That's the situation when Mr. Lebanon opens from MP and I look down at Ac3c with about 10BB in my stack in the SB. Mr. Lebanon is opening almost every hand, so even though Ac3c is not the nuts, it rates to be good against his range. I opt to shove. It folds to Mr. Arkansas in the BB. Like a bull seeing red, he is so eager to get involved in a pot with Mr. Lebanon that he shoves behind after only looking at one card. I'm not sure he even really realizes I'm in the hand. It's all about beating his rival and getting a measure of revenge. Well, there will be no revenge in this hand. Mr. Lebanon tank-folds. I, however, become collateral damage when Mr. Arkansas's QTo runs out a straight to the ten.

You want people in there against you with hands they shouldn't be playing, but it hurt me in a couple spots tonight because they got there (99 in the first hand and QT in the second). Mr. Arkansas is a case study in what NOT to do in poker. He was letting emotions drive his play and taking it personally when people beat him in pots, which in turn was causing him to reach in spots where he should've been shutting down. He happened to win the hand against me, but I'd bet he won't sniff the payouts tonight.

That's one thing we have in common. I've now bricked several events in a row.

You go through runs like these in tournaments. After a string of good results, it was almost to be expected. By and large I'm happy with my play throughout. You can only control what you can control. The rest is pure noise.

Tomorrow is my last day in town (for now) and I'm not likely to play much poker. I'll take an off day and find some other ways to spend the time before skipping town.

Then I'll contemplate the possibilities for a potential part 3.

Brutal, and not much to do in these spots I think. Since you are only 30 bb deep in the bustout-hand, I don't think we can ever consider folding AK unless UTG is 70+ in age and haven't played a hand for four hours.

Hand 2 is obviously a gigantic cooler, but I would still like to find a raise on this board. 9s-8s-2h contains so many draws that there is no way an overpair will fold to a raise here.

Nice write up and sorry about the bust outs. MTTs are a horrible, brutal prick tease that 999/1000 result in having your balls smashed by a hammer

The guy in the 2nd AK spot was a youngish German, so definitely not an OMC from central casting. His line still looks really strong, but I agree that going broke there with AK is probably still correct when considering stack sizes and pot odds vs. likely range. Even KK is not a death sentence, but I ran into the absolute top.

PART 2, DAY 8 – 6/28

Moving day is upon us...

I'm set to leave town today, but my flight is late in the evening, meaning I have a lot of time to kill.

Enough time to play a tournament? I could play flight chicken with a daily event or the WSOP Colossus, but I don't think it's worth it. Booking a Friday night hotel room and pushing my flight back would be expensive. If I happened to bag the Colossus, I'd be tethered to Vegas until day the day two restart on Monday, and that's just not happening.

Instead I decide to try the 3PM $240 mega satellite at WSOP again. These things are so shallow that it should end well before I have to leave for the airport. Unfortunately I encounter the exact same problem as the last time I tried to play this. It's shortly before noon and they aren't allowing anyone to register for the satellite at the Normandy cage yet. By the time registration opens up, the lines there will be a mess due to the 1PM tournament. Without being too pushy or acting like an entitled Karen, I explain to the guy at the window why this is problematic and encourage him to mention it to the next man up the ladder. It's a small thing to dwell on, but WSOP is losing money by making registration harder than it should be. It behooves them to make it as easy as possible to give them your dollars. That's now two satellites I wanted to play, but couldn't because of this system.

I don't dwell on it. There are plenty of other forms of entertainment available. I decide to make a return trip to the Pinball Hall of Fame, which I haven't visited in over a year. I walk about half the distance, weaving through Bellagio and Park MGM before finally hitching a ride from NYNY.

One of my favorite video games growing up was Super Punch-Out, the SNES sequel to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. In some respects Punch-Out is a fitting analogy for tournament poker. You play the underdog boxer Little Mac, who has to battle through a sea of formidable adversaries before becoming champion. You have to take your lumps, learn the patterns, and execute precisely until you're a winner. That sounds familiar. When I made a final table run in a tough Venetian $600 last year, I was actually wearing a Little Mac t-shirt under my sweater on day two. The ultimate underdog.

The Punch-Out machine is my first stop today at the Pinball HoF. I'm not hellbent on winning the belt, but I want to work up a sweat and rack up a few KOs. After dumping several quarters in the machine, I've battered Glass Joe, Piston Hurricane, Bald Bull, and Kid Quick.

I try a few other games before finding a World Poker Tour pinball machine in one of the aisles. I slide in a couple quarters and proceed to punt off my pinballs at record speed. I've run bad on the felt the last couple days and now I'm running bad on the flippers too. "The price of poker's going up, Vince!"

It's late afternoon by the time I get back to center strip. I stop by a Caesars Rewards kiosk in Planet Hollywood and convert my meager rewards credits for $22 in free slot play. I sit down at a nearby machine. I'm a total slot fish and I have no idea what's going on here. Like a terrible poker player, I'm just clicking buttons. I guess I clicked the wrong ones today. It takes maybe a minute for my credits to disappear. That was fun.

I check the WSOP cash game lists on Bravo, but there's nothing too enticing. I'm not really in the mood to grind 1-3 and the mixed offerings are too big for this minnow. It looks like the play now is to shift into "counting down the hours until my flight" mode and hammer out some final entries for this leg of the TR, so here we are. That's all the excitement for today.

6/28 - LEG 2 RECAP

I didn't set specific goals going into this leg of the trip. I just wanted to enjoy the WSOP experience, make good decisions at the table, and hopefully get lucky enough to run deep in something (or several things). All in all, it was mission accomplished. While I actually bricked 6 of 7 tournaments this week, my top 5% run in the Millionaire Maker still ensured a moderate profit after all overhead and entry fees are accounted for. I consider that a good outcome.

By and large I'm happy with how I played. You have to be delusional to think you've played perfectly and made zero mistakes. There are a few hands I'd like back (and especially one mucked winner), but overall I think I did a lot more right than wrong. I'm not crazy enough to think I'm some super crusher, but it's hard to last 20 hours in the Milly Maker if you're a time bomb with a million leaks. I've gotten pretty good at navigating these things.

If there's any frustration, it's that I wasn't able to stack any additional results on top of that initial success. My secondary goal with these trips was to spin up enough profit to fire the WSOP Main. I've put a significant dent in the entry fee, but there's still a gap (more on that later). I wasn't able to find a second score on this trip to bridge that gap, not for lack of trying.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on other things:

WSOP – This was my sixth year at the WSOP. I'm not one of the wide-eyed newbies anymore, but it's still a great experience. You're immersed in a poker bubble, with a variety of events at your disposal. Considering the scale of the operation, things tend to run relatively smoothly. Are there some areas for improvement? Yes. The registration was a shitshow in the Normandy Ballroom. I didn't love that area in general. It creates more of a visible caste system in the player population, as you no longer share space with the big boy events. That being said, I can understand wanting a dedicated venue for the smaller events and satellites. I just wish they did a little more to respect our time and reduce the waits. More windows for registration might help. There shouldn't still be a huge line at 3PM because a 1PM daily is running.

FOOD – I'm not very adventurous in this area, typically falling back on my boring safe options like Giordano's, Chipotle, In-N-Out, and Earl of Sandwich for the sake of pinching pennies. I did branch out a few times on this trip though. My foray into Nacho Daddy was satisfying. Junior's in Resorts World is somewhere I'll visit again. My splurgiest meal was once again at Mon Ami Gabi, which is just so convenient for the WSOP that it seems inevitable to end up there at least once per visit.

LODGINGS – I've said my piece on Excalibur. It's a dated property, but a reasonable option if you don't mind walking and/or you plan on playing a lot of the nearby MGM rooms. The Flamingo is a good option in its price range. The rooms are stylish and the casino has a relatively upbeat vibe throughout. The biggest plus might be the location. It's an easy walk to the WSOP and you're not super far from other prominent poker venues like Venetian and Wynn. My one complaint about the Flamingo is that the quick check-in kiosks have not let me check in on my last few visits, so you have to go wait in a huge line for 30 minutes. Once again I am a grumpy old curmudgeon bitching about these venues not respecting the customer's time. People don't pay to come out here to stand around with their luggage.

VEGAS – It's a double-edged sword for sure. The strip is exciting with lots of things going on around the clock, but the gouge is real. You get squeezed and nickle-and-dimed at every opportunity. While I enjoy playing poker out here, there's a cost that comes with it: airfare, resort fees, meals that will run you 2-3x what they should. Gouge, gouge, gouge. The gouge is the biggest deterrent from coming back out here more often.

ODDS AND ENDS

- The more you play the WSOP, the less awed you are by the environment. Poker is a small ecosystem and you will see the same faces again and again, including the TV pros and poker-famous. I still had some notable sightings this year. I walked right past Johnny Chan in the Bellagio today. That's a new one for me. I'm about 90% sure that former American Pie actress Shannon Elizabeth was two tables over from me on day one of the $600 event, which 14 year old DogFace would've been very excited about. A few nights ago in the Horsehoe I saw Neymar and Tom Dwan, one of the original poker heroes for my age bracket.

- One of the funny things about visiting Vegas often is noticing how the environment and crowds change depending on which events are happening at any given time. On one of my trips towards the end of 2023, it was cowboy central out here. The rodeo was in town. The streets were packed with cowboy boots and stetsons, while the speakers were pumping out a steady stream of country. This time around it's lots of South Americans decked out in national team gear for the Copa America. There's also some type of powerlifting event happening at my hotel, resulting in a high concentration of yoked-out gym bros.

- It feels like there is a specific song of the moment that defines many of my WSOP summers. 2019 was definitely the year of "Old Town Road", which was all over the radio and impossible to avoid. I want to say that 2022 was defined by the "Running Up That Hill", which blew up from the new Stranger Things season that year. This time around I can't escape "Not Like Us" by Kendrick Lamar. You're liable to hear that beat blasting at least a few times per day, so I guess it's the unofficial soundtrack of WSOP 2024.

LEG 3???

The big question for me after this week is what I'm going to do in July. I've always wanted to play the Main Event. I've had the room and flight booked for months. I see three clear options:

#1 – I "book a win", cancel the July trip, and bank the profits. I'm up about $7k on poker this summer, due primarily to the runs in the MSPT and Milly Maker. The figure is closer to $5k when you factor in the overhead of trip expenses. Not life-changing money, but a nice chunk of change to pocket.

#2 – I come back in July and play satellites. $5k profit is not enough to buy a Main Event ticket outright, but I could fire 2x $1100 megas and 1x $2200 mega and use the rest of the winnings to cover most of the overhead. I wouldn't be heartbroken over losing the full $5k since it's found money anyway. The way I see it, it's almost a freeroll.

#3 – I say **** it, YOLO, and just pony up the $10k outright. I can try to sell some action, but I don't know if the marketplace will bite. If I want to be 100% assured of playing this thing, I might have to pay the iron price. I could get the money without any real risk to my everyday life, but I'd be pulling about $5k extra from sources not earmarked for poker. It's a lot to wager on a poker tournament, even if it's THE poker tournament.

I lean towards coming back in some capacity, but I don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet.

In the mean time, thanks to anyone who took the time to read and follow along.

Shannon Elizabeth, along with a pre-crazy, pre-boob job Britney Spears, played a large role in Young TJ’s awakening into puberty.

I say go for option 2. It’s a good middle ground, you’ve gotta be +EV in satellite donk fields.

And come on, it’s the Main. Tomorrow’s not promised. And that way, if you satty in, you’ll feel like you’ve earned it.