BigWhale & brother (feat. MuckPls) does Vegas - 2025 edition (21st-31st March)
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BigWhale & brother (feat. MuckPls) does Vegas - 2025 edition (21st-31st March)

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BigWhaleOP
22d ago

Hello people,

I can't believe it's been 6 months since I have been in Vegas, and we cannot let that go on for much longer! I will fly to London on March 20th after work, relax at a hotel there overnight, and then fly direct from there to Las Vegas on Friday the 21st (just in time for March Madness).

My brother will finally join in as well; he actually has a business trip to the US coming up in a few days, so when he is done with work he is already in the country. He will also head out to Vegas on the 21st of March.

A late addition to the trip is also 'MuckPls' who said YOLO and booked his own trip as well. I'll let him post the details on his end.

With this being the middle of March, and MGM having slashed my previous reasonable offers, it was not super easy to find cheap hotels. As of such, I have to stay at 3 different hotels to take advantage of the comp nights I had available (although I have to pay full resort fee). I will be staying at:

- Excalibur (2 nights)
- Flamingo (4 nights)
- MGM Grand (4 nights)

That said, it won't be too much stress to switch between the hotels. For MGM properties I can obviously check in and get digital room keys through the app. And for Flamingo I will just show up early and pay the (ridiculously high) early check-in fee to avoid gigantic lines.

It's March Madness time in Vegas when we are there, so I have high expectation of there being a lot of games to play and hopefully some good action as well. But regardless, it should be a fun and hopefully profitable trip. I will come back with some more thoughts + picture of shoe and bankroll in a few days.

As always, you guys can expect a lot of hand histories as well as random pictures from my end. Hopefully I can get brother to post a bit as well. And MuckPls will obviously also contribute with his own degen stories

This is only the first of many trips to Vegas for me in 2025, but we can get back to that later. I am regardless stoked for the trip, and it will be nice having someone to share the excitement with as well!

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12 March 2025 at 06:09 PM
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Enhanced
10d ago

Well done by BigWhale as always, staying alive in those big fields. Personally I busted the circuit event quite early in mostly uneventful fashion. Some times you just don't get anything going in tournaments, especially with the blinds going up every 20 minute.

After having done some decent wagering on both video poker and Buffalo Gold (which was a gallore of two coins but never hitting the third), I decided to max late reg the MGM Grand $130 evening tournament. Buying in two hours later you get 25K chips for the buy-in and 50K more chips for the addon of $100. This means you start with 75K chips at 1K/2K-2K, which, in my opinion, makes it a decent value to do the late reg.

The tournament has only a 15 minute clock per level, and the organization of it is not always the best - especially now that they have many cash tables running as well - sometime they will waste 2-3 minutes before things such as breaking 3 tables down to 2 etc. before they maybe stop the clock. These things matter when you only have 15 minutes per level.

Positive thing though is that the field is very beatable. In fact so much that I made it to the last three players. For sure I had a massive edge over the other two players (sorry, not sorry, if any of them are reading), but the blinds were quite massive then, so after we had traded the chip lead between us for some minutes we decided on a three way even chop. Which amounted to $1475 in my pocket. Can't complain. 😀

AvatarMuckPls
10d ago

Also sharing a hilarious story from yesterday, shoutout to Jay who was the best dealer I’ve ever seen (although doubt he will ever read this but anyway).

So I’m playing blackjack at Horseshoe and having some tequila with 3 random dudes, we are having an amazing time, the dealer is great and we are winning so all good.

I hit a big split / double hand and the next hand I push $20 as a tip play for the dealer. Now if anyone has played at Horseshoe they know that the felt has the player spot and right above that is some kind of weird side bet that pays for flushes and straights. So I place the $20 tip above my chips, Jay asks me if it’s side bet or tip (I never played side bet) and I tell him tip obviously.

He then proceeds to deal me a straight, and says ”don’t worry man I got you ”. Calls floor over and tells her that I bet on the side bet but he accidentally pushed my bet behind it. Floor says yeah sure no problem at all and the guy pays me $200 for the straight and the table is roaring. Obviously gave him a $100 tip for it, crazy guy.

BigWhale
10d ago

Wow. These last two days have been the most exhausting one I can ever remember. Back in my room now at Flamingo, completely dead. But let us turn back the clock first. Went over to this location:

And together with 'Enhanced' I regged the €250 WSOP single day event, which was being played in the upstairs ballroom where they also hold the Daily Deepstacks during WSOP. Pretty cool to actually see one of these signs in real life and play a tournament under their umbrella:

In total the tournament got 212 entries, and it had 20k starting stack and 20 minute blinds. I lost a bit in the beginning, before doubling up with quad Queens versus a full house (AQ vs 99 on Q-Q-5-7-Q), which took me up to around 28k.

Stayed there for a long time before finding KK after a new bigstack raised pre and a shortstack woman pushed over. I rejam, and got snapped by the bigstack JJ. But we held up for a nice pot and was up to over 70k.

A while later I raised A7s pre and only SB called (a decent female player that looked somewhat familiar). Flop came K-T-7 two clubs one spade, and I chose to check it back this time around. Another 7 on turn, and I bet and got called. River was a 6, and after she checked I bet fairly hefty.

She surprised me by check-jamming all-in, which looks very strong here. I actually took a couple of seconds with it, but I struggled to see what she had unless 89s or something. So I made the call, and beat her very weirdly played ATo. She got a bit angry and accused me of slowrolling, and although I tried to explain to her that it's not she was not in the mood to listen. Oh well, at least I had her chips.

After that hand I had 130k and basically stayed in that range for a long time, while players got eliminated quickly. Before we knew it we were in the money and secured $507 USD. Because of the weird payout structures WSOP uses though, the increases from here were super tiny unless you made the Final Table.

And by some miracle I actually did make the 10-handed final table. I was grinding the short stack for ages, never really getting any huge hands but often picking up the blinds and staying alive while others busted.

Before the Final Table we had to fill in a quick questionaire with a few details + we were informed that the winner will get a free seat into the Tournament Of Champions, which for some reason is held in LA. My chances of getting there was slim though, as I came in with 4.5 bb after not having won any hands for a bit along with escalating blinds.

Sadly I was the first one eliminated after I got severely crippled, jammed A7o, but ran into TT and could only halfway improve (hit a seven). I got $656 USD for my efforts.

I don't quite know how to feel about that. I am completely exhausted, I have a headache, and I could hardly sit upright at the end. But I am actually somewhat proud of the fact that I managed to keep my head in the game despite this, and not punt of my stack. Obviously the decisions was fairly easy towards the end though, which helped.

But it feels bitttersweet being that close to a $10k first place, and sadly I have had too many finishes like this the last 1.5 years or so. I am great at staying patient and picking my spots, but I am not great at amassing a big chip stack in late stages. Thus I often come in to final tables very short, and need a lot of luck to be a contender.

Now I am going to take a shower, hopefully sleep for many hours, and from tomorrow we will be playing some Cash Games.

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