Las Vegas Poker Player Vlogs

You can tell that Rice wants so bad to take Timmy's place in the highest echelon of the Poker Vlogging stratosphere.

He's already eyeing his "record" even though he's thousands of videos still behind. And even though there are several other poker YouTubers he completely ignored who have also done way more videos than him. Oh Rice!

I love how Diesel will explain why he's frustrated when he runs bad. Maybe it's your style of play and game selection? Nah, he's got it all figured out.

Maybe short stacks gamble more in close spots cause they are looking to double up or leave? Maybe larger stacks don't shovel it in weak like they did a decade ago and actually have a stronger range?

I know people like saying "Oh the game has passed them by" but in this case, it really has. Diesel's game has become stagnant and his unwillingness to improve and actually embrace some variance and push small edges has negatively affected his win rate.

It's pretty obvious the bulk of his win rate comes from stacking idiots with his big hands. Now since those idiots have gotten better or at least don't stack off indiscriminately, you have to push the small edges you find. You have to take advantage of people's unwillingness to stack off with a good one pair hand and bluff them off their whole range.

You have to overbet 1.5x to 2x or even shove on your bluffs. I've had a discussion about this before with Diesel last year when he was posting videos about his successful or unsuccessful bluffs. He's of the mindset to bluff the least amount that he thinks will get the job done to give his bluffs the best odds, which is good. However, he's trying to bluff like 40% pot when there's $100 in the middle. People aren't as incentivized to fold top pair for $40. Maybe you might get some folds depending on the board.

Now take that same $100 pot and bet $150 to $200 or shove $300. What percentage of the player pool at Horseshoe is gonna call that with top pair?

Let's just say you get folds 50% of the time when you bet $40 into $100 as a bluff as Diesel will do. Congrats, you made a little money long term.

Now take the overbet example where they fold probably north of 99% especially with a clean image. A player like me has won a significant amount of EV.

Rinse repeat and Diesel makes $10/hr and cries about being stuck $200+ and losing all his big pocket pairs for stacks and winning $50 when it holds. Meanwhile, players like me win $25+ an hour.

Of all the people to emulate.
How sick is that !

Rice explains in his last video that on day 3 of the challenge he was ahead even though 10 things went terribly but he made the most out of the one hand than held up. No wonder it's so frustrating, he should be up thousands.

A lot of poker players think this way, when amazing things happen and they win huge pots that's exactly what should happen anyway. But when the reverse happens then that is an absolutely terrible case of bad luck, and they can't believe how it's even possible to be that unlucky!

Rice is either the King of exaggeration or he is the best poker player in the world. I mean even when every single thing possible goes wrong he still manages to break even or barely lose anything in the process. Still it's frustrating to him because he's thinking of the thousands of dollars he should be winning instead.

7 is way high. Raises AA almost always (will sometimes whiff the limp raise) def flats kk qq and JJ to raises sometimes but generally raises KK and QQ. He even explained how he flatted KK OOP because he was "deep stacked" with 500 or so dollars in a straddle pot.

With a drawing hand like AK maybe he raises if it's folded to him in mid position and definitely late position.

The thing is he's never actually weighing the percentages to see which way makes more. He's simply uncomfortable bluffing for "big amounts". That 1 percent of the time he gets called when overbetting might give him a heart attack. He might have even tried this before then he finally got called on the overbet and went storming back to Flamingo throwing his free Gatorade into the wall.

I've seen super tight players who kind of do something similar with good hands. They'd rather bet 100 dollars in 500 on the river and get called 95 percent of the time (obviously sometimes the opponent has nothing to call with) than bet 500 and get called half the time.

And yea I've made the same point on why he's mostly stacking people with almost no money in front of them but he thinks it's just run bad. Players these days overall are way tighter than a decade ago. That doesn't make most of them good but it's the truth especially in nit city Las Vegas. So when he folds for 2 hours and is finally shoveling money into the boat people aren't putting in 300 Dollars with one pair no draw when there is 40 dollars in the pot. But he just chalks this up to his horrible luck.

The fact he's practically in tears and needs to run to his room after playing for an hour bc he gets set over set and is down 1 buy in over 36 hours shows he's not remotely cut out for it.

He thinks only losing 200 dollars when he's "running terrible" is him showing how skilled he is. It's pretty comical. Everyone has a breaking point where they need to reset mentally. But that point isn't 1 buy in over 36 hours for anyone else who plays poker. It just shows how risk averse he really is.

sorry but this is nowhere close to reality in low stakes live american games

top pair is rarely folding to any size bet

you regularly see guys cold call a big 4bet with 77 and then shove any non ace flop, stuf like KQ8

This is really true, he says this as a humble brag not realizing swings are just part of the game. It’s like a magical way of thinking, even the best players have 10 or 20 buy in swings. I remember a story about cole south having a break even 100k hand sample playing 6 max and he was the best or one of the best 6 max players at the time. It’s just a reality of gambling.

This line of thinking is why he makes what he makes and will never rise above that in poker

I'm referring to low stakes NL in Vegas, 1-3 and 2-5. Vegas poker is a different animal compared to the rest of the country.

[QUOTE=Vegas poker is a different animal compared to the rest of the country.[/QUOTE]

How so?

heard about this a lot, i don't get why it attracts so many 1-2 grinders

At 1-2, 1/3, half of the table is sitting with 50-60bb, the other half is playing tight. They fold when you open more than $10 preflop. The big stack is on his iPad half of the time and rarely calls. It's rare that 3 or more players are giving action and building pots with 3&4 bets. It's terrible during weekdays. The games are just not as good nor profitable at low stakes as many other places in the country. I haven't played anywhere in the country tighter than the LLNL games in Vegas.

Damn man. I haven’t been to Vegas post pandemic but things must have really changed since I was there last.

Huh, looks like I need to bluff more.

low rake and low cost of living (at least until recently) while having the appeal of Vegas. A lot of these dirt merchants like telling people they're a poker pro in Vegas. Sounds cooler than I'm a poker pro in the middle of nowhere, and they can't afford to live in other big cities with poker.

Sounds like you’ve got it figured out. Lose a bunch of money, and recoup losses with value gained. Just be sure to value those comped weekday room nights at a price that covers those losses. Mental gymnastics can always justify the gamble.

400 hours at 500 hands per hour (modest rate) at quarter machine VP at $1.25 per hand with 3% house advantage is roughly $250K coin through for Diamond plus, and a $7500 loss (adjust downward if you can find 2% or 1%, or even 0.46% for full pay JOB). Play during 5X promos only and that’s 125K tier credits for Diamond Elite.

Now you have to make up not just the VP loss, but the money lost from missing out on profitable poker play. Whatever floats your boat. The casinos are certainly happy to trade losses for room nights if that works for you.

People get super entitled. When they win with the best hand it's just the way it's supposed to go. Your AA KK hand is a perfect example of that. When AA wins nobody says I'm 120 over ev this hand. The hand also just plays itself and yet the guy with AA thinks he actually did something.

Vegas games are definitely beatable they're just way better elsewhere.

It's amazing that won't click for him. He thinks he has some secret poker hack by limiting his swings to almost nothing when it's not a hack ,it's a set of handcuffs. Even if he thinks we're all idiots, he plays the same games as Herbs and Rye who is obviously way better than him. On their trips H&R swings so much bigger than him. They go away for 5 days and his biggest wins and losses each day of the trip are bigger than any of Rice's for Six months or more.

His "ten things went wrong and I still only lost 200 dollars" routine is also pretty tired.
If that much went wrong then to get all of that money back he'd have to win a bunch of other hands which never happens. It would also mean he'd have to have some monster days where nothing goes wrong but that also never happens.

He describes his threshold of things needing to happen to play a lot of hours, and says his threshold is very low and says on a scale of 0 to 10 his threshold is 3.31/10 lol.

The best part is when he projects that for other players to put in lots of hours they would need a 9.8 of things going perfectly. Because he’s the only poker player in the world that can grind through results not being above expectations.

He’s never done VPIP, but he’s given won hand stats under 4%. Insane low when everyone is saying Vegas games are filled with nits who fold to 3x raises pre and refuse to call multiple streets with TP.

Just the fact he has a threshold is a red flag and sign it’s actually very high.

It’s 1-2, you just sit there and play a game

The “things going wrong” are things that are a built in part of the game that you’re too mentally weak to deal with.

Guy who a week ago is talking about how resilient he is, its just so ridiculous, all of it. Hard to really explain how much I look down upon him and people with this weak of a mindset in gambling. He was the best applicant but they all passed on him!

Best part of this video is the flashback shout out - "I'm so glad you enjoyed meeting me so much." LOL. What a humble dude.

Diesel has posted a video every day for years but still says we don’t know how bad things are going for him.

We all know how bad he is struggling: room rates and rake are up, he is sleeping in his car more than ever, he is living off of cheap sardines and stolen condiments, plus all his challenges now are restricting food or forcing poker hours.

Hilarious that he is so out of touch that Diesel is like “I know you all think it’s strange when a handsome and wealthy grinder like myself freaks out about some minor bad beats but I have really hit a rough patch, no joke! I know it doesn’t look like it because I spent a normal 15 minutes arguing with a cashier that milkshakes are drinks not food so that I can use my free vouchers on them.”

I’m not surprised he would be so annoyed at losing $200 after 36 hours. Remember with his style it could take a long time to just win that $200 back. And even if he does that, and even if he pulls ahead, he knows some negative variance can be around the corner.

If that happens it will take FOREVER for him to get anywhere. A few hundred hours of really cautious play just so he can win $1000 at 1-3 sounds miserable. And if he runs into negative variance, a good chunk of that $1000 can disappear.

That’s why it really sucks being such a cautious player. You sit there for hour after hour and day after day and you see the players playing badly, and all you do is wait, wait, and wait for what seems like an eternity to get in a spot where you can actually win a good sized pot. And when you get in that spot and get unlucky, it’s very tilting, especially if you think you’re unluckier than usual lately.

Then you’re in a hole and your plan is to wait forever to get in another spot just so you can get back to breakeven again.

That’s why it’s better to get better so you can move up. Or get a job.