BigWhale & brother does Vegas + World Cup 2026 (6th-20th June)

Good luck and awesome that you’re going to a World Cup game. Can’t wait to hear how that experience is.

Any plans for the pokerz on the east coast?

Maybe a little bit. Like I wrote in the opening post; I'm up for advise and hearing what the best options are on the East Coast.

Probably won't make down to Atlantic City, so basically anything New York area-ish and up towards Boston.

I'm always in for a BigWhale TR! Also go Vikings (or whatever the Norse WC side is called)!

That looks like an unforgettable trip, with a World Cup match included!

Take LOTS of pictures!

I hope you got a good price on your World Cup tickets! I went through all of the disgusting year-long hoops and hoopla, only to finally give the middle finger to FIFA. Instead, I paid "only" like $200 per ticket to see the France-Brazil friendly in Foxboro a couple of months ago.

Depending on where you end up staying, you could go to Encore (always soft 1/3 and reasonably soft (Bart Hanson notwithstanding) 2/5), Bally's in Rhode Island (very close if you are staying south of the stadium, rumored to have good 5/10, but not sure if that's dried up), or Foxwoods/Mohegan. The latter two are close together, but a long drive from Boston. I used to live in the city, and haven't been to either place since 2019 when Encore opened. If you happen to stay north of Boston, you will be a long drive to the stadium, but a short drive to the New Hampshire casinos, where you can enjoy some of the worst casino rest rooms in the country! Keep us up to date in the thread, and enjoy Boston!

Tickets were $500 each. Could probably have gotten them cheaper if we had held out a bit longer, but obviously didn't want it to sell out.

(I realize that it's extremely unlikely it will be sold out, but obviously had no way of knowing that early in the year).

looking forward to following!

I went to the 1994 World Cup opening round game in Chicago between Germany and Bulgaria.

I had no rooting interest and almost no knowledge as to the finer nuances of the game, but it was still cool to attend because of all the passion, pageantry and fanfare in the stands. It was definitely worth attending. I'm looking forward to reading about your experience.

As I've been planning for my own summer excursion, it occurred to me that while June-July are the peak season for tournament poker in Vegas, that doesn't necessarily apply to the friendlier price points. My usual go-to spots (Wynn and Venetian) crank their prices to 2-5x their offseason rates. WSOP has some modest options, but generally skews premium as well. Aria tournaments are relatively pricey. Who does that leave on the strip? MGM? I haven't heard great things about their series.

The WSOP dailies are a whatever. They're decent events, but nothing I would travel for.

Resorts World is a goner. They had the best tournaments on the strip in the $400 and lower range. Not anymore.

Now a player might have to hitch a ride to the Orleans or Nugget to find a friendly NLHE offering. Ride share fees will take a bite of your ROI.

A slightly "hot take" is that summer really isn't the best time for tournament poker in the <$500 price range. For higher stakes, it's a much different story.

So while I hope you still might find room for a tournament somewhere, I get it. It can be tricky this time of year.

All that said, my research indicates that only about 1% of the Colossus field advances to day 3, so I think you could probably squeeze in a flight without too much risk of schedule conflicts, but it would put you in an uncomfortable position in the somewhat improbable event of a super sun run...

All points are sort-of true. I really wish I had the kind of bankroll where I could play higher and stay in Vegas for 3 weeks or something to just grind. But since I am an idiot (and also very lazy), I don't have that. I should do a better job at diversifying and finding ways to suppliment my income. But instead I am just banking on miracle poker results to do that for me, and that hasn't really been the case so far in 2026.

If I only had weekly access to cash games with US skill levels it would obviously be a different story, but such is life.

Anyway, there are still plenty of good tourneys to play this summer and I don't need $50k on top to make a tournament worth it for me. If anything, cashing for amounts over $5k would be pretty annoying as 30% will disappear in tax witholdings for foreign players.

It would be nice if there was more casinos on The Strip that 1) offered poker and 2) had some more reasonable buy-ins, but it's not something I'm gonna lie down and cry about. I will just play whatever I feel like and live with some extra Uber costs etc. And hopefully we can put together a deep run or two like last summer, although I fully expect to go 0/7 for cashes (or however many tournaments there will be).

You are obviously right about Colossus, but it just feels so silly to enter a tournament and almost 'hope' to bust. Will probably not take that chance, and even the payouts for around 160th place (1% of field remaining) last year was 'only' $3900 USD. So it's not like making day 3 would be life changing either, although it's a good amount of money (for me).

Anyway, I digress. It's going to be fun regardless, and even though I am probably not coming in with super super high confidence or bankroll I still like my chances.

This is def true and this is why RW closing is such a crushing blow. Great daily's at very modest price points that were pretty easy to grind in a super nice room, and the side games there were much better than some of the other rooms. RW really filled that 300-500 gap. I expected much more at least from the Golden Nugget but when I was looking at the schedule 500 was like the main event lol, which is kind of the other extreme, and rooms like Caesars with 100 dollar buy ins, Southpoint 100 dollars etc. Aria had everything around 600 for years, then they went to 800 which was still pretty solid, and then now all of them are like 1100. Inflation, and the price of poker is going up.

I see you follow my strategy!

hope to meet you when we're both in town

Are you the captain, or your brother?

There wouldn't be much risk for you if you made day 3 of the Colossal. When the payouts are high enough you get to play like a maniac, and eventually someone will call you and knock you out.

There's also Orleans, which might be running Bankroll Builder satellites again. Those resemble the Milestone/Survivor type satellites. Unfortunately, Zoox apparently only runs on the Strip.

MGM has a series with lots of sub-$400 events, and the monorail runs there, although it's within walking distance anyway. Aria has some $300 events too, but I don't know how good they are.

FWIW I've been building a WSOP bankroll via the stock market. My target is $100/week. Five grand isn't exactly a fortune, but it's still a lot of events.

Aria actually have some evening $300 events this year. Might enter one of those once I get a bit more adjusted to the time difference. 25 minute blinds, so it's not a complete turbo.

Hehe, the guys in the picture are Norway's two major star players - Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard.

Although brother probably looks more like the captain, since he still has hair!

They start at 7pm, so they will surely go way past midnight but they seem like decent tourneys. 25 minute levels, 25k chips, structure looks fine, and it has $25k Guaranteed (100 players). Late reg until end of level 8 + ensuing break, which in my estimate seem to be around 1045pm.

Personally I wished they had started maybe one hour earlier or maybe 'only' had 20 minute blinds to avoid the 4am finish, but I will definitely try one of these tournaments. Aria is always a chill place to play.

Ooh, this new, at the Horseshoe:

Single Table Tournaments available daily!
- $200 buy-in
- 1st = $1,100 & 2nd = $600
- 3k chips & 15 minute levels

Interesting they pay 2nd...

(stiff rake tho)

Sounds fun! Where did you find this information?

Bravo.

BTW, I asked the poker desk how they work, and they're ordinary run-of-the-mill sit-n-go's. You sign up, and when they get 9 or 10, whichever it is, they start it.

btw, not to discourage anyone from playing them (I used to love Sit N Go's) but a big reason the single table satty's and sit n go's disappeared from WSOP for a long time was that they were riddled with collusion and soft play. If these aren't huge buy ins, I wouldn't be overly worried about it, and just be vigilant, but just wanted to say that in the event some weren't aware of that.