Nitty by Nature 8: Confirmed Busto TR (6/14-6/22)

Thank you, and thanks for being on the team since year one.

Your decision making is similar to a younger me regarding paying some bills. Your 15 year future self won’t hate it. Pipe dreams were referring to the tourneys you listed as possible. No pressure at least from a $$ perspective these next few tourneys - keep it rolling!

Sick! I am impressed and jealous. Congratulations 😀

Likewise!

WTG, Nitty, er, I mean DogFace! That's one awesome run!

So much for the curse of the $50! Congrats!

Incredible! Well done

I assume no talk of a head up deal was had?

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But yep, mad not to if it’s available IMO when I’m assuming eff stacks were tiny? I’ve played many thousands of spin n gos and the variance on 70:30s and 60:40s can go in one direction or the other for seemingly ages

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Way to go! One for the good guys!

Good Job DogFace!!!

The king of DDS after complaining of not cashing it at ParisShoe!

I am getting the same high feeling like Leon when he takes the big Casinos to cleaners on his first day!

How is the experience of playing DDS at a different location DogFace?

Major congrats on this epic run and great score to start your trip off! Just as I said, you have the game to do some damage, and damage you did! Now you maybe look to run it up a bit this week and take a few shots! Enjoy this though ! Stay hot!!

Congrats on the win! I remember enjoying your past trip reports, and this one is off to a great start.

I am absolutely thrilled for you! You have put in the work and deserve the success!

Hell yeah! Reading this made my day. Congratulations

Congrats man! Score one for LVL.

They do not, they discourage such talk. Whatever happens, they pay the winner and give him a tax form. So if you do make a deal, you're taking some chances.

edit: BTW what's all this talk about spending it on your house? Spacex ipo is Tuesday!

Monday morning, at work. This was a great update to start my day! Congrats and I hope the TR continues.

SUMMER TRIP DAY TWO (6/7/26)

After all the excitement of a Saturday that bled well into Sunday, Sunday proper was not set up to be an especially exciting day. I did not want to play any poker. On 3 hours sleep, I was far too exhausted. I knew I would punt. My main goal was just to take care of some simple errands and eventually crash early to catch up on lost sleep.

I deposited my check from Paris. Then I made my way over to Planet Hollywood to cash out various sports betting tickets I've been holding for months. There's an NBA Finals game tomorrow, but I don't have a great feel for this series. I'm not tempted to make any basketball bets. The only fresh bet I make is a speculative World Cup wager. I put $20 on Portugal to win the tournament, which would pay $210. I followed soccer closely in the 2010s and had a good handle on the different teams. Now I only follow the sport very casually. The bet is less about recognizing value and more about having a small sweat in the competition, though I know Portugal has several key players for PSG, the top club team of the moment. 10-to-1 seems like a reasonable price for one of the more compelling dark horse contenders.

For lunch I made my first summer visit to the Earl of Sandwich. Two sandwiches disappeared, never to be seen again.

After acquiring a pair of sandwiches, my next goal was to obtain a pair of shoes. This proved to be quite the odyssey. The mall in Planet Hollywood had nothing I liked in my size. The mall at Caesar's Palace is too bougie. I had to venture to Fashion Show Mall across from Wynn to finally secure a pair of somewhat normal Adidas in my size.

Like Miles Davis, we'll be kind of blue this summer.

For dinner I went to Maggiano's Little Italy, also in the Fashion Show Mall. Maggiano's was a frequent dinner break spot for me back when Wynn poker tournaments still had dinner breaks, but before Resorts World was open. I always ordered the spaghetti and meatballs with a side Caesar. I opted for the same tonight (sorry, no picture). The quality was fine and the portion was huge. I had to tap out without finishing, which is rare for me. The pasta, salad, lemonade, and tip set me back about $55-60. If I take off my personal nostalgia goggles, I wouldn't say the food was exceptional quality or value for the price, though the service was good and the ambiance is nice there.

There isn't much else to report from this rest day.

Looking ahead, there should be some great tournament options on Monday. When trying to plan my summer schedule, I was tempted by the $600 WSOP NLHE/PLO, $1100 Venetian 1C, and $600 Aria TOE for this slot. While I love the idea of chasing bracelets, PLO is probably my weakest game in the 8-game mix. I am not ready to play it yet in a huge field where everyone loves to say "pot". The Venetian event is appealing, but may lose out because there's still another possible flight tomorrow and because the opportunity to play good multi-day NLHE events at Venetian is available throughout the year. Aria TOE might be the winner. After my triple draw run in March, I wanted to play some T on this trip. This tournament would check that box while also offering a test of my O and E skills ahead of a possible $1.5k WSOP HORSE appearance.

I reserve the right to change my mind at the last second, but tentatively it looks like we will be dipping our toes in some TOE soon.

Nice plan Dog, I forgot about that TOE at Aria! Might have to run it as well. Triple draw is my worst game in the 8 game mix though, but it’s fun. GL - keep the heat!

What's the T game? Orleans had a tournament for that last night.

2-7 Triple Draw? Omaha and Stud Eight make up the games.

😀 DogFace might start a new trend buy into DDS with a $50 bill to finish first!

SUMMER TRIP DAY 3 (6/8/26)

The plan today is to play the $600 TOE at Aria. As this event is a 1 PM start, I kill some time before heading to the Horseshoe and securing the lucky breakfast. Can we activate lucky breakfast rungood? Lately the lucky breakfast has become the unlucky breakfast. We'll try to buck the trend.

We get a positive runout immediately on the walk over to the Aria. It's unusually pleasant outside for a summer afternoon in Vegas. We have avoided punishing summer heat. If we can avoid coolers and bad beats as effectively, it might be another great session.

Things start out reasonably well. I grow the stack from 30k to 35k within the first couple levels. I then make a few minor mistakes to finish the first cluster of four levels a whisker above 30k. After the break, I proceed to go ice cold. I'm simply not making hands. This continues until I have fewer than 10BBs at the start of a triple draw round. I brick a draw to an 8 perfect, which is good news for me because I was up against a made 7. I then find a wheel draw that turns into a made 87542. I go all-in. With one draw to go, I correctly break the 8 against obvious strength. My opponent has a 76542. I am drawing live with my 7542, but the last draw bricks and I'm eliminated.

I have no major regrets about anything because I don't think there was any route to a cash with my card distribution and runouts today. The bullet was always doomed, so all I can really say about it is, "On to the next one." Apart from the quiet cards, the tournament was enjoyable. I had fun with the TOE format. All of the games are engaging and it's a well-balanced mix with one draw game, one flop game, and one stud variant. I was never bored. After enduring some of the brutal WSOP newbie dealers, it was nice to have a crew of (mostly) real professionals at Aria. Aria is a nice venue and I always enjoy being on the property. The only complaint I have is that their tournament tables out on the gambling floor are a second-hand smoke nightmare. I was disappointed to bust the tournament relatively early today, but my lungs must have been happy.

I hit the Momofuku Bang Bar in the Cosmo for dinner. I got the teriyaki chicken bowl, which is what I always order from there. If it looks familiar, you may have seen it in my 2025 TR. The dish strikes a nice balance between being filling, somewhat healthy, and not super expensive.

My unplanned dinner break gave me an opportunity to figure out my next step for the day. I wanted to keep playing, but wasn't in the mood for a cash session. There were a few options on the tournament front. I could play the evening flight of the Wynn $1600. I could max late-reg the WSOP NLHE/PLO and have a shoving stack. I could fire the 6 PM $600 Venetian bounty. Or I could keep the outlay small and opt for the $200 WSOP daily at 8 PM. The first two options felt a little reckless and the Venetian tournament is just a carbon copy of their typical evening bounty with inflated summer stakes, so I picked the 8 PM $200. There will be plenty of chances on this trip to stretch into bigger events, but it has to be something worthwhile. When there's nothing exceptional on the slate, I'm happy to stay in the low stakes streets.

We are back on the scene of our victory, but I don't see my banner in the rafters.

I play a snug game for the first several levels out of necessity. My neighbor thinks I'm "tight", but really I'm just card dead. Still, I pick up a few premiums eventually and get paid. There is some pretty goofy play in this tournament. People are doing goofy things. I grow the stack to 3x starting, but have dropped closer to 2x after the second break. With sky high blinds, the all-in yo-yo begins. The yo-yo goes up and the yo-yo goes down. We win a flip with A9. We take down a pair of big hands with Ax against KQ. We lose half of our stack with TT all-in pre-flop against a Q9 squeezer. Close to the bubble, it folds to us in the SB with 9BB in our stack and AQ in our hands. This is a great spot...until BB snaps it off with AK. The flop brings two kings. That's all she wrote.

Not much else to say about this one. It was a fun ride, but the luck factor becomes paramount once the blinds get high. I held in a lot of spots, yet not quite enough. I probably won't fire this one again on this trip, as the swings are just too wild due to the turbo structure. One positive thing I'll say about the WSOP dailies in general this year is that they seem to have ditched the 10-handed play. We played 9-handed all day in the 1 PM on Saturday. The 8 PM was 9-handed tonight. I believe this is a change from recent years, when these tournaments tended to run with 10 players per table. It's a small difference, but I much prefer the extra legroom and slightly looser ranges.

Looking ahead to the next few days, there are a couple potential pathways. There is a NLHE route that would see me play the $1100 Venetian 1D on Tuesday and the $500 WSOP Colossus 1A on Wednesday. There is a mixed game pathway that would see me play the weekly $250 WSOP HORSE deepstack on Tuesday as a warm-up for the $1500 WSOP HORSE bracelet event on Wednesday. Both pathways are compelling in certain respects, so the decision might come down to a last minute vibe check.

As I type this, I lean towards playing the HORSE today as a warm-up for tomorrow and a gauge of my readiness in the format. If I have a decent experience, I'll likely play the $1.5k on Wednesday. If I feel like a mixed game fish after today, I might opt for the Colossus instead.

To clarify this comment, the lucky breakfast is a specific meal that I often get in the mornings in Vegas. Despite my miracle run on Saturday, the lucky breakfast itself is on a cold streak. Without this context, the comments above could appear to be approaching Joe Hachem "one time" valleys of self-awareness.

Obviously grateful for the recent rungood, though the lucky breakfast superstition has been debunked.