Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP dream

rp, great report and art work.
I'm an old guy, so take this for what it's worth: when my kids were young and playing sports, I told them "when you decide to play you have to be ready to accept some very painful loses and disappointments - can you handle that?''
Simple advice but you get the point.

I play a lot of HL blackjack and the number of "one outers - 7.7%'' can wear a person out, especially in tournaments (never won one, but have finished 2nd twice, and 3rd twice).
In other words, get back on that ******* horse and ride!!!

+1
Dogface is very insightful and understands the roller coaster emotions of tournament poker as good as anyone. Me? I just love tournament poker. I don't have the attachment to WSOP you seem to have. I'm just as happy at the Venetian, Wynn, Aria etc. as I am at the WSOP proper. I am already licking my chops for some local MSPT action in August as they come to Rivers and Ameristar East Chicago. I swore off local poker but ... this WSOP left a bad taste in my mouth too. And I wanna right those wrongs. Gotta look at it like a closer in baseball. Blow a save? Have a short memory and get right back out there tomorrow!

It was great meeting you and your efforts to get us all together was greatly appreciated! I hope you can put this disappointment in the rear view mirror and enjoy again the game I know you love!

I'm really glad you got what I was going for.

While I suffered numerous bad beats this WSOP, only the last one got to me.

I wrote about this specific bad beat and the impact it had on me over numerous days of posts, but I worried that it might come off as whiny, annoying, crybaby complaining. But given that it did bother me so much, I decided to share the psychology of what I was experiencing. I thought that sharing the inner turmoil would make for an interesting look into mindset. It's not something I'm proud of as a poker player. It is something I thought was worth exploring as a writer.

Here I just said I need to take some time off poker, and you go and try to entice me with upcoming local poker tournaments.

The Rivers location is incredibly geographically desirable, but I don't love the structures of the one day tourneys. The Ameristar East Chicago has some one day tourneys with structures I like a lot.

Let me know when you decide your schedule for these tourneys and I can see if I 1) am ready to jump back in to the MTT streets, and 2) am able to make it fit with my non-poker life schedule.

RP, can I strongly recommend a subscription to one of the established mtt coaching sites?

I've only been on one for 3 months but it is really interesting & very useful to learn more about the craft, detail and nuance of mtt strategy. Most importantly of all for me, it's generated a new level of passion for MTTs while also giving me a huge amount more confidence in my play because of better understanding of good strategy as well as adding some very useful & profitable tricks to my box.

it will absolutely make you better & I think your brain will find the learning fun too.
While it won't help you fade bad beats it will help you accumulate more chips to protect you from them and to profit more from all ins when you have more chips in your stack.

I subscribe to Jaka coaching, which brianr does too - he has for far longer. I'm sure there are other good ones as well - the only other one I've used was Upswing - I far prefer Jaka, but that may be a personal preference.

thank you for the impressively detailed and entertaining report. I've enjoyed it immensely. I also enjoyed meeting you, albeit I wish we could have met again.

& a+1 to what dogface said. This is the business we have chosen & horrible beats & 0 for trips are an unfortunate & necessary part of the journey. Most days end in painful disappointment. I am lucky to have experienced the other side of the variance swing with my recent trip but the previous one I was 0 for 6 in $1k+ mtts, I lost chunks at cash, was robbed at LAX & returned to a smashed up car at the airport!

keep putting in the hours

I have put in a lot of time on pokercoaching.com (Jonathan Little's site) in the fairly recent past. I spent many hours each night doing so. I don't think I'm up for that kind of commitment right now.

I think I want to back off the mtt coaching sites for the time being. I think I'd like to just play for fun. Maybe a year from now I'll be up for grinding away again on a coaching site.

Thanks for the suggestion.

1000 thanks once again for your trip report. You really do spoil us here with your writing ability.

I like your thinking with being less obsessed with the WSOP for the whole year round. Maybe instead of the Lion King you could be like Baloo, or any bear for that matter, and go into hibernation for the winter in regard to thinking about WSOP, and enjoy other things and football season. Good luck to Michigan btw. Maybe February would be a good time to come out of hibernation when the schedule gets released and you’ll still have plenty of time to prepare in your own meticulous way.

I enjoyed spending some time with you this year and hope to see you again next year.

Poker is extremely all-consuming, and finding balance can be very hard and delicate. If you get too wrapped up into the game and have that as your one big interest (like i have), then it's way too easy to tie your self worth into poker results and get very discouraged if those are not at the level you expect. I don't think that is a danger for you though, as you have a family and seem to have other interests and activities to keep your mind engaged and having a fulfilled life.

At the same time, I think your mindset and gameplay suffers from lack of repetition. The more poker you play, the more you get used to bad beats like AK vs AQ and can move on to the next one. But when your 'next significant one' is 10 months away and you really only play 15-20 (?) tournaments a year, it's a bit harder. And although I can hardly claim to know what's the right move in every spot, I also think your gameplay suffers from not playing enough. It seems like you are doing a decent job at studying, but when it comes to WSOP-time you often default to 'American OMC' lines. I apologize if that sounds like an insult.

(although I like that you found some 3-bets and some double barrels at times)

I guess my point is that it's very difficult to be a half-studied player, and still expect results. It takes insane dedication and volume, to a level that I probably can't even comprehend. For example, I have not been dedicated enough the last year, and I think it shows.

My recommendation would be to take some time off (maybe rest of 2026?), but when you really get back into things - ensure that you get a lot of game time. I realize you don't have any casino super close to you and that it's hard to get in reps, but I think it would be great practice if you showed up to a random $120 daily tourney or whatever and just gave yourself a strict rule based on the studying you have done prior. I think your game would grow leaps and bounds as soon as you start to put yourself in uncomfortable spots and practice more aggressive lines and uncomfortable bet sizes.

(I should do the same)

Edit: And if I have not said so before, your writing is amazing and I wish I could write like this. And your TRs are a huge positive to this forum, and I always look forward to read new updates.

All valid points. Improvement requires volume to a level that would make sense if I were single and if I were trying to make the jump from amateur to pro. But I am none of that. So yes, more volume would be +EV as a poker player but -EV for the rest of my life. The reality is even if I doubled my volume I would still consider myself to be relatively inexperienced compared to the typical WSOP participant. If online poker would get legalized in my state that would be a game changer for me, but who knows when/if that will ever happen.

Other responses:

-- No insult taken regarding "American OMC."
-- I like your comment about self worth and poker. I need to focus on love of the game (which I do 98% of the time) rather than tying my self worth to results (which I do 2% of the time, which is probably 2% too much given who/what I am as a poker player.
-- Thanks for the compliment about my writing.
-- I started this poker journey embracing my underdog status and embracing my desire to nonetheless put myself in The Arena. I need to remind myself of this from time to time.

Upon further review ...

OK, I have had what is either an epiphany or a bout with delusion. Here is my testimony, you be the judges:

I have been absorbing LVL members recent comments/advice/suggestions (and thank you to everyone who has cared enough to do so). Obviously I can't take ALL of the advice since some people's thoughts are at odds with other people's ideas.

But the key take aways as I see it are the following:

-- Control what you can control.

-- Focus on the process, not the results.

Looking through these lenses, my thoughts keep coming to the same analysis, which was I kept putting myself in position to have a really large stack only to have negative variance clobber me. Maybe I should be embracing how I played at WSOP 2026.

Going from memory, in two separate day 1s of the 2026 Colossus, I was about to build stack of 200,000+ chips when I got it in way ahead and lost. On a third Day 1, I was set to surpass 300,000 chips if my AK held up against AQ, which it did not.

I get it that there are no trophies for "Got it in Good and Lost." But the only way to make deep runs is to keep putting yourself in good spots to have a lot of chips, and I did so this WSOP at a frequency and size I hadn't done in the past. I also did so without sucking out to build my quality chip stacks.

For comparison purposes (going from memory):

-- During WSOP 2025, I believe I surpassed 200,000 chips one time, and that was during a Day 2 in the money when 200,000 chips was not a lot. In WSOP 2026, my opportunities to have 200,000+ chips would have been at Day 1 levels when that would have been a quality chip stack.

-- During WSOP 2019 I surpassed 200,000 chips on Day 1 (I think I may have gotten as high as approximately 260,000 at one point, but I'm too lazy to go back and find the exact amount) because I was sun running. I had A-A versus K-K for a very early double up and I was hitting sets left and right. In WSOP 2026 I feel like I built stacks more on solid play (I did have one A-A versus K-K double up).

-- The biggest pot I ever played for was either during WSOP 2024 or 2025 (again, I'm too lazy to go back and find it). The pot was in excess of 400,000 chips, which might have been for the Day 1 chip lead at the time. I had J-J. The flop was A-K-J. Two opponents each had Q-10 for the flopped nut straight. All the chips went in the middle. If the board had paired (or the case Jack had arrived) I would have won the hand (I did not get there). And while I had equity with two cards to come, the reality was I got it in from behind. This year when I played for 200,000+ and 300,000+ pots, I got it in good every time.

Based upon all of this, I think a case can be made that I had a successful WSOP in the context of process, not results.

My process saw me get it in from way ahead numerous times for huge amounts of chips (in relation to big blinds). What I could control was the fact that I was getting it in good. Nothing I could do about bad run outs.

Looking at my 2026 WSOP this way, I think an argument can be made that there was growth on my part. I think an argument can be made that I have been too hard on myself. I controlled what I could control (getting it in very good for large amounts of chips during three separate Day 1s). My process put me in position to probably find a bag/cash if only my dominating hands had held.

My question to LVL is, does this sound like I took a positive step forward during my 2026 WSOP? Or am I simply rationalizing to make myself feel better?

Blunt honesty is encouraged.

It wasn't my intention to tempt you 😀 Neither place is really "geographically" desirable for me but at least Rivers looks to have easy expressway accesability. Then again the is the O'Hare traffic. Rivers seems to be the premier Chicagoland poker destination. That said I am only a possible maybe for a Rivers event. If I do play it, it would be the 2 day mini-main ($400) on either 1A (8/4) or 1B (8/5) with day 2 (8/6).

I am much more likely to play the first 3 events at the Ameristar. (8/25) $300 Epic stack, (8/26) $300 Ultimate Stack, and (8/27) $300 Senior Event. I really hate these commutes so my plan for Ameristar would be to get a room there for the first 2 nights. If I bink any of that I could possibly talk myself into playing the main event.

And again your trip report is simply perfect (except that soul crushing hand!). Turn into a book or a series of articles at Card Player or something. This is really good stuff!

Definitely positive! You went deep consistently and got it in good. Thats about all you can do.

Our thinking is very similar. I don't think I will play at Rivers (don't like the structures). The first two events at Ameristar are what grab my attention. I played in them last year (staying overnight at the hotel) and got knocked out of each fairly close to the money bubble. The structure of each was very, very good. If I decide to go a similar route this year I will let you know.

As for the book idea, 1) Thanks for the compliment, and 2) I think I have the beginning and middle of a book, but I don't have the back end of the story, and I certainly don't have an ending at this point.

Well, the ending is obvious.

You're on the right track, but I'm thinking something more glorious ...

Of course, Tiger was Goliath back then, which doesn't fit me. If you want something more in line with glory in the most hobbled, unlikely of ways (which sounds more like both current and future me) ...

At the 7:56 mark, legendary Vin Scully offers the recap that would certainly fit me taking the final step to the peak of the mountaintop, "In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened."

In my delusional imagination, I'd celebrate such a great achievement something like this ...

And if this ever happens at the WSOP, I expect LVL members to help me celebrate as a group something like this (go to 3:27 mark) ...

OK, we now return to the real world.

this post answers your question broadly with comments on your play/experience, but is directed at least as much towards me, my play & process as I am on the same self improvement journey as it relates to mtts. + I'm sure all the rest of the MTT tourists in here.

I can't say I've read all your hand histories to be able to comment in detail on your play, but I think your mindset & approach may actually be holding you back in some regards.

headline....if you only get it in good when lots of chips get into the middle ...this isn't a good thing. it means you're playing too tight.

tight and even tight aggressive play does not win or go deep in no limit hold em tournaments. it doesn't.

Just waiting for big pocket pairs & AK or sets after seeing the flop cheaply & having a collision with another big but slightly worse hand is just never going to get it done. Everyone else is trying to do the same & once we get past the droolers who are calling down with third pair, we are ultimately just trying to get luckier than other people and that isn't a long term winning strategy.

(this is the biggest adjustment I still need to make when moving from from cash games to mtts)

MTTs with increasing blinds, finite times & the pressure to keep building your stack (plus no rake in pots) require looser, more aggressive play. Particularly in sth like the Colossus with 40 min levels or sth with 30 min levels but in bigger MTTs too.

- We have to open up our starting & 3 bet ranges a ton & be prepared to continue aggressively.
- We have to play more aggressively from the blinds pre & post flop
- We need to bluff & semi bluff a ton more post flop
- We need to value bet way thinner
- We need to bluff catch
- We need to win more pots without the best hand & this style of play will mean we win bigger pots WITH the best hand because we'll be harder to play against

Building big stacks protects us from losing all ins & we have to remember that we are going to lose them & to expect variance. (It's always jolting to remember that when we win with AA all in pre against 27o...we're actually running ABOVE expectation)

- All the above means that we also need to be prepared to die in an ugly, embarrassing and painful way from time to time. When we check raise an up & down straight draw on the flop, bomb turn & river & get called by TP weak kicker. When we 3 bet pre with K7ss, bet two streets representing the A on the flop & lost to 88 or whatever.

It's a challenging mindset to adopt particularly if...like me...you're playing 10 mtts a year & there isn't another one tomorrow But it's what we need to do.

I'm not suggesting playing like a maniac. but there needs to be one inside

A night (and then some) without poker

My WSOP is over. My trip report just saw me write my final entry. And there were no WSOP streams to watch tonight as all that remains is the delay and then the Final 9 of The Main that won't occur until August 3-5.

So what was I supposed to do tonight? For the first time in forever I watched a movie. I watched Project Hail Mary. The movie was entertaining, yet I was a bit disappointed. The book this was based upon was written by Andy Weir. He also wrote the book The Martian, which was also adapted into a movie. The Martian was awesome as a book and just as awesome as a movie. The clever writing and dialogue really translated well from book to movie. The book Project Hail Mary was also exceptionally written. The movie, however, failed to live up to the high standards of the book. Again, it's a solid movie. But I wasn't as captivated by the movie as I was by the novel. Obviously that is a common refrain about a book being better than the movie. But given how well The Martian translated from book to movie, I was hoping for the same for Project Hail Mary, but I guess I was expecting too much.

Still, it was nice to just chill and do something that did not require me to run GTO pre flop charts through my brain.

Next on my movie agenda is the movie Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. It's the conclusion to the incomplete story line in Mission: Impossible - The Dead Reckoning Part One. As I recall, The Final Reckoning Part One really left me wanting due to its slow pace, mediocre writing, lack of story arc and the fact that it made no attempt to hide the fact it simply existed to get you to eventually watch Part Two. I thought it was a lazy money grab. I like the Mission: Impossible franchise, but I didn't care at all for Dead Reckoning. I'm hoping The Final Reckoning is more satisfying.

After that I may watch the movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. I read the book and it was Hunger Games lite and felt a bit rushed and mailed in by the author (Suzanne Collins), but I like the Hunger Games franchise so I'll give the movie a watch.

After that I will dive into my reading. I have David Baldacci, Brad Meltzer and Mark Greaney fiction action/thriller books to read. They are my three favorite writers and are each master story tellers of the highest order. I also have read the first couple of books in The Inheritance Games series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and I may keep going in that franchise. Ben Mezrich is a writer that tells a rollicking good story, and I have his latest book Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess on my to read list. I also want to get to a book by New York Times best-selling author John U. Bacon book titled The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which isn't necessarily the type of book I'd normally read but he is friends with a bunch of my college newspaper friends, and we have ended up in a group together at a bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan on multiple occasions in the past. I've read his other books and they are always extremely well-researched.

All told, there are in excess of 40 books on my book shelf waiting for me to read. I love going into bookstores (Barnes & Noble as well as used bookstores), and I never leave without buying multiple books. They are always waiting for me, and eventually I will get to all of them. Now feels like a good time to put a dent into this overflow of books.

Finding something to keep my mind occupied will not be a problem now that I am going to give my poker brain some time to rest and recharge.

you can take positive steps forward in your play, strategy, effort and mindgame in poker and still not win. tournaments are like that

[QUOTE=feel wrath]...Building big stacks protects us from losing all ins & we have to remember that we are going to lose them & to expect variance. (It's always jolting to remember that when we win with AA all in pre against 27o...we're actually running ABOVE expectation)[/QUOTE]

This cannot be emphasized enough.

The continued recharging of my batteries

I watched the movie Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning last night. Highly, highly entertaining. It contained everything that is great about the Mission: Impossible franchise. Tom Cruise was born to play Ethan Hunt.

Today, Mrs. rppoker was out all day and night with a couple of her college friends, so I had a Saturday all to myself (along with my pup Astro -- lots of playing fetch and eating treats). I finished the roughly 750-page book "Those Guys have All The Fun: Inside The World Of ESPN" today (I read the first half of it before my WSOP trip), which was astonishingly well-researched, but very clunky in its organization. Also today, I watched the World Cup third-place game between England and France that was both one of the worst played contests ever (France was horrendous the first half, England was horrendous much of the second half) while also being insanely entertaining. I turned on a meaningless consolation soccer game and the NBA All-Star game broke out (translation: almost no defense played). Final score: England 6, France 4. Finally, tonight I started reading a new book, which was the third installment of The Inheritance Games series titled The Final Gambit.

Tomorrow, I'll watch the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina (I'm rooting for Messi to finish his World Cup career in style -- surely he isn't a cyborg who will still be scoring meaningful goals four years from now -- although Spain looks like the better side) during the afternoon, and then it's family dinner at night.

Zero poker. The break from no-limit hold'em is refreshing.

Rppoker, your trip reports are superb, and you are such a boon to LVL. Thank you for taking the time to write such thorough and entertaining dispatches from your adventures at the tables and in Las Vegas -- I found myself repeatedly looking forward to the next installment. I'm sorry that variance reared it's ugly head at the wrong times this year. Glad I got the chance to briefly meet you and say hi.

I hope you will take a good break and then slowly gear yourself up for WSOP 2027. Tournament poker is a masochistic pastime, but there's truly nothing like running deep in a big tournament (like you, I'm also still chasing my first big live score with very limited volume).

My two cents' worth of advice: When (I will assume it's not if) you gear up for the next WSOP, I hope you'll consider a coaching site and/or a little one-on-one coaching. Your hand histories revealed some notable leaks - you open limped a weak/capped range, for instance, that could have been easily attacked, and you should cut it out of your game. No reason you can't open small pocket pairs from EP, which was what you were most often open limping. There also were a few spots where you gave up too easily on pots where you didn't make a pair but had other equity.

What feelwrath said is important -- we are going to get bad beats in tournaments, and part of the key to survival is having enough chips to sustain the body blows. You found spots to bluff/be aggressive, which is good, but I suspect you can still improve on accumulating chips with less than premium holdings and to save chips by losing fewer small where you don't connect with the board.

Enjoy the break and I look forward to reading more soon enough!

I will likely be an outlier and don't think you should take a long break. I don't know what it's like to have a big ramp up to the WSOP and be devastated by a beat, but it's AK vs AQ. It happens. Stewing over it for an extended period of time likely accomplishes nothing. You didn't do anything wrong.

To add to others... Thank you for taking us along with you.

I also thought that MI 4-6 was the sweet spot, but that's just me.