-$48K in 2 Days…Have I Reached my End-Game?

Sigh…what not to do after you lose $24K the day before: take a shot at 25/50 HU.

I mean, I actually started today really well and was up about $15K. Although I had that $-24K session last night I actually won $10K in the morning so between the three sessions I was actually even for the two days. So what do I do? Get cocky of course and notice that this really big 25/50 fish is online (down over $200K on PTR). So I sit at a 25/50 HU table and hope that he’ll sit with me. Literally within 10 seconds he sits and I proceed to win half his stack on the very first hand. So now I’m up 17.5K, have a reloading fish all to myself at 25/50, and have an equally good spot at a 25/50 FR table on Stars – what could go wrong?

LOTS!

I couldn’t really be bothered to go into the details, but I lost $30K to him and about $10K on my 25/50 six-max and full ring tables (since I was concentrating on the HU match so much I basically auto-piloted away a couple of stacks from bad c-bets and the like. Overall I finished the session down $24K again. Here’s my graph for August, AKA “how to ruin your best month ever in two days”.



I cashed out $20K four days ago so I’m now again in the precarious position of only having $56K online. Last time I went back to 5/10 to grind it all back up, and it seems that I’ll have to do the same again now. What’s really starting to bug me though is that I haven’t really made that much money this year – at least not nearly as much as I could have. I’ve spent the better part of this year trying to move up permanently to 10/20+ and have basically gone through cycles of winning $20K at 5/10 and then losing it back at 10/20+. I feel like I’ve seriously sold myself short in terms of how much money I could have made this year and so I’m starting to think that maybe the best thing for me isn’t to keep trying to move up but rather just settle down at 5/10 and still make a shitload of dough there.

The thing is though, I’m not that kind of person. I’m very ambitious and want to keep moving up. In fact, I’ve always wondered in bewilderment how some people seem to have no motivation to move up at all. On Stars especially, there are a bunch of grinders who seem to accept 1/2 or 2/4 as their lot in life and simply keep playing there forever. In some ways I’m actually kind of envious of them. They’ve reached their end-game in poker and are probably a lot more relaxed and stress-free in life overall. They know how much they make per hour, they repeat it endlessly, and they use the money to get on with the rest of their life. I don’t think I could ever do that. For me, if I’m not at the top of something, I’ll keep trying my darn best to get there, and if I realise that I simply can’t, I’ll probably find something else to do.

The thing is though, this endeavour is not like the other ones that I’ve pursued in the past. It’s very different in one very important respect: this is real money that I’m losing here, and a hell of a lot of it too. If ever there were a time to let my pride and ambition give way to logic and common sense, then surely this is it.

I’m not going to be playing poker forever. Once I graduate in one and a half years I’ll probably take a year off and travel before starting work full time. This means that I have about two and a half years left in my poker career. Two and a half years is kind of an awkward time-frame. If it were ten years then the clear play I think would be to keep trying to move up. If it were only one year the clear play would be to just grind 5/10. But two and a half years…I’m not really sure. I guess I can see one of three outcomes eventuating:

1) I decide to just grind 5/10 forever and make, say, $400K
2) I go for gold, succeed and make a cool billion
3) I go for gold, fail, and wonder why I didn’t just grind 5/10

I’m terrified of the last outcome…

So yeah, I’m not sure where I’m going to go from here. I’m definitely not going to decide right now since I’m probably not thinking very straight, but I’ll definitely give it a good hard think while I grind this money back at 5/10. Yep, back to the 5/10 tables for me…

PS: My first CardRunners video is out this week! The video description says that I’m “extraordinary talented”. Don’t know who wrote that but I couldn’t agree more! Hehe.

12.5 Hour, -$24,000 Session…

What can I say…I spewed, I tilted, I ran badly and generally just played like shit…

I actually ran amazing in preflop all-ins but my god I must’ve missed 90% of flops while these two ridiculous fish hit every single damn one. One had a 28K stack at 25/50 and the other had 18K at 10/20. Both were non-deep tables…both had VPIPs > 45… how is that even possible?

After five hours I actually picked up a pretty sick tell on both of them. It wasn’t much use though, but basically whenever a flop came down and they checked, all I had to do was work out what the top pair was…that’s what they had…MINIMUM!

FML…

My Epic Vegas Trip - Day 3 (Loads of Pics!)

Saturday July 4 – Exploring the Strip

I wanted everyone to wake up as early as possible on Saturday so that we could fully explore the Strip, but they were having none of it. So in the end we set our alarm for 11AM and, when we woke up, Pete called the other’s room to wake them up too. He was greeted by an extremely pissed off Anna who snarled at him before promptly hanging up. Literally ten seconds later though she called back all jovial and ready to go – apparently she thought it was like 8AM the first time which is why she was so unimpressed!

Pete, Fraser and I got ready pretty quickly so we decided to play some Three Card Poker downstairs while we waited for the others. I really liked Three Card Poker because I knew I was playing optimally – bet with Q64 or better and fold the rest. With Blackjack I still didn’t know exactly what I was doing! Our dealer was this American lady who, upon finding out that we were Australian, launched into a speech about her adoration of Australia and how she has family who live right near Star City Casino. We had a pretty nice chat but I could see the other man at the table getting a bit fed up because while she was talking to us she basically stopped dealing hands altogether!

The others arrived soon after and informed us that the queue at the buffet was inordinately long due to it being Independence Day. None of us felt like waiting and it was already midday by this stage so we decided to just head out onto the Strip and find some food along the way.

We took the right exit from the Bellagio since there were a bunch of escalators and travelators and they’re always enticing.

We then headed into the Miracle Mile shopping complex since it involved shade and had an equally enticing entrance sign complete with flashing lights.

It was during our tour of the Miracle Mile that we had our first encounter with fake sky and I have to say it was very cool; mostly because it was completely unexpected and the décor suddenly changed from your standard shopping mall into this Arabian Nights sort of theme.

We also came across a cheeseburger joint where we decided to stop for brunch. Julian salivated at the thought of having an American-sized cheeseburger and ordered the double cheeseburger just to make sure it was big enough. I went for the bacon cheeseburger with blue cheese which was unusual but also really nice. We had a chat with some people from Kansas or somewhere similar on the table next to us and they recommended us some places to go see the Independence Day fireworks that night. They also thought we were like 17 and kept making jokes about my Prada sunglasses and us staying at Bellagio...

After lunch we left the Miracle Mile and headed out towards Paris hotel. Along the way Anna collected some ‘fliers’ from the nice folks handing them out (she claims as souvenirs, but we know better) and everyone took some happy snaps.

Inside Paris we encountered more fake sky and this time were entirely unimpressed. I think you’ll agree.

We made our way out pretty quickly and headed back towards Caesar’s. Along the way Fraser felt thirsty and bought the largest bottle of beer I’ve ever seen…a 67 oz Bud Light (he didn’t end up finishing more than half…)

Arriving at Caesar’s was pretty cool because we had just seen ‘The Hangover’ and so immediately recognised the entrance and lobby. Here’s a photo of me with some hot Vestal Virgins in the lobby.

And here’s a photo of the rest of the guys being complete galahs around Caesar’s statue.

We then proceeded through the casino (deciding along the way that Bellagio’s casino was much better) and into the famous Forum Shops that link the Bellagio and Caesar’s. Here we encountered more fake sky and were again unimpressed but definitely found the curvy escalator to our liking. Anna bought a scarf to make our day feel productive.

After exploring the Forum Shops we were all feeling pretty exhausted and it was boiling hot so rather than continue up the Strip towards the Venetian as planned we decided to save it for another day. Fraser and Julian decided to take the direct route back to the Bellagio (i.e. at street level out in the sun) while the rest of us trudged back through the coolness of the Forum Shops. Along the way we picked up our first daiquiri of the trip which should have been a godsend but in the end turned out to be so sweet as to be virtually undrinkable. In fact it probably left us more thirsty and dehydrated than before…

Back at the Bellagio we decided to head down to the pool for a quick swim before dinner (it was already about 5PM by this stage). I have to say that the Bellagio pool was a bit disappointing. It had a very polished layout with a relaxed courtyard feel but at the same time it felt quite uptight, there was nowhere you could really swim and the crowd was all middle-aged people in their 40’s and 50’s. I know the latter is probably somewhat expected for an expensive hotel like the Bellagio but still!

After showering we decided to just head out and see where the night would take us. Before leaving for Vegas we had heard about how Independence Day is a massive holiday in the US and how everything would be going off. The atmosphere during the day therefore had been a lot more subdued than we expected (for some reason I expected everyone to be covered in face paint, flying American flags, wearing over-the-top Uncle Sam hats and beeping their car horns in the street) so we figured that everyone must be saving their energy for the night.

During the course of the day we had found out that fireworks would be going off from 9 hotels simultaneously and that some daredevil would be performing an amazing death-defying trick for us all. Expectations were running high. What followed though was one of the biggest letdowns ever. We could only see the fireworks from one hotel (Caesar’s behind us, and they were pretty pathetic fireworks at that) and the daredevil dude decided to do a disappearing trick! WTF? Surely the one trick you don’t do when trying to entertain a gazillion people who can barely see you in the first place is a DISAPPEARING trick where NO ONE can see you?! We literally didn’t even know the trick was over until someone told us.

The highlight of the night ended up being seeing someone get arrested and smacked onto the police car bonnet right in front of us, though I guess the helicopter landing and taking off was pretty cool too (apparently the finale of the trick involved the guy disappearing from wherever he was and appearing on the helicopter).

At this point we decided that we needed to have a few drinks so that we could forget just how bad that experience was. We hadn’t booked a table at any club and imagined that the lines would be far too long so we decided to just go back and drink in our rooms. Julian and I went back to the Miracle Mile to buy some alcohol while the rest went to buy some dinner from the snacks diner at Bellagio. On Pete’s advice I ordered the Chicken Buffalo Wings for the first time and they were awesome!

After a couple of drinking games we were suitably tipsy and decided to head down to have another crack at the table games. Along the way we saw Audrina from The Hills which made Rosie’s night. We started by playing Blackjack, during which time I apparently said “what a fish!” really loudly when a player made a bad hit. The others found this hilarious and apparently he also glared at me for the next 30 minutes. I however do not recall such a thing. To finish the night we moved back to Three Card Poker and I tried to convince Rosie to make her first bet of the trip but she kept declining because she was scared she would stuff up. I kept explaining how she couldn’t possibly stuff up since all she had to do was bet Q64 or better and fold everything else. She was adamant though and eventually I just placed an ante in front of where she was sitting and she had to play the hand. She looked at her cards, placed them face down and put a bet out.

“See Rosie, easy!” I said.

The dealer turned over my hand, a weak Q-high which ended up being just outkicked, and then she turned over Rosie’s…

“Jack, Nine, Eight – Dealer Wins” she said.

FML…

After that I proceeded to lose the rest of my $500 buy-in and along the way made Rosie feel as guilty as possible by saying that I was on tilt and would keep on playing until I recouped her $10 bet or bust. I remember that she began to feel really bad and thrust $20 at me in hopes of making amends but I declined and kept on betting…

Ah, another day in Vegas…

HU Challenge Finished, Played Galfond HU!

A few months ago I checked my HEM and noticed that I was up in nearly all forms of poker up to and including 5/10. The only games that I was down in were 3/6 HU, 5/10 HU and 2/4 Full Ring. I didn’t really care about the 2/4 Full Ring since I was playing 5/10 6-Max at the time but I really didn’t like the fact that I was down so much at HU, especially since HU is often regarded as the litmus test for determining whether a player is actually good or not. So I decided to play HU for a little while to win the 5 to 10 buy-ins that I needed at each level to get back to even and in a way clear my conscience. At the time I figured that it’d take me at most a fortnight to complete my goal but right off the bat I dropped like 10 buy-ins at 5/10 and then when I dropped down to 3/6 I simply kept on losing. At this point I realised that a) I really did suck at HU and b) that this goal was going to take a lot longer than I thought, especially because no one plays you once they realise you are a reg (no matter how much you actually suck at HU – I still laugh at all the value some people must have missed off me).

Anyway, at this point I had a choice: I could keep on playing and try to complete my challenge, or I could quit. The latter option was extremely tempting since in terms of making money this challenge was quite retarded. I made much more money (heck, I actually made money) at 5/10 6-max and all I was really doing was causing myself much unneeded heartache because of an artificial goal that I had set for myself. But in the end, I decided to try and finish the challenge because I really hated the idea of giving up and admitting defeat and having these two red boxes perpetually staring at me in my HEM.

Since I was foregoing EV simply by playing HU, I decided to go all the way and treat the experience entirely as an investment. By this I mean I didn’t seek out fish to recoup my money. Instead, I sought out the best regs in an attempt to learn new things, try new things, and generally just become a better poker player. In fact, given my struggles at 10/20, I felt that I certainly could use an injection of freshness in my game and indeed a lot of people talk about how playing HU can really add to your game and make you a better 6-max player.

Well, I finally finished my challenge today and am feeling really relieved more than anything. At their lowest points I was down 13K at 3/6 and 28K at 5/10 so to gain all that back was really nice. It was an exhausting experience though and to be honest I’ll be happy if I never have to play another fully-fledged HU match ever again. But I’m definitely glad that I completed my goal and think I am a better player for it. Not by much mind you – I definitely think the benefits of HU to your 6-max game are overstated since quite simply, the two are entirely different games. It might be true that the best HU players also crush 6-max, but this is probably more of a correlative relation than a causative one.

So, what did I learn from my HU experience? Well, as I’ve said previously, I learnt to play better out of position, both in raised and in re-raised pots. I was also able to identify a few common spots where I could take some new and pretty interesting lines both as bluffs and for value. I think both these things will translate pretty directly to my 6-max play which is nice.

The thing though that I will take away most from my HU experience is not any particular line or move or anything like that. Rather it’s sort of a way of approaching the game and three matches in particular come to mind (as you can imagine, I got crushed in all three).

The first, against jungleman12, was very brief but it really taught me the power of relentless aggression; no matter what line you take or how little sense it makes, it’s still really hard for your opponent to call down third pair even if you do it over and over and over again.

The second match, versus heybude/Mirttinur, took this concept to the extreme and he was the first player I think that I’ve played who literally (and I mean literally – think defending J2o and 48o from the big blind HU) didn’t care about the strength of his hand and only played board textures instead. The first time I was demolished so badly and was in such a state of shock that I even asked him who he was after the match, fearing that he was some awesome high stakes player that I’d never heard of (turns out that he’s a 25/50 HU reg so figures). I reviewed the entire session afterwards and saw that his style was extremely exploitable but my god, if you didn’t see a few showdowns early on and know what was coming, you could easily get ridiculously run over like I did.

(A fun addendum to this match: The next day he sat with me again but this time on FTP where I have a different screenname. I had finished reviewing the session literally just one hour earlier and couldn’t believe my luck. I won about seven buy-ins in thirty minutes… To his credit though he adapted extremely quickly and I quit soon after once he seized the momentum back.)

The final match was against Phil Galfond. Yep, that’s right, OMGClayAiken. He was sitting at 5/10 on Stars and pretty obviously making a video so I decided to play him. Unfortunately, little did I know that I was about to walk into, in Phil’s words (part one of the series is now up), “the most advanced video” he’s ever made. I simply got owned. I was definitely extremely card-dead (so much so that his first note on me was that I was a nit) but his mix of aggression and variable bet-sizing completely threw me off my game. In fact after the first fifteen minutes I dead-set thought he was drunk, so erratic was his play. It was nothing like I’d seen in his videos and it was really frustrating because mostly I was just folding everywhere but then anytime I did decide to make a move he would come right back. Looking at the video now he had a hand in most of those spots but I assume he definitely also had his fair share of air (so far I’ve seen him 5-bet me with 34o and I folded A4s for example). After about half an hour into the session I remember thinking to myself “jeez, this guy really is that good… on a completely different level”. I mean, I didn’t expect him to be bad or anything obviously…just not that far apart either.

Anyway, so concludes my HU adventure. And with the end of it also comes the end of my downswing - I’m up about 40K since I made my “50K Downswing” post and dropped back down to 5/10. I have 95K online now and am looking forward to having another tilt at 10/20 again. I’m going to take it easy for the next few weeks though and take a bit of a break. For one, before taking on 10/20 again, I really want to watch a whole bunch of videos that I haven’t had time to watch and I also want to collate and review the copious (but currently typo-ridden, unorganised and unreadable) notes that I’ve taken over the years. I have a feeling that there’s a whole bunch of awesome stuff in there that has slowly filtered out of my game as time has passed. Secondly, it’s a really busy month coming up for me anyway with 4 summer clerkship interviews, 3 corresponding information nights and/or cocktail evenings, and 2 mid-semester law exams, so I think a break from poker is almost mandatory for me anyway.

Good luck at the tables guys.

My Epic Vegas Trip - Day 2

Friday July 3 – Welcome to the WSOP!

Our first full day in Vegas began with a beautiful buffet breakfast at ‘Buffet’ (another simply-named Bellagio eatery). I was ready and eager to devour about three plates of hot food and two plates of fruit but after having just one of each I realised I was pretty much spent – the Philly Cheese Steak from the night before was still taking its toll it seemed…

After breakfast we headed back up to our rooms to book tickets for ‘O’ and the Grand Canyon. You would think this would be a rather tame affair but by the time it was all done and dusted Rosie had stormed off in a huff (one too many sexist jokes by Julian) and Anna was, to put it mildly, unimpressed with all of us (“why are you so incompetent Pete!”). So that was nice.

Julian, Fraser, Pete and I then decided to head to the Rio so that I could register for Day 1D while Anna and Rosie went down to the pool.

It was a pretty cool feeling walking into the Rio. The hallway leading up to the Amazon Room is one I’ve seen a million times on TV, so to actually open a door and walk into it was pretty surreal. We turned into the first room we came across and instantly the chirping of chips filled the air. Ah…the sound of poker.

Since this was Pete and Fraser’s first poker trip they immediately went forth and set out in search of pros. I, being the seasoned veteran of the live tournament circuit that I am now, felt no such urge and instead headed out to the cage on the other side of the hotel to cash in my traveller’s cheques. Julian decided to accompany me because a) he has no interest in poker and b) he felt I needed a worthy bodyguard like himself.

Along the way we came across a restaurant name that in Australia would completely defy belief. The term must obviously have a completely different meaning and/or connotation in the US because there’s simply no way this would pass muster as a restaurant name in Australia. Anyone care to explain?

After I got my money I sat down and stared at my two chocolate chips for a good half-hour…

Ok, not really, but man, $5000 chips are cool!

While I waited in the line to register the others found the exhibition room and attacked it with glee. By the time I found them they had already putted golf and battled Gladiator-style. Fraser had even disposed of an unworthy American challenger! Australia 1, USA 0.

The other offerings ranged from lame to not-so-lame. On the not-so-lame end of the scale was the strength tester and the mechanical bull. Here’s Julian on the former and Pete on the latter.

It was getting towards 6PM by now so we decided to head back to the Bellagio. We were meant to pick up our O tickets on the way out but had forgotten so we stopped by the O desk on the way back. Unfortunately the line was way too long so we decided to come back another time and face the wrath of Anna instead.

For dinner we went to ‘Noodles’, thus completing the circle of self-descriptive Bellagio eateries. While waiting in line Fraser mentioned how his girlfriend inadvertently used lasagna in their Iron Chef cook-off, despite the special ingredient being noodles.

“All noodles are pasta” he said matter-of-factly, “but not all pasta are noodles.”

WOAH! STOP RIGHT THERE SON.

And so ensued a ten-minute debate on whether all noodles are in fact pasta: Anna recounted the historical origins of the two; I noted how vermicelli noodles (those thin, clear ones) clearly aren’t pasta; Fraser countered that vermicelli noodles must not be noodles then. In the end, we came up with this.

More than anything, I think what the above diagram shows is that ‘Noodles’ needs more damn tables! When we did finally get in, the food turned out to be pretty disappointing. It wasn’t bad or anything, it just wasn’t Bellagio, if you know what I mean.

After dinner we played some Blackjack and Three Card Poker. By we, I mean Fraser, Pete and me: Rosie and Anna refused to gamble even though I offered to stake them… so soft! I bought in for $300 and was down as low as $130 at one point before coming home strong and finishing up with a $25 win. Who’s the sucker now Bellagio!?

The girls headed to bed at about midnight and we followed not long thereafter. The jetlag was starting to take its toll and a good night’s sleep was definitely in order...

My Epic Vegas Trip - Day 1

Thursday July 2 – Arriving in Vegas

I remember clearly the first time I watched the WSOP on TV. It was halfway through 2006 and some random $1000 side event was being televised. I remember thinking how crazy it would be to fork out $1000 to play a single tournament. Given my entire bankroll totalled only about $500 at that point, my reservations I think were quite understandable. I mean, what if you lost an all-in on the first hand? Crazy!

Yet, here I was, three years later, about to embark on my first trip to Vegas and to the WSOP. As you can imagine, even the thought of this was quite the thrill for me. As players move up in the poker world, rising up in stakes or winning MTT after MTT, there’s a tendency I think to become “too cool” for everything and everyone in the poker world. You begin to realise that Negreanu isn’t actually that good at NLHE, that Doyle only beat a field of 20-odd people, that Sklansky probably couldn’t beat 1/2 online. But going to the WSOP, it made me feel like a (poker) kid again. I mean, I don’t care how bad Negreanu is anymore, I’m going to see him live in action! And so what if Hellmuth is loony? I might be on his table! And maybe, just maybe, I’ll even get on ESPN and be on TV back home and be able to show all my friends! Sick! What’s not to love?

And so, with a packed bag and a mind full of anticipation, I met up with Fraser, Pete and Anna at Sydney Airport. Our flight to LA was going to be about 13 hours and our flight to Las Vegas a further one hour. Rosie and Julian were going to meet us there since they were going to New York afterwards and had booked their own flights.

The flight to LA was pretty smooth. I watched three of the four films on offer (Confessions of a Shopaholic, 17 Again and Duplicity, though I didn’t have a clue what was happening in the last one since my fatiguing mind had no chance of following a film with a fragmented timeline!) and busied myself by doing crosswords and reading Bluff Magazine. I bet Fraser that I could finish the crossword in the in-flight Magazine within an hour and miserably failed. Heck, I couldn’t understand half the clues let alone conjure up the correct answer!

When we finally arrived at LAX I gave a big speech to everyone about how we should hurry and get through to the domestic terminal ASAP. After nearly missing my flight to Miami on route to the Bahamas in January, and having had a mad panic while doing so, I had no intention of repeating the experience. So I made the rules clear to everyone - no loitering, no separating, and no donating to those Red Cross people outside! And boy did it work. We were through immigration, customs, baggage and security within an hour and had over an hour to go before our flight to Vegas left! Awesome! But then…we got United (verb: to have something go wrong with or on your United flight).

Our flight was cancelled! Some mechanical problem had forced the Vegas to LA flight to turn back mid-air and we were placed on a different flight three hours later. Only problem? That flight was already delayed a further five hours… jeez, how bad do I run?! So now not only did my rush through US immigration look retarded, but we had to find something to do for the next 8 hours! Lameee…

Our first port of call was of course McDonalds. There Pete was quite puzzled when he found out that he was not allowed to order a meal containing a single cheeseburger. Rather, he was told, he had to order the double cheeseburger meal, a proposition that he found equally puzzling. You see, in Australia, a double cheeseburger is a burger containing two patties of meat and two slices of cheese. But not so at LAX! There, a double cheeseburger meal consists of – get this – TWO cheeseburgers. So for five minutes Pete is sitting there debating the merits of getting a double cheeseburger meal and, having finally decided that he can’t finish off two whole cheeseburgers, decides to order the Big Mac meal instead. This of course is notwithstanding the fact that a Big Mac is about the size of two cheeseburgers… Awesome.

For the remainder of the time we slept, ate, listened to our iPods and talked about what we could be doing in Vegas at that very moment were it not for the fact that we got United. I remember ringing Rosie and Julian who were already there to tell them about our terrible plight. They were exhausted and completely unsympathetic. I resolved to poison them.

Eventually, our flight finally arrived and we all clambered onboard, thankful that we were finally on our way. In preparation for Vegas we had re-watched 21 and in that movie there’s this scene where they arrive at night and the lights of the Strip come brilliantly into view. We’d always thought how sick it’d be to arrive like that and mourned the fact that we were arriving during the day. Well, I guess in the end some good did come out of that delay because by the time we arrived it was completely dark and we got to see Vegas for the first time lit up in all its glory! The airport is actually ridiculously close to the Strip so during our descent we were able to pick out all the hotels we recognised. Simply awesome!

Here’s a video of us in our taxi as we drive into Vegas proper. It was a completely amazing sight and a truly surreal feeling. One moment you’re driving along your average, run-of-the-mill highway; the next you’re being confronted by the gargantuan lights of Mandalay Bay, THEHotel, Luxor, and eventually, by the rest of the Strip itself.



After checking into our rooms at the Bellagio, Fraser, Pete and I went downstairs in search of food (the others were too tired to join us). It was at this point that we were introduced to Bellagio’s commendable policy of simplicity in relation to its restaurant-naming. We were after a snack, so where better to go but “Snacks”? I mean, I couldn’t have named it better myself! Fraser and I got the Philly Cheese Steak while Pete got the Buffalo Chicken Wings. The latter were to be a favourite with Pete and myself for the remainder of the trip (much to the disgust of everyone else)!

After that we toured the casino briefly before heading to bed. And so ended Day 1 of my Epic Vegas Trip! To finish, here’s a random video I took of the Bellagio lobby. Enjoy.

50K Downer…Sent Packing Back to 5/10…

So my first shot at playing 10/20+ exclusively was a dismal failure. I’ve lost about 50K in the last two weeks and it certainly hasn’t been very pleasant all-round. I cashed out a huge chunk (42K) when I was on my heater so now I’ve only got 54K online and am pretty much busto. I don’t like re-depositing so I think it’s time to return to 5/10 and grind it all back up again…

The weird thing about this downswing is that it never really hit me just how much I was losing until I crossed the 50K mark today. With uni being back in session I’ve been playing shorter and more sporadic sessions and this means that no single session has really caused me to tilt or go ‘jeez, what a shocking session that was’. Rather I’ve been losing small amounts frequently and consistently and so eventually it’s all snowballed and turned into this one massive downswing. Oh well.

In other news I managed to finish my summer clerkship applications last week and was about to plan a trip to London for the WSOPE when it dawned on me that I couldn’t actually go – despite it being perfectly timed to fit in with my mid-semester break, second round clerkship interviews were scheduled for that very week :(. I better damn well get through to that stage now or it’s going to be a very annoyed Joey…

Anyway, my plan from here on I guess is just to grind 5/10 until I get my roll back up to 100K and then take shots at 10/20 again. I haven’t watched many videos recently so I guess I should also start doing that again.

Next entry I’ll definitely (and finally!) start my epic day-by-day Vegas/WSOP Main Event trip report. I haven’t had time to do it because of clerkship applications and uni restarting but now that everything’s settled down and poker is going terribly I might as well sit down and write it up. Until then, peace.