Poker Update Plus Final 2023 Las Vegas Trip Begins on Sunday, December 10

Poker, like life, seems to be one continuous circle. After getting frustrated with some brutal losses in October, I muddles around for a few weeks, playing less and winning a few, losing a few. Fortunately, I finally got on a heater starting on November 14, winning five sessions in a row and  fattening up the ol' sockroll back from its lean weeks. Unfortunately, it finally ended last Tuesday when I was card dead at Desert Diamond, the one local poker room where I seem to have a difficult time posting winning sessions. I continue to do well at my "home" poker room at Talking Stick Resort and finally had a monster session at Lone Butte which moved the room up to my second most profitable over the past two years. In terms of driving time, Talking Stick is 25-30 minutes, Desert Diamond is 35-45, and Lone Butte is 45-55. No complaints here since in my Illinois days, it was 90 minutes to a small riverboat room that no longer offers poker, over a two-hour drive to Harrah's Joliet, which no longer offers poker, and about 2 1/2 hours to the Shoe in Hammond, Indiana. The Shoe does not have a hotel attached and is in a sketchy area outside Chicago, so I usually had that long drive home in the late night/early morning hours. If you ever wondered why I used to treasure my trips to Las Vegas, now you can see why they were welcomed.

This past summer, I think I finally overdosed on Las Vegas and poker since I had been such a frequent visitor after my move to the Phoenix area. That and the traffic and others hassles caused by last month's F1 race caused me to just concentrate on the local rooms. However, when I heard that VeryJosie and her sister were going to Las Vegas in December, I decided to make a final 2023 trip. I will be driving this time and spending four nights -- Dec 10-14. Aside from playing poker and seeing some of my friends who are either Las Vegas locals or frequent visitors, Josie and I will be hosting a meet up game on Wednesday, December 13 at 5:00pm at the Sahara Las Vegas. The game is designed to be friendly and fun, and will be either just $1/2 NL or else a combination of $1/2 NL and $1/2 PLO alternating each rotation around the table. We used this format last time and things seemed to go pretty well. You can get on the sign up list by responding on my tweets on Twitter or just leaving a comment on this post. We already seem to be counting on having two tables going, which hopefully means no waiting to play. Flynn & Ollie might have a few surprises for the game, so who knows.

Since I am driving to Las Vegas this trip, I might bring along my laptop and crank out a blog post or two while there. Of course, u see, when poker and sleep both call, the posting tends to take a back seat on a short trip. We'll see. Cheers!

Thanks for reading. 😀