It's definite! Online > B&M (Vegas trip report)

Last time I wrote my post before I was rudely interrupted by the 10k race, I was writing from the airport all excited about my upgrade to first class. Well, let me tell you something. I don't know how much it is to upgrade to first class but for the trip to Vegas, I would say it's totally worth it (unless you can figure out how to smuggle enough alcohol through the security gate with the liquid restriction they now have). From Cleveland to Vegas, I was sitting first class and at first, when I took my seat, I was a tad annoyed... sitting next to me was a dude with his family in the other two seats across the aisle and they have clearly never been in first class. This dude was yelling to his other buddies few rows up (they were all in 1st class - clearly just upgraded like me) about how great it was... Fuckin noobies...

So here I am, sitting in this comfortable seat on the plane and in bit of a tilt... but then the flight attendant comes, I order a Miller Lite thinking I'll just enjoy a few cold ones for a warm up, put my noise cancelling headsets on and just ignore these clowns around me. Well, when our beer comes (the guy also ordered ML), he goes "well, cheers to Vegas!" Well, how can I not cheer to that. I smile, say cheers out of courtesy, and I take a good swig. Mmmmm, nothing like free beer on a plane. This got us to talking and next thing we knew, we were ordering more beers and I gotta admit, this guy wasn't so bad after all. He was willing to pound drinks and then the cold platter thing came with cheese and meat and so I downed a few glasses of wine, polishing off all the wine they had (they only had 2 bottles and there were 12 of us in first class - I had 3 or 4 glasses tho) and then we kicked the ML so we had to switch to Heineken. After all was said and done, I was pretty buzzed and definitely ready to get the night started in Vegas. Sure enough, it was almost landing time. Great way to kill time on a plane. I never even pulled out my PSP (which I only play on flights - and considering I fly to Japan at least once a year, I fuckin need it).

I meet up with my friends the first night and besides a short craps session (a profitable one, might I add), I decide to hit up bars to continue on with my drinking. No more gambling was done that night, which is definitely a rarity for me. I got to bed around 4am PST and having been awake for over 24hrs (I woke up at 6am EST that morning to play bball in the morning), I was ok with calling it a night.

Over the course of the next two days, I played a good chunk of poker and a good amount of craps. My buddy was on fire all weekend and he basically made the craps table his personal ATM machine. Oh, and in an attempt to dust off my "iceman" image, I roll a 4 point fire bet... I even set the 5th point but couldn't hit... I had $3 on the firebet so the 5th point woulda been huge (4pts pay 25 for 1, 5 pts pay 250 for 1, and all 6 pts pay 2000 for 1).

But instead of going into a detailed trip report, I just want to share something I discovered for myself. CK does a much better job recapping live poker experiences anyways so there's really no point in me telling similar stories about calling station tourists and some ridiculously passive/nitty table filled with college kids with no money out during spring break for the March Madness.

People always talk about the appeal of live poker... the social interaction, blah blah blah. I really don't know what else. Social interaction I guess makes up for a lot. For me, it just adds to the annoyance. Brue mentioned this before in his blog that I reluctantly pimp... But live play sucks. First of all, you see a lot less hands per hr... I mean online, you might see anywhere from 50-60 hands per hour... and that's only if you're playing one table. Live, you might see 20-30 per hour. Online, some of you earn rakeback, I just enjoy the very meager benefits that come with earning points but nonetheless, you get something in return... sure, you can earn comp points or $ or whatever in a casino but the accumulation has got to be much slower than online. The rake on FTP is capped at $3 (I think 5% of pot, capped at $3). In most casinos, I think it's $4... this, I could be wrong, and not sure. Then there's also the tipping factor of tipping the dealer which costs another $1 per hand (if it's a big hand, maybe even more). All of this really amounts to me preferring the online world.

Well, and then there's the social aspect of poker you can only get live... Man, I don't know what people enjoy but putting up with other people's banter just makes me wanna shoot myself. I don't want to hear other people's bad beat stories, I don't want to hear their "analysis" on their hands (which are never good ones), and honestly, I don't give a shit where you're from or what you do. If I wanted to socialize, I'll hang out with my friends. If I wanted to network, there are plenty of networking social events that I can attend that will be beneficial for me professionally. So when I play poker, I just wanna play cards and make money. I am not interested in getting to know people. And I realized this during one of the sessions in Vegas when one side of the table was discussing airline bad beat stories (my bag didn't get here, my flight was delayed, we had to wait on the runway for x hrs, etc etc - AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!) and the other side of the table was discussing strategy ("well, I limped from UTG+1 with K8s and this guy raises but I have to call because if I hit, I can win a big pot. Flop comes 8 high, turn brings a flush draw, but I miss completely and I lose most of my stack cuz this guy has AA! I'm just so unlucky!").

At least online, it's only in the chat box, you can mute whomever you want, or you can just not read what's there. You don't have to deal with some stupid ass boring story or engage in small talk. Now I know some of you enjoy this and that's great. But I just know that this trip finally, definitively made me realize that I prefer online poker to live poker any day of the week. Sure, live players are so much worse but man, the amount of time I would have to invest in it really isn't worth it. Great for vacation, maybe... Of course, a profitable trip made this all less tiltworthy but nonetheless, I am clearly an online donk.

Now I'm gonna go be unsocial again.