**** TJ's Summer 2025 Quest for Poker Glory ****

I suppose I’ll close this out with my expense report.

Flight: $606

Very happy again to get Raleigh to Vegas direct. I also flew on Delta, which I think is going to be my preferred airline going forward. Frontier and Spirit are occasionally $100 or so cheaper, but then they get me back with bag fees, or charging me to pick a window seat. Plus, they seem to have more flight delays than I’ve had with Delta. So I’m going to be more loyal to the brand, not just sortbyprice going forward.

Airbnb: $1890 (105/night for 18 nights)

Once again, I wasn’t looking to make lodging a luxury expense, as I don’t do much in the room besides shower and sleep. I was a little annoyed with the construction next door, which occasionally started with metallic banging at sunrise, before it gets too hot. I’m also annoyed they charged me $25 to reload the toilet paper and shower stuff. But it’s whatever. I did my laundry twice, and my place was perfect for my minimalist needs.

I’m staying at the same place on my upcoming Main Event trip, and nothing I experienced was bad enough to make me want to change my plans.

Food: $2072 after tip.

Once again, I find that when planning a Vegas trip, $100 a day is a good starting point for food. I find I tend to eat two large-ish meals a day when I’m traveling, rather than three normal-sized meals. A good breakfast, play all day, then a nice dinner. I’d say the best place I ate this trip was Esther’s Kitchen.

I probably could have got this number down with a little more effort, like meal prepping, or packing sandwiches or something. But it was also a vacation for me, and I didn’t have much of a drive to do this.

Uber: $745 ($17.90 average trip), plus another $215 in cash tips

I took 43 rides with Uber, and tipped every Uber driver a $5 bill. This looks like a lot, compared to renting a car for almost three weeks. But if I rented a car, I’d have to pay to park it, then walk a mile from where I parked it to where I played. Once again, I conclude I came out way ahead just taking Uber everywhere.

****

We don’t need to talk about the poker profit and loss, it’s bad. I had one negligible cash on 16 tournament bullets, so that bottom line number is gonna be ugly.

More disturbing to me was that I was down at cash games over my whole trip. Over a significant sample of hours. Not as much as tournaments, but it’s disturbing to me because I’m starting from the assumption that I’m a winning cash game player. I thought the longer I played, the more certain it would be that I’d finish up.

I think, looking back, towards the end of my trip especially, I was definitely pressing. LOTS of my sessions were over 4 hours, and I know from experience that I just don’t play as well from hours 4-8 as I do from 0-4.

Let that be a lesson for me to internalize, and modify my behavior upon.

So yeah, it was still a fun trip!

…I’m sure the Las Vegas board of tourism, and Euro trash regs everywhere, appreciated my business.

Sounds like around $146 USD per night for these two expenses, per night. Pretty sure you could find some decent Strip hotels where you are paying around the same or less per night. And especially when having many deep tournaments runs into the night (well, in theory), it would be an advantage in staying closer to the action.

Have you given any consideration to this, or have you just researched extensively and not found anything cheaper on The Strip?

A big advantage to Airbnb is laundry facilities, the ability to make longer, continuous stays, and no resorts fee.

I was able to get harrahs for $100per night (with a Friday) for 5 nights including resort fee. Room was meh, but you could probably pay for laundry service and still be OK. Didn’t need Uber from Harrahs.

Your Uber fees were WAY lower than car rental or Turo would’ve been. Like half, not even factoring in any parking fees.

I noticed mid tier rooms (Harrahs, MGM, Park) were lower rates than in past. Could’ve had Park or MGM for similar to Harrahs, and think both of those offer better rooms. For a 5 nighter I’d probably pay the extra few hundred for Paris.

I'm late to the party catching up on this TR (and many others) following my own 12-day trip to Vegas for the WSOP. Thanks for writing all this up, TJ. Sorry that, at least as of 29 June when you posted the above, your results have come short of what we've grown accustomed to from your Cherokee TRs.

I'm not familiar with the term S-points...can you help me out with its meaning?

Basically S-points are a way to quantify structure quality. The greater number of S-points, the slower, deeper, and better the structure is of a given tournament.

It takes into account starting stack, length of time of levels, and how many levels there are in the early and middle stages.

The $250 Daily deepstacks at the WSOP have 25k starting chips, and 30 minute levels: 44 S-points.

The Aria $1100 NL event tomorrow starts with 30k chips, and 30 minute levels: 73 S-points.

The WSOP Main Event, with 60k chips and 2 hour levels, the best structure of the year: 340 S-points.

And so on.

Nevermind the URL it's a legit thing. S-Point calculator.

I actually got a decent answer from the MS AI regarding S-points that included a pointer to that site (which I already knew about).

Yes, I think it was a bad summer for the casinos.

BTW, most nights prices were lower than usual for Paris too, like everywhere else.

Came in to get out of the heat for a minute, TV happened to be on the weather channel.

Hope you're able to get out and to Vegas without delays. The storm is pouring down rain, it sounds like.

Sometimes it's too much of a good thing. It sucks when the parking garages get flooded.

Good luck today TJ! Saw this main day 2/3 advice elsewhere and figured I would pass it along. From a rec who has gone deep the past two years: