Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP dream

This is the kind of prep we all really need to excel at. We need to be QJhh here and bink the 450bb pot.

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Hey RP,

I hope that you create a new thread for this years WSOP - I like following along with your detailed write-ups but do you think that making a separate thread would be better for us to follow along?

Just a thought.

Hi luckboxxed,

Thanks for the suggestion. I already had been wrestling with the idea of starting a new thread versus continuing with this thread. The decision I made is I am going to continue with this thread for WSOP 2026 and beyond.

My reasoning is that I consider this my journey from WSOP newbie in 2019 to whatever I am now and in the future. I think it makes sense that TonySoprano9 and other players who are much more accomplished than me view each WSOP as its own story and its own thread. For them each WSOP is its own journey. But for me I think my total journey belongs in a single thread.

I realize the thread is extensive, and maybe that makes a newcomer to it think twice before starting to read from the beginning. But they can always choose to join the story in the present day and read forward. I also like the idea of having the entire journey be in a single thread for my own satisfaction many years down the road when I may want to reflect on the totality of it all.

As far as making it easier to read for readers who have been followers of my story, you may want to utilize the following 2+2 tool: When you click on the thread, near the upper left and below below the thread name, and below the boxes to post reply or subscribe/unsubscribe there is something that reads, "View First Unread." If you click that, it takes you to the last post in the thread that you have read. It's what I use when reading other people's trip reports.

Thanks for following along.

I read through the whole thread and thoroughly enjoyed it! Looking forward to seeing more this WSOP!

One week from now I will be in Las Vegas

Some minor thread updates:

-- As I have done in my past WSOP trip reports, I will not start posting my reports until my WSOP is over. My rationale is that I not only hope to play well, but it is just as important to me that I write well. I will write rough drafts each night at the WSOP, but I won’t clean them up until I return home and have the time to make finishing touches, proper edits and create artificial intelligence generated artwork. Think of it as a written version of Inside the Mind of a Pro insofar as it will a) get posted after the fact, b) take its time to try to create a really finished product, but c) I’m no pro.

While I won't be posting during the time I'm playing in the WSOP, rpphotographer will try to fill in the real-time void as he's done in the past. Also, rpcolumnist may make an appearance if there is something going on at the WSOP that warrants an opinion.

-- Last year in mid-May I took notice of my weight given that the WSOP was getting close. I weighed 195.4 pounds. I’m almost 6-3, so this was below my line in the sand of 200 pounds. But it was above my target weight, which I think is just a shade under 190. Aware that I intended to eat as gluttonously as possible at the WSOP, I went on a diet to create a better weight for when the WSOP would begin for me. No Dr Pepper, no snacking and healthy meals. I was only trying to lose 5.4 pounds over two weeks to get down to 190 pounds. To my shock, on weigh-in day I was down to 183.3 pounds.

About the same time this year, I weighed in at 196.0 pounds. OK, same ballpark as a year ago. Time to go on a pre-WSOP diet again. Given that I lost way more weight than I needed to last year, I decided to go on a diet but I am continuing to drink Dr Pepper. I didn’t go into full-blown writing mode about this year’s diet battle since I did that a year ago and I don’t want to be redundant. With a week to go, I weighed myself this morning. The scale said 188.0 pounds. I’m right where I want to be. Once again, I will be able to eat well (and by well I mean fattening) at the WSOP with no feelings of guilt.

-- I picked up the bulk of my needed WSOP cash yesterday. Enough to stay under the $10,000 traveling/airport threshold. I have also funded a bank account I only use for the WSOP, which has a branch near where I work as well as in Las Vegas so I can get more money as needed.

-- I got close to completely caught up at work today. Unfortunately, next Monday is going to be a beast. Mondays are the busiest day of the week for me. And the 1st of each month is always the busiest day of the month for me since municipal bonds and dividend stocks mostly pay interest/dividends on the first day of the month. Thus, a Monday that is the first day of the month is a double whammy. I’m not complaining. It’s a good “problem” to have. But I’m going to have to work my butt off before I head off to the WSOP. I should be able to update my charts and move around the money before I fly to Las Vegas. It’s probably a good thing that I’ll be able to get this all done before I leave, but I’m not going to be able to coast my way into the start of my trip.

-- We had the professional inspection done yesterday of the condo my daughter had agreed on a price with the seller subject to inspection and attorney review. The inspection turned up a lot of unexpected problems. A lot. We pulled the offer. I feel bad that my daughter is disappointed. But if I’m being totally honest, I am relieved that I won’t have to deal with the buildup to a closing since the closing date was scheduled for the morning after I return home from the WSOP. Now that pressure has been lifted from my shoulders.

-- I’m looking forward to be able to be at the WSOP where I can unplug from the outside world. I ignore my phone at the table. I’ll check my voice mail on breaks and return an occasional phone call that requires my timely attention, but past history says we are only talking 1-2 calls per day on average. One of the best parts about the WSOP is, besides the obvious fact that I love playing poker, it is a rare two weeks in my year that are almost entirely “Me” time.

-- My anticipation is growing. I'm starting to feel the excitement. But dealing with life is limiting me to maybe 80% excitement. I've got a week to get that to 100%.

If problems came up on the inspection, it’s SO much smarter to walk away.

I know it must be going through an emotional wringer, falling in love with a condo enough to put in an offer, get it accepted, and have to walk away.

I think that means the place she DOES get will be that much more perfect for her.

Your mental game in life is strong.

Trying to create “the perfect” poker schedule

Here’s my schedule. This schedule makes the assumption that I do not make any Day 2s. This isn’t me being pessimistic. It is simply me having an option for every day. If I make a Day 2 then, obviously, I will need to eliminate the tournament scheduled for that day.

6/4 Arrive, check in to hotel, fund my WSOP account, dinner at Carversteak
6/5 Relax, grocery shopping, maybe check out Fremont Street, dinner at Joe’s Seafood
6/6 WSOP $1500 NLH Monster Stack Day 1D
6/7 WSOP $500 NLH freezeout
6/8 WSOP $250 NLH Daily Deepstack
6/9 Venetian $1,100 NLH Day 1D
6/10 WSOP $500 NLH Colossus Flight A
6/11 WSOP $500 NLH Colossus Flight B
6/12 WSOP $500 NLH Colossus Flight C
6/13 WSOP $500 NLH Colossus Flight D
6/14 WSOP $800 NLH Deepstack
6/15 Orleans $400 NLH
6/16 Golden Nugget $200 NLH
6/17 Fly home

Schedule looks good. I expect to be in a few of those.

I'm not playing the Monster this year, but I think that will be an enjoyable one for you. It's a unique event due to the diverse field, deep stacks, and 60 minute levels. There is a lot more time to dissect the table, pick spots carefully, and navigate with patience. It can still be a very short day if you run badly and play badly (happened to me in 2022), but generally you can expect a lot of time value for your entry fee. It's the best NLHE tournament in its price bracket.

Yeah I lost 200+ bb my first hand of the Monster one year with AK vs 88 bvb on K85K2 or Sth. Wish I’d stayed in bed and late regged!

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Good luck and more importantly have a blast!

I arrive 6/10 and am playing a few of the same. Would be happy to buy you a Dr Pepper or just say hi on a break.

Sounds good to me. Check your 2+2 Private Messages and get back to me.

So much poker content

Wow, so much volume of poker content. It's like the Bacchanal Buffet only instead of food it is poker content. LVL is full of trip reports. YouTube is showing Day 1A of the WSOP $25,000 NLH Heads Up Championship as I type. Inside the Mind of a Pro just dropped another new episode of Leo Margets epic run to the 2025 Main Event Final Table. WSOP vlogs with regularity from Daniel Negreanu and Martin Kabrhel.

Guilty Pleasure admission: I have gone from thinking Kabrhel is annoying to finding him entertaining after seeing him play at the WSOP Paradise as well as him joining the announcers in the booth at the same series. He is on tonight's YouTube stream, and he makes me laugh. I doubt I'd want to spend 10-12 hours at the same table as Kabrhel (yes, Mustapha Kanit I see you raising your hand to give your opinion on this), but Kabrhel can be amusing. Unlike Will Kassouf -- who too often comes across as mean spirited, angry and unhinged -- I think Kabrhel comes across as playful much of the time. I suspect Kabrhel can go too far at times (you can stop raising your hand Mustapha, we all know your stance, we all know you want to dance), but there is an entertainment factor quite often with Kabrhel. He has good comedic timing. If you watch his vlogs, he seems to be trying to just have a good time and be entertaining. And while there is some repetition to some of his catch phrases, there is also fresh comedic value from his performances. There is far more creativity in his speech play than Kassouf who says the same handful of things over and over and over. Kassouf plays the role of a bully sometimes and a victim other times. Neither is a good look. Kabrhel is more like the smart aleck at the back of the class poking fun at his surroundings in search of affirmation of his sense of humor.

But back to the avalanche of poker content. I think this has the potential to really grow the game. The reason I play in the WSOP every year now has everything to do with WSOP Final Tables being live streamed every night back before PokerGo took over the coverage. Back then I was watching the WSOP streams every night, and I got the itch. I decided I wanted to play in the WSOP. That was the impetus to this thread going back to 2019 when I played in the WSOP for the first time.

The WSOP being broadcast behind a paywall on PokerGo always struck me as a huge misstep. I think it was similar to the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team back in the day when old man Bill Wirtz owned the team and refused to televise the home games locally. He had the misguided notion that televising the games would result in fans not attending games. My recollection is that the games were sold out to the tune of approximately 18,000 attendees, but the saying back then was that it was the same 18,000 fans every night. The fan base was not growing due to the home game not being televised locally. I think the same thing could be said about the WSOP on PokerGo. People watched, but it was the same hard core fans. No growth in the fan base. And don't get me started about the WSOP on CBS Sports Network, which you needed a police sniffing dog and a map to locate. The WSOP returning to ESPN strikes me as a massive step in the right direction.

All of this poker content is getting me fired up. I think the rppoker Excitement Meter is up to 90%.

Your AI photos get better with each post. [emoji3]
I watched some of the streaming when I got back to my room last night. Seems like they’re putting out a really top class product and we’re going to get it every day from now on. They’re really spoiling us, and I agree way better for the growth of the game that it’s free to watch.

I experience poker epiphany after poker epiphany while reading an unlikely book that has nothing (and everything) to do with poker

Just a couple of days until I fly to Las Vegas for WSOP 2026. It’s about to get real.

The last couple of nights I started and finished the book “Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession and My Wild Youth” by David Gessner. It is the story of the author’s journey as an Ultimate Frisbee player at an ultra-high level during his college and post-college days.

This might strike you as having absolutely nothing to do with my upcoming WSOP. I beg to differ.

For me, it has everything to do with my soon-to-be WSOP 2026.

First, a little back story that I have already told in this thread that is worth repeating since the thread is so long. In high school I ran cross country and track, plus I also played on the school’s ultimate frisbee club when there was no conflict with my varsity sports practices/meets. In college I played on the University of Michigan’s ultimate frisbee team/club. After I graduation, I joined Windy City, the reigning national and world champions at the time. I wasn’t good enough to make the Windy City tournament roster, but I was good enough to participate in every practice/scrimmage held multiple times per week. To put it in perspective, it was the equivalent of being a member of the practice squad of a National Football League defending Super Bowl champion.

As I read Gessner’s book, I had epiphany after epiphany about the correlation of what he wrote about ultimate frisbee and its application to the WSOP.

In both the WSOP and the highest levels of ultimate frisbee, there is the fact that we are talking about the best of the best. Furthermore, glory is observed and celebrated very much within their respective communities while mostly ignored by the mainstream media and public.

Gessner writes of Ultimate during the era I participated, “It was true that in those days fewer than a hundred people might watch your Nationals win, but that wasn’t the point. Among the ever-growing Ultimate community, among the tribes, you would be known.”

Watch a final table almost any one of the many final tables at the WSOP and you’ll see the same lack of a crowd. Yet everyone in the poker community is aware of who wins the bracelet.

Gessner quotes an all-time great Ultimate player as saying, “Ultimate is addictive. You might look at my expenses over the last fifteen years and say that work is what I do between tournaments.”

Raise your hand if that describes you as a poker player.

Obsession is everywhere in the Ultimate community, as Gessner tells the story about another all-time great Ultimate player: “Once when he was leaving for a weekend tournament, his then girlfriend said, ‘I can’t believe you’d rather go to an Ultimate tournament than stay home with me,’ and he replied, ‘I’d rather go to an Ultimate practice than stay home with you.’ “ (Of course I would never say such a thing to Mrs. rppoker, but I can imagine many a WSOP player thinking such a thing.)

One thing I would in fact say about poker, however, is the point Gessner makes about his love of Ultimate, “So what if no one knew what the hell Ultimate was? When NBA players said they ‘love this game,’ as they did constantly in an ad from that time, they also meant they loved the money, the attention and the perks. I loved Ultimate despite the fact that it had nothing like that to offer. I loved the pure play of it, the great moments, the camaraderie, the stories we told after.”

That’s me. I’m not likely to be profitable. I don’t care. It’s about the chase, the pursuit, the willingness to be in The Arena to compete. Gessner quotes an all-time great Ultimate player who chased down a national championship unsuccessfully for what seemed an eternity before breaking through as saying, “In the end it’s not all about winning. It’s about trying to win.”

Although, truth be told, the winning matters for the 1%. But so does the trying for the other 99%.

Finally, Gessner concludes this book by describing a scene in which he and many of his former teammates, long after their playing days were over, had a get together: “We drank late and told stories we’d all heard before. It was just like the old days. In a sport with no external commentators, no coaches, and little TV coverage, we could tell ourselves our own stories about what we had seen and experienced. Not surprisingly, as the night wore on, those stories often starred ourselves.”

In other words, in a poker sense, I will soon enough give you... Las Vegas Lifestyle and my WSOP 2026 ... starring myself (with cameos likely by, I hope, numerous LVL members) in the ongoing saga that is “Gray-haired poker TRs: Living the WSOP dream.” I don’t know what I can promise in terms of results, but I can promise you lots and lots of stories.

I’m about to live it. Then I’ll write it. Then I’ll post it. It’s almost go time.

Looking forward to the pic dumps and eventual write-up! LFG!

You can now buy Dr. Pepper Tic Tacs, FYI.

Good luck! Looking forward to your reports when you get back.

Going radio silent in my poker submarine

When Jim Harbaugh was the head coach of the Michigan football team, he used to say that he and his team were going into a submarine in the preseason practices before the start of the season. This described a bunker mentality in which outside communication would be shut down to eliminate distractions.

As those of you who have been reading along from the start of this thread know, when I am playing in the WSOP I don't post anything. I write up my rough drafts each night. But I don't edit them, polish them and post them until I have left Las Vegas and returned home, which will be two weeks from now.

What that means is I now turn the thread over to rpphotographer and possibly rpcolumnist makes an appearance.

For the moment, rpphotographer is kind of mad at me since when we were walking down the area where the Paris and Horseshoe connect, Ren Lin was walking in the opposite direction carrying what looked like 10 dinner to go containers. rpphotographer missed the shot because I was checking e-mails with our cell phone/camera.

In any event, rpphotographer took a bunch of pictures today and will try to post them later tonight depending on how late dinner goes since we are going to a late dinner with TJ Eckleburg 12.

In any event, I'll return on the other side of my two weeks at the 2026 WSOP.

rpphotographer, the thread is yours.

Good luck! Look forward to the photos.

Initial photo dump from the cell phone camera of rpphotographer

Cliche photos that nonetheless must be posted

Depositing money

A line of one whole person ahead of rppoker. This year the cage to deposit money is not in its own room. It now shares the room for payouts with the chandeliers.

Celebrity Corner

The Mouth

DNegs

Shaun Deeb

Kathy Liebert

Paris Ballroom now has the big TV section for final tables

Horseshoe Ballroom, seems unchanged

Horseshoe Events Center
Gone are the TV tables. Seems like the new location for Daily Deepstacks.

Went to Dinner with TJ at Carversteak in Resorts World
Photos from the dinner will get posted with rppoker's trip report in a couple of weeks. As best I can tell, the Conrad and Resorts World seem connected. It was difficult for me to tell where Resorts World ended and the Conrad began, so I'll just lump the photos of the two all together.

Conrad/Resorts World casino

Happy memories of my childhood turned into casino slot machine games

I find it strange that the Stanley Cup hockey game was on TVs all over the casino floor. After all, casinos don't have clocks to try to keep you from leaving, so I'm surprised they would have TVs that could distract customers from gambling.

The Sportsbook was 90% bar and 10% sportsbook which seems like the tail wagging the dog

I'd like to have included pictures of tons of people gambling, but there was very little action anywhere in the casino.

Sites from our cab rides
We haven't gone off strip much the last two WSOPs, so here are some of the views:

Helpful pics. Last year playing in the Horseshoe events center was a target of mine because that typically meant you were deep in a WSOP event. If it's as easy as firing a daily deepstack now, I guess I'll be backing my way into that achievement soon.

Conrad and Resorts World are one and the same. Resorts World is an umbrella for three different hotels: Crockfords, Hilton, and Conrad. If that sounds confusing, well...it is. It's a poorly branded property. Nice, but generic. I like it there though. Their poker room (RIP) was excellent.