SBSQ #16: Nate’s Incomplete Guide to Vegas
Including my Vegas hotel tiers and restaurant recommendations. Plus, advice for young poker players. Is the poker dream dead?
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays from Silver Bulletin! (Does anybody use “Seasons Greetings” anymore?) We hope you’ve enjoyed the newsletter this year. We’ve also really enjoyed meeting some of you through questions, comments, and chats.
This is SBSQ (Silver Bulletin Subscriber Questions) #16; you can leave questions for edition #17 in the comments below. If you haven’t yet, I’d also recommend you check out our newsletter from earlier this month on whether the New York Mets paying Juan Soto $765 million (!) was plausibly rational, also inspired by a subscriber question.
Questions on all subjects are welcome for edition #17, set to run in late January. As I hope you can see, we’re making a concerted effort to transition out of full-on election/politics mode, but there will still be plenty of newsletters on those topics. Plans for next year include reviving and improving the sports models and doing some hiring. We’re excited about what’s to come, though I still have some contingencies to work out, namely, whether to pursue a slow-growth or more medium-speed path. We do think no matter what you’ll find plenty of value in a paid subscription as we expand our product offering over the next year and beyond.
I’m traveling to Seoul and Tokyo for the next two weeks, and I’m not quite sure how much I’ll be posting. What we have planned for sure is a deeply reported Eli story on pollster weighting and then a long Nate story on the Baseball Hall of Fame, which will announce its new crop of inductees early next month — yes, I’ll even give you my hypothetical ballot.1 That might be it, or maybe not: I also owe you Part 3 of my Kamala Harris campaign autopsy at some point.
But for today, let’s go in a different direction. Part of the Always Be Blogging ethos is to write up subjects that you know really well or have spent a lot of time thinking about, even if they aren’t necessarily interesting to the entirety of your audience. I’ve spent about 9 months of my life in Las Vegas, most of that fairly recent, longer than any place I’ve officially lived. For most of that, I’ve stayed in various middle-to-upper-tier resorts on the Strip. So I have some strong and informed opinions about where to stay in Vegas and where to eat, and otherwise, how to approach a visit to one of my favorite cities.
We’ll pair the question about Vegas with one on something else I know well: moving up the ranks as a poker player. I was a professional poker player from 2004-06 — and back then this was much easier. The games were very soft in the Poker Boom years. So you basically just had to log on and start playing, and if you knew what you were doing, before long, you’d be playing (and winning) in some relatively high-stakes games. Poker even sort of made my dreams come true, enabling me to quit a consulting job I was deeply unhappy at and eventually to start FiveThirtyEight. But now the landscape is more fractured and otherwise more challenging. In fact, I’m not sure I’d recommend this course unless you’re both very talented and really love the game — but I’ll try my best to offer advice.
In this edition:
Advice for young poker players: Is the poker dream dead?
(Hint: you can click on the link above ^^^ to zoom past the poker stuff.)
Advice for young poker players: Is the poker dream dead?
Let’s keep the first question free just because the target audience is someone I imagine who’s just getting established in the poker world; then we’ll paywall the Vegas part. Cyclops asks:
Question: What’re your thoughts on GG taking high stakes games private/the broader trend of high stakes cash games going private? What does it mean for the poker ecosystem in the future? Is the high stakes dream truly dead?
For context, GGPoker is a major online poker site that recently purchased the World Series of Poker brand; it is, however, not currently available in the United States. Recently, GG announced that it was taking all of its high-stakes cash games private. So to play, you need to be a GGPoker “ambassador” or get an invite from one. Basically, this means that you either need to be poker-famous (so your mere presence attracts others to the games), extremely well-networked, or a huge fish that other people want to play with because you’ll make them money.
This mirrors trends in the offline world. Many — probably most — high-stakes cash games these days are private. Some take place in casinos — in which case, the games may nominally be open to the public but it just so happens that there’s never a seat available — and others at people’s homes. There are also increasingly popular high-stakes televised livestreams like Hustler Casino Live, which are often very juicy but require you to know the right people (or to be a very entertaining TV presence). But it can be hard to find a public game above $5/$10 blinds for most of the year in most markets, and even $5/10’s aren’t always running.
I selfishly benefit from this trend since I do sometimes have access to some good, safe, private games and could probably get more if I hustled to make the right connections. But obviously, this goes against the romantic ideal of poker, one of the few professions in which you could be a lone wolf and not have to rely on networking or staying in people’s social graces. Public mid-stakes (e.g. $2/$5) cash games are often still juicy, as are tournaments. But the former caps you at essentially an upper-middle-class income — there’s just not enough money on the table for more than that. And tournaments are extremely high variance. You might theoretically be +EV, but as I describe in extensive research in my book, it can take literally decades to realize that equity because some of it comes in the form of, say, finishing in the top 10 in a 5,000-person tournament, something that won’t happen very often no matter how good you are.
However unfavorable to the middle class of the playing pool, this new equilibrium may be hard to break out from. Well-networked pros like the private games because they can pick their opponents, and they have leverage because they can threaten to take their games truly private — played in the comfort of someone’s home or in a gray market online site — if licensed operators won’t spread them.
Still, let me do my best to provide some tips to you, Cyclops. I’m not going to lecture you on lifestyle factors — meaning avoiding the usual sins associated with poker like a sedentary lifestyle, borrowing/loaning money, constant access to booze, and getting into -EV sports betting or casino gambling — because I’m not a prude. But the thinner your edges are, the more those things can take you from a winning player to a losing one — and edges in poker are usually thin these days.
Focus on live play, not online. In general, online play entails a) slim margins and tough competition relative to the stakes; b) a constant arm’s race against RTA, ghosting, and other types of cheating; and c) at less reputable operators, some “enterprise risk” in the form of governmental enforcement actions and the like, such that you might wake up to find your account inaccessible one day. Online poker may have a time and a place, but I don’t think it should be at the core of anyone’s long-term plan under present conditions, and things may get worse as AI advances.
Focus on cash games, not tournaments, at first. Despite higher-stakes cash games increasingly going private, they’re fine at the mid-stakes, so I’d start there to build out a bankroll. For tournaments, I’d play the World Series of Poker and tournaments in your local home base. Apart from that, I’d deemphasize tournaments until you’re more established, even though they present opportunities to make a name for yourself. The reason is simply variance: as I discuss in my book, even a solid winning player will have a losing year in live tournaments almost half the time. I love tournaments, but they’re also hell on your schedule: you don’t get to rack up for the day until you bust, even if you’re tired or the game isn’t any good.
Pick a local base with good live cash games and some social connections in the area. Poker can feel solitary even when you know a lot of people on the scene: you’re working odd hours when most people are recreating, and you aren’t part of any “team”. So you’ll want a home base where you can “touch grass” and not just couch-surf in between stints at various poker rooms. Vegas is one option, obviously, but it isn’t for everyone, and the games are often tougher than games at the same stakes in other cities. California has lots of poker, but with high rakes, some dingy cardrooms, and a high cost of living. Options I’d consider if I were starting out today include Austin (The Lodge), Fort Lauderdale (Hard Rock Seminole), Phoenix (Talking Stick) and Philly (Parx).
Don't be afraid to take shots at +EV higher-stakes games. Your risk of ruin should not be zero. Here’s where my advice deviates from what it might have been 10 years ago. Because that tier of, say, juicy $10/$20 public games no longer reliably exists in most markets, the reward for steadily moving up the ranks is smaller. That should make you less risk-averse when these opportunities do arise. Set a stop loss when moving up a limit or two so you don’t crush your bankroll. But it’s probably worth experimenting to see whether the higher-stakes games are really your jam.
Lean into an aggressive, exploitative style. By all means, study GTO using computer tools and coaching videos — at this point, it’s the price of entry into playing at a professional level and generally well worth the money. But the gains from skilled exploitative play are generally much larger than from perfect theoretical play, especially at low-to-mid stakes live cash games where most players are fish and have lots of predictable leaks and lots of tells. “Aggressive” and “exploitative” are not synonyms; in loose cash games, some of the correct adjustments actually involve tightening up, especially preflop. Still, an aggressive style will attract more notice — meaning you’re more likely to get invites to private games down the road. It also lets you feel yourself out as a poker player, calibrating when you can put pressure on your opponents and when you need to back down.
Learn PLO. This is also different than how I’d have advised you in the past; I’d have said to master hold ‘em before venturing into other games. But the juiciest game in any given cardroom on any given day will often be a PLO game, and PLO is common in private games too. So you’ll want to give yourself more options. I’m not much good at PLO, but I’ve also never really put in the time to learn. I think there’s some sense in growing up “bilingual” (hold ‘em, PLO) to sharpen your poker intuitions.
Have a side hustle. After you get more established, this will ideally be a poker-related side hustle, like sponsorships, coaching, or making videos. But a little bit of steady income goes a long way. Even if poker is your job, I don’t think it’s a good mindset to feel as though you are forced to play poker because you have nothing else going on. Playing mostly your “A-game” for 35 hours a week will generally be better than 60 hours of B-game or worse, both for EV and lifestyle reasons.
Yes, you probably have to network. If you’re hoping to get invites to juicy private games down the line, you’ll either have to develop a reputation as a fish or a fun guy to hang out with — or be well-connected enough that you’re running the game yourself. I’m not saying you have to be an eager-beaver type — and as a general life rule, I don’t think you should spend much time around people whose company you don’t enjoy. So be discerning — there are bad actors in the poker world. But your default should probably be to say “yes” to social invitations and be friendly on and off the tables.
And probably also have a social media presence. This is another way to break through or to get invites to private live-streamed games — if you’re bringing in a big audience, operators may offer you a seat even if you’re a winning player.
Assuming you’re not starting entirely from scratch and can be at least moderately +EV even at the outset, my overall goal would be to give this plan about two years. At that point, you should have accumulated some combination of: a) the bankroll established to withstand tournament variance; b) the social capital to get invites to safe, reliable private games — most private games aren’t trustworthy and should be avoided; c) lucrative poker-related side hustles, like working as a coach. True, there will always be a chance that you’re a great player and just get unlucky during this trial period. But relatively few people break through in poker these days — after years of getting younger, the poker scene is now dominated by 30 and 40-somethings. So you need to be realistic about the odds and be willing to pull the plug if you’re not cutting it.
Nate’s Incomplete Guide to Vegas
Connor asks:
Unsure if questions are still open but for a non-election related one: how would you approach planning a Las Vegas vacation for someone who's never been? I know from On the Edge that hotels and resorts tend to have strong rewards for repeat customers, but for someone who has mild interest in gambling but wouldn't want to make a habit out of it and be a regular visitor, are there particular neighborhoods or types of establishment to stay in / go to that are good for that? Also curious about what food to eat.
Thanks for the question, Connor. One qualifier is that my journeys to Vegas are in some ways atypical, consisting of poker and business trips rather than, say, bachelor party weekends. I know Vegas Strip hotels very well and restaurants pretty well, and I’ll cover them in detail. I’m not going to be your best guide to nightclubs, shows and sightseeing — though I’ve done pretty much everything at least once. But let’s start out with three very basic strategic tips: