Thank you for such an informative reply. I really enjoy playing on Replay and do not think I have the ambition to play for anything other than fun. It makes me realise that to earn money I must stick to what I am good at, and keep poker for pleasure!
Reading your comments, it seems that just sitting down at a poker table and playing is not the way for any person with the desire to play poker professionally, so how much homework does a professional player do away from the tables, eg practice time, studying other top players, even having special diets to improve concentration?
Wow, ok,
When you are starting out, you take some notes while you are playing. Then plan on about one hour of notes and recall once you get home for the day. Reading a poker book in your spare time before going to sleep never hurts.
When I first moved to Las Vegas, it took me almost a year to find myself solidly in the win column, winning more than loosing. But, in my defense, this was Las Vegas. I had been playing home games twice a week for a couple of years before moving to Vegas, but the skill levels of the players I was now going up against was truly apples and oranges.
Unless it is your lifelong ambition to become a professional poker player, just plan on having fun with the free play until you are ready to move up a notch.
A hint - after a while start playing in the free sit and go poker tournaments. Poker tournaments are where the big money is for all levels of poker players once you switch to live cash games.
When you are comfortable, log in to a live low buy-in sit and go, eventually moving up to a thousand player poker tournament on your weekend, sitting back at home with a cold beer while still in your underwear. If you are willing to put in the time, there is big money out there looking for a new home.
Happy Holidays, David
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Hi, Konrad,
Personally, I do not consider it to be a completely different game.
The players at the table will take it much more seriously.
Go in the poker room and walk around. Become familiar with your surroundings. Read each and every sign posted on the walls. They are the specific rules of that poker room. Not all poker rooms follow all of the same rules. Walk up to the front desk and see if they have any paperwork on display. Ask a floor person if it is all right to stand around and watch the action for a bit before you choose what type of game you would like to play and explain to him that this is your first time. If you finally feel comfortable enough, tell the floor person that you are ready to play. Pick a low “limit” game to start with, not a “no limit” game. You may get up and leave almost any time you wish.
Mostly, sit back and have fun.
(Remember to put on your poker face)
Happy Holidays, David
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Thank you David! Merry Christmas!!!
On an odd note, I have been playing poker since I was taught by my relatives at the tender age of 5 years old, playing for match sticks, and I loved it.
When I got out of my military college in my early 20s, we no longer had a draft, and we were pulling out of Vietnam.
So, off I went to Las Vegas, to become a professional poker dealer in a city that never sleeps and where I knew absolutely no one (raised in Viginia, went to a military college in North Georgia).
I loved every minute of my new life. Dealing poker during the days and finding a soft spot to play poker during the evenings, while all the time looking for lovely women, of whom there were many. I mean this was Las Vegas. Every beautiful young lady in the world winds up here at one time or another. Then around age 30 something, I decided to try playing poker for a living.
My ultimate dream.
A professional poker player living in Las Vegas Nevada.
And I was good. But I finally hit a wall. I could beat games up to 15- and 30-dollar limit (20/40 whenever I went into Las Angeles to play for a weekend vacation, more people there, easier players). At 20 and 40 limit in Las Vegas I could only break even. If I went higher, I started to lose. The higher you go, the better caliber of player you were up against. Ok, I gave it a shot and the answer was, no, I was not destined to have my picture up on the wall of the immortal best poker players of all time. Mind you I was still making good money, but, Oh My God, the hours you have to put in and the unending number of assholes you must associate with on a daily basis sitting at a table that you can’t get away from. And then I noticed something. I had mentally turned poker, in my mind, from fun time, into a business. I bought a Corvette and went scuba diving with young women in the Caribbean (not too young). I no longer had that eagerness to go play poker that I once had. I was a winning poker player but was no longer having fun with the game. I had lost a very important part of my life and I never got it back, right up to this day. I finally switched back to working in poker rooms for a living, and I enjoyed it. But I never again enjoyed playing poker for fun. (Although I do enjoy winning still) Now, whenever I sat down at a table, my mind switched over to the cold business mode. So now I play poker online, multiple tables at once for the mental challenge. If you don’t think it stretches your mental capacity, you try playing 6 tables of Omaha High Low split at the same time and winning. (Usually, I just play four tables at once, I don’t want to hurt myself, mentally, LOL)
What I wish to caution everyone is that, if you truly love playing poker, think, and think again before you attempt to go pro. You might find a tradeoff that is just not worth it in the long run.
Happy Holidays, David
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I guess you have not really tried playing in tournaments on Replay Poker, as I see on your profile that you have slightly less than 1 million chips.
If you played the tournaments which are 1 million chips or 5 million chips to enter, what percentage of the time do you think you would win the tournaments?
Presumably since you can play several tables at once, you would find it very easy playing only one table. What single piece of advice would you give a Replay Poker tournament player to increase their win frequency?
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Hi BuffaloKing,
I think that I have played exactly zero regular poker tournament on Replay Poker, although I did play in an afternoon beat the staff tournament. I got bored after less than one half hour of play.
I have a second house up in Las Vegas where live action poker is Legal. I very rarely play in 4-to-6-hour daily poker tournaments anymore. I really enjoy playing 3 or 4 ring games at one time. It challenges the mind (keep in mind that I am 75 years old) and I can quit all my tables at any time I wish when playing ring games. In Vegas I have two monitors hooked up together so that I can play 6 games at once. I used to play 8 tables, but getting older, I find that my win ratio is better with 6 tables. And yes, I do have about one million in chips on replay and I have not paid cash for any of them
I played in the WSOP a few times in Las Vegas but got bored by the second day. Like I said, I am now only good for single evening poker tournaments these days. Your right, I could very easily play in a single table tournament, but for a ten-to-20-hour tournament I would be bored to death in less than 2 hours. I really enjoy the fast-paced action of playing multiple ring tables at once. Especially 3 or 4 tables of Omaha high low split. Talk about keeping your attention focused.
Winning a poker tournament and placing in the money in a tournament are two completely different things. My goal was always to make it to the final table, in the money, and then worry about winning. I really hate coming in just out of the money.
Over the years I have played in literally hundreds of daily tournaments. When they started playing Omaha high low split poker tournaments at The Fort MacDowell casino one night per week, of the first 10 weeks, I won 7of them and placed in the money in the other three
When they asked me to start poker tournaments at the Chumash Casino outside of Sants Barbara, when I got them started, I was working on day shift and came in to play in the tournaments on swing shift to play and to also watch to see that my training was being followed. After the first two weeks, the Table games manager made it a rule that no staff management were allowed to play in the tournaments for the foreseeable future. I had won 12 of the first 14 tournaments.
You see, those 1 million and 5 million tournaments take up the whole damn day. I just don’t have the interest. Playing on one table at a time is sooooo slooooow.
As I have said in other posts, when you start the first hand in a poker tournament you have one goal. Make it to the money table or tables. Every decision you make has that goal in mind, meaning you can through away pocket Kings preflop if it helps you get to you goal. After you are in the money, your next goal is to get into the top three spots, because that is where most of the money is paid out. Once you are in the final three, now focus on winning the tournament.
And by the way, playing one table for hours at a time is like being in hell for me.
Some players love it. Just not my thing anymore
I hope this helps.
Merry Xmas. David
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Thanks for your interesting reply. Actually the 1 million tournaments here on RP usually last 2 hours or a bit less, occasionally a bit more if you have a really tough final table. With each player starting with 5,000 chips, at the beginning of the second hour the blinds are already 200/400, so the final part of the tournament unrolls fairly quickly.
I usually play the 6-max tournament at 7:30 p.m. my local time, so that is my evening’s entertainment. Most of the time I make it into the second hour, but if I go below 20 BBs, I am inclined to go for a risky double or quits.
To me the main factor in winning these tournaments is to study the style of play of opponents, particularly if they are unknown to me. For example, they will often overcall pre-flop raises or make pot-sized bluff bets on the river too often. I think with Replay Poker being play money, probably the biggest error most people make (including me) is in bet-sizing (usually too big.)
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Thanks, I did not know about the two-hour tournaments, but now I am really not interested. Two hours at those quickly escalating limits turns it into a shootout. I guess it does not matter in a free chip tournament, but I take my poker seriously.
You are right, this betting style has nothing in common with real cash poker tournaments. It is like going out on the golf course all alone and teaching yourself how to get to the Masters.
Physically and mentally impossible, a waste of time.
You can eventually by, trial and error, teach yourself how to get in the money in a free poker tournament, but what have you actually accomplished
If all you want to do is kill time and have fun, you have found your Nitch in life.
But please, do not think this is helping you a very much on learning how to win in a real cash game. Real cash players have to pay their dues, by playing in real cash games.
Merry Xmas, David
By the way, I think you caught me with a hangover.
Ok, I guess it is time to tell you a story about when the Mob ruled Las Vegas.
This was about 1982 and the Dunes was run by the Mob, from top to bottom. I was dealing for Johnny Moss who owned and ran the poker room there. He leased the space from the hotel and my paychecks were issued by the Dune’s Hotel. Johnny was not really what you would call a mobster, just an associate.
As I have previously noted, A lot of low-level mob personnel liked to play poker, and I got to know most of them on a first name basis The man trusted to run the day to running of the mob, outside of the casinos was a man named Tony Spilotro (Tony the Ant). Joe Pesci was a good pick to play his part in the movie “Casino”. Tony was not very tall and was a nice enough guy when he was off the clock. By the time I first met him, he was listed in what was called “The Black Book” in Nevada Gaming. This meant that he was not allowed anywhere near a Nevada Casino. He could be arrested for just being seen in a casino parking lot, let alone inside the casino proper. When I first met Tony, I was working in the Aladdin casino poker room, also run by Johnny Moss, on the Las Vegas strip. I was working day shift at the time and got off at six at night. Just a couple of buildings down from the Aladdin was a little Italian restaurant called “The Leaning Tower of Pizza”. I used to stop in there at least once a week to order a take-out dinner. I lived in an apartment complex of 4 plexus just one block behind the Alladin Casino. The restaurant was a meeting place for Mob associates. I have no idea if the Mob owned the place, but it would not surprise me. While I was waiting for my order, I would see 3 to 5 known Mob members sitting at a table in the back corner of the room talking and sometimes eating. Because I knew almost all of them by name, I would often walk over to talk while I was waiting for my take-out. If there was someone there I did not know, they would introduce me by first names. I was almost always welcome to join in the conversation because almost all of them were people that I dealt poker to, and they loved to talk poker stories or hear stories that I had to tell. They were very careful of their surroundings, and sometimes I was casually waved off before I got to the table, I guess they were talking about something that I should not hear, and to tell the truth, probably about something that I did not want to hear. One day when I walked over to the table, I was introduced to a man who’s picture I had frequently seen in the paper but had never seen in person before, Tony Spilotro. The topic of conversation quickly became poker and Tony joined in. Over the next few years as I worked in the Alladin, the Flamingo, and the Dunes hotels, I very frequently saw Tony at the restaurant. Enough so that he knew my name and talked to me like a friend. He asked questions and laughed enough, so I guessed that I was safer than the average person around Las Vegas. I even got free tickets to good seats down front at the Sahara for 4 people every New Year’s Eve to watch “Sha Na Na” play. My favorites at the time. I could get seats in just about anywhere in Vegas, even when they were sold out, but I still did have to tip the head man in the showroom for the special seats up front. I was never asked for any favors, I guessed they just liked me or were saving up for something special. Hey, in Vegas, you never knew. I feel sure that most of you have seen the movie “Casino” at least once. Well, the movie was at least 95% right on. I knew most of the people in real life, except for Frank Rosenthall’s wife. Her, I had seen from a distance but was never introduced to. Tonys number two man, or at least I thought of him that way, was named Frank Cullotta. I never saw these guys at work, I mean overtly illegal work, and I had good interaction with all of them that I met. Some I saw working at different casinos and would say Hi to when I saw them. These men were not hiding in plain sight back then. They had real Jobs.
Then comes my story.
I was dealing at the Dunes one day and a player in the number 4 seat was having a bad day. I mean, really, he could just not win a hand. We had about 5 tables going that afternoon (dealers were pulling 20-minute downs back then, not like the 30-minute downs of today). I sat at his table for the second time that day and saw that he was about to explode. I guessed that his luck had not gotten any better. The game was 10/20 limit seven card stud. About the third hand I dealt out, he looked at his first 3 cards and threw them in, so they landed in my dealer’s tray, not on the felt. No big deal. I deal a couple more hands and again he threw his first three cards in, only harder this time and they skipped off of the felt and onto the floor behind me. I decided to let this pass because he was having a bad day. The very next hand his cards again went sailing past me on to the floor. I picked them up and politely asked him not to throw his cards so hard that they went on to the floor. He just glared at me, not saying anything. The very next hand, his cards went sailing past me again. I picked them up and politely told him that if it happened again that I would be required to deal him out and he would need the permission of the floor person to be dealt back in. I was not prepared for his response.
With spittle flying from his mouth he said, “You’re going to deal me out, you little pissant? No, no. You deal me out and when you get off work tonight, I am going to have two of my boys waiting by your car. They are going to break both of your arms and both of your legs. Tomorrow, I will be back here playing poker. Where will you be, you little pissant? Go on, deal me out!” He was yelling so loud that he could have been heard halfway across the casino.
I was pissed. I was furiously shuffling up for the next hand so that I could deal him out, when I suddenly felt a hand take a firm hold on my shirt collar and yank me up out of the dealer’s chair, spilling cards everywhere. The hand belonged to my boss, Bob Thompson, who told me to take a double break far from the poker room. I found out later that he did not even have a replacement dealer in the room and the players just all sat there for the next 10 minutes without a dealer until the next dealer push and a new dealer sat down. When I got back to the room, 30 minutes later, the player in question was gone. During the rest of the day, I found out that the player in question was a new member of Tony Spilotro’s crew and had just recently arrived in town with his own handpicked men from Chicago. Oh joy. Bob had security escort me to my car after work that night, just in case. I came into work the next day with a 25-cal. colt auto with hollow points tucked into my back pocket behind my wallet. (It stayed there for the next year and a half until I left The Dunes to work elsewhere. Come to think of it, it still stayed there for the next few years, we had become close friends. Mine you, I still knew I was a dead man if anything went down, but at least one other person was going home with a stomachache that day).
So, the next day I came into work, went to the last table where the sign in sheet was and signed in for the day. When I turned around, sure enough, walking toward me down the center of the room was Mr. personality from the day before. Well, at least I had a few witnesses around. He walked up to me, put out his hand to shake, and said that he would like to apologize for his behavior the day before, he said that he was totally out of line. I had a hard time finding my voice but, I said, “Thank you” and shook his hand.
When I pulled my hand back there were two $25 chips in it.
As he walked away, I sat down. (It was either that or fall down).
Later in the day, I was on break sitting at the back of the room all alone, when Frank Cullotta, Tony Spilotro’s right-hand man walked over and sat down beside me. He did not look at me, he just stared out across the poker room, so I did the same. After a few seconds he said, still not looking at me, "Did you get the $50)? I said “Yes”. He then then said, “Do you know why you got the $50”. I thought about it and then answered truthfully.
“I thought I did, but now I am not so sure.”
At that, he laughed and said, “You see, it’s like this. Mike is allowed to have two of his boys waiting by your car to break both of your arms and both of your legs.” Then he turned to look at me.
“He is just not allowed to announce it to the whole world.”
Then he just got up and walked away, me, still sitting there, with probably a stupid look on my face. You see, there is only one man in Las Vegas that could order Mr. Personality to walk through the poker room, apologize, shake my hand, and give me a $50 tip.
Tony Spilotro. Somehow word had spread, Tony had heard of it, and for whatever reason he had given the order to make amends in public. Who knows, maybe because it was a Mob casino. Or maybe because Tony liked me. Who knows.
Well, that is my story.
I never saw that player in the Dunes poker Room again.
I hope you enjoyed the story.
Happy Holidays, David
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Thanks for the response and sorry about the late reply. Ron has survived and thrived in this industry for many years, living and working out of Vegas (Rio). He’s now an international host (plays guitar!) and works out of the Buffalo area where he has worked out a niche market. He’s a good man which is something I’ve rarely said about anyone.
I’m also a member of the CardsChat forum (which is why I signed up on Replay due to living in Ontario, Canada) and midway through my 1200 or so posts I encountered a professional (from your early years) who now lives in the Dominican. In any case, you both can relate to living by your wits and instinct as was required. I’ll try to find his CC nickname and note a few interesting things related. Regarding books, Poker Faces about a particular “historical” Poker economy/sub culture, was a book I read years ago and have not come across one like it since.
Regarding some of my background, when I was in my 20’s the 80’s was a venturesome and adventuresome time. Here’s a link, a French Foreign Legion Forum where you may (possibly) access posts of mine. This site had upgraded a few years ago and much of my earlier material…some photos…etc… were lost but I’ve still maintained some activity there. There’s another, a math related one, where I discontinued my membership but some older posts still exist here, jwaltos - mersenneforum.org
Regarding Clive Cussler (he had a good TV series too!), look up Peter Easton in association with “The Curse of Oak Island” where an episode outlined some of this person’s uniquely interesting history.
Cheers and happy holidays!
Who’s Ron ? Who are you talking about?
It was a previous post in this thread.
Polytarp
I just came across your posts and never expected to see anything of the kind on a “play money” site!
Thanks for your stories! “Amazing” as Louis C.K. would say.
Out of curiosity do you know of a casino host by the name of Ron Nicoletti?
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Hi, FIKayak,
I must admit that the name rings a bell, but that’s all. Sorry
What the heck.
I decided that play money people deserved to hear some real Vegas stories from the old days.
They don’t seem to be hearing it from anyone else.
Happy Holidays, David
Wait a minute.
Am I replying to FIKayak or to Polytarp? LOL 
Thank you. I forgot all about that guy.
Sorry for any confusion I was answering craigs question.
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Thanks for the truly amazing stories. As a poker player, I’m delighted. As a sociologist, I am fascinated.
Hi, as a sociologist. which stories got your interest the most.
Now, I am curious?
Happy Holidays, David
PS - If I had started writing this stuff down in a journal, I could have had a half dozen books published by now. Dang!
Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of what went on back then.
Do you hear that, Kansas City? Chicago? New York? Dallas?
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