Vegas for Low-Limit Professionals Part 1

This is part one of a three-part article to help save you from yourself in a city built for high rollers. In Las Vegas, where money is concerned, it can be easy to go 'O'-verboard.
Vegas baby... Vegas
Being a low-limit poker professional requires as much bankroll discipline off the table as it does on the table.
There are people in Vegas whose whole job is researching the psychology of spending. They literally build and renovate casinos trying to maximize the amount of money they can take out of your pocket. To give you some basic examples:
• The carpet in a casino is obnoxious. This is done on purpose; they use obnoxious patterns and colors to make you stop looking at the floor when you walk. If you're not looking at the floor, you're looking at slot machines and table games.
• There are no clocks or natural light. They don't want you to know what time of day it is. People are happy to drink and gamble at 8 a.m. on a Wednesday, just as long as they don't have to be reminded of it.
• The casinos are a maze. You will have to walk past hundreds of tables and slots to find your way out.
• Higher-limit tables marked cards lenses and slots are in more attractive areas, with more attractive people in them. Casinos hire beautiful women to sit and play at higher-limit tables. You won't be the first, or last, guy to sit next to her to chat her up. (These people are known as "props.")
The whole city is built in a way to make you want to play games and limits in which you had no intention of playing. The Vegas culture glorifies any decent-sized wins, and sweeps losses under the carpet.
Don't get me wrong and think I'm talking smack here; Vegas is one of the greatest cities in the world. You just have to know how to keep your roll in your own pocket. This guide should be a great starting point for you.

Best-case scenario is to have a girlfriend who plays as much as you do. Vanessa Rousso would be a fine choice.

The Company You Keep
If you're a low-stakes professional, you will be going to Vegas to work. This will translate into 8-20 hours of poker a day. You will live in the various poker rooms, and be more than content doing just this. As a result you have to go with friends in a similar frame of mind.
If your best friend wants to go with you but he/she doesn't play poker, you'll be making a big mistake going with them. You'll have the choice of making them hang out in Vegas alone, or chilling with them and losing out on playing cards. If you can't play cards, you can't work.
Your goal is to leave Vegas with more money than you had before you arrived. You need to make enough money to cover all the costs of your trip, as well as earning for yourself. To do this, you need to grind.
Ladies: before you write angry letters to me about this next point, please read the reasoning as well.
Guys, it's a mistake to go to Vegas exclusively with your girlfriend (unless of course she's going to be playing too). If your best buddy wouldn't like being left alone to entertain himself, how do you think your girlfriend would feel? I've said it before, and I'll say it again: no girl wants to feel like she's second-best to a card game.
If you go to Vegas just for a vacation, then by all means, there's no one better to bring along. But if you plan to go and play some serious cards, it would be a mistake to bring the old lady. Along with not being able to earn, you're going to be spending significantly more money on entertainment and food if you're not playing all day. That's a double hit to your roll.
Another person to watch out for is the über-gambler. If you bring your friend with a gambling affliction, it's easy to get dragged along. If your friend is rocking the table games all day, you're going to be doing the same. You'll want to party with them, and it's easy to say "Screw it; we're in Vegas!"
I'm not just making these things up. I've been in these situations and made all these mistakes. Luckily for me, "All of it on red" was very good to me. After your fifth glass of cognac, putting all your money on one spin of a wheel can seem like a really smart idea.
Being a low-stakes professional, you can't afford to be giving away a few buy-ins on a roulette table. Playing a little $5 blackjack is one thing, but when you get in with a manic gambler, it's not long before you start pushing $200 bets.
The best way to avoid making such a mistake is to only carry a small portion of your roll on you. Hotel rooms have safes, and hotels have lock boxes. I suggest you use them.

A bed and a bathroom. What else do you really need?

Where to Put Your Suitcase
Anyone who's been to Vegas before will understand why I say "Where to put your suitcase" rather than "where to stay." You're not going to spend much time in your room at all. When you do need to sleep after being up for 36 hours or so, you'll crash so hard that you couldn't care less what the room looked like.
When you go to Vegas to play poker exclusively, it's more of a working trip than a vacation. On a trip like this you won't be partaking in many of the inter-room activities you otherwise would marked cards. (I'm talking about playing big two and Yahtzee!, obviously).
If you're going to be spending almost no time in your room, the quality of the room isn't of the foremost importance. I'm pretty sure my girlfriend would disagree with me on this point - yet another reason why it saves you money to go with someone other than your honey.
Imperial Palace: This is the go-to hotel. It can be booked for as low as $40 a night, and it's literally across the street from Caesars Palace and the Bellagio. All hotels in Vegas cost more on weekends and during peak times, so it can go up as high as $90 a night.
Staying on or near the central Strip keeps your cab costs low. It also makes it easy to stumble back to bed after a long night.
The downside to this wonderland of cheap is it's pretty clear you're not staying at the Ritz the second you step through the front door. Some people describe the place as "creepy," others, "dank." I like to go with "rustic."
It's pretty dark, not the cleanest place in the world, and makes you feel like you've just hit 88 mph in the Delorean. But $40 a night to be across the street from the Bellagio? Fine by me. Plus there was a really awesome, and cute, waitress working the Palace's casino last time I was there.
The Travelodge behind the Harley Davidson café: If reading that hasn't scared you away already, I highly recommend this place as well. It's also across the street from the Bellagio, but a bit to the New York New York side, putting you more of a walk from Caesars and the Mirage. This place looks pretty sketchy at the best of times.
It's also in the $40 a night range, and even sports a pool. I enjoyed my stay here, and found it only to look sketchy. It was clean and friendly and I never felt at risk of being... sketched. This place is my Imperial Palace backup.

The Bellagio is as beautiful and spectacular inside as it is out.

The Bellagio: I bet you didn't think I'd have the Bellagio on my list. The Bellagio is my second-favorite casino in all of Vegas (The Wynn being No. 1). The rooms are spectacular, the place is spectacular, and you're minutes away from the Bellagio Poker room.
The downfall to the Bellagio is cost. You're looking at close to $500 for a room. Don't get discouraged just yet. The poker rate for a room at the Bellagio is $120 a night on weeknights. To get the poker rate, you're required to play five hours a day in the Bellagio poker room.
The lowest limit the Bellagio spreads is $2/$5 No-Limit. And it's a serious action game. So the Bellagio is a great place for medium-stakes poker professionals with a large roll. I put it here for when you move up the food chain.
If you're planning an extended stay it might be really worthwhile to look into this one. If you're staying for over a month, the game changes. You'll play shorter sessions, and spend more time in your room relaxing and sleeping. At this point having a nice room is paramount.
Part two to come will cover poker room comps and where to put in your hours. Stay tuned... same bat time, same bat channel.

Poker's Greatest All-Time Whales: Andy Beal

The "whale" is the holy grail of poker - a big-moneyed, amateur poker player with a bottomless bankroll, an eye for the gamble and next-to-no sense of what's truly happening on the felt.
In honor of the Discovery Channel's now-infamous Shark Week guest blogger James Guill is breaking down some of poker's biggest-ever donators in a five-part series we've dubbed #WhaleWeek.
Next up: Dallas banker Andy Beal
By James Guill
Andy Beal is perhaps the best known whale in poker history.
His battles with an elite team of marked cards poker pros dubbed "The Corporation" are the stuff of legend with the Texas billionaire wagering - and losing - more in one pot than many people will earn in their lifetimes.

Mind for Business

Andy Beal had an aptitude for business at a young age. In high school, he would acquire broken televisions to repair and resell for a nice profit.
Shortly after graduating high school, he began to buy and renovate business properties. He sold those properties for a substantial profit.
By the early 1980's, Beal had graduated to renovating and reselling apartment complexes and began flipping them for millions.
In 1988, he opened Beal Bank and six years later opened another branch in Las Vegas. Those companies have assets exceeding $9.5 billion.
Throughout the years Beal has made money from financing casino properties to buying up airline debt. He's a shrewd businessman that has accumulated a personal net worth of $8.5 billion.

Poker Funded Early Business Ventures

Andy Beal has played poker since his college years. It has been widely reported that he was a fairly successful player during college and it may have helped fund some of his early business ventures.
His journey into poker history came after a visit to the Bellagio poker room in 2001. He played in games against several professionals and finished his stay up over $100,000.
Beal was smart enough to know that his win was likely the result of running good, so he began to work on his poker game.
In time, Beal decided that he had the ability to take on the best in the world. The only thing he needed was a way to get them to play him.
Ultimately, he put up so much money that the pros had no choice but to play him.

The Corporation is Born

Beal wanted to test his poker skills against the very best players in the world and proceeded to challenge them to a series of heads-up Limit Hold'em poker matches.
Starting in 2001, Beal took on a group of pros known simply as "The Corporation." This team consisted of Jen Harman, Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese, Ted Forrest, Chau Giang, Gus Hansen, Todd Brunson and,, eventually Phil Ivey.
For the next three years, Beal played marked card tricks the pros in a series of matches with varying results. Limits first started at $10,000-$20,000 and moved up steadily to $100,000-$200,000.
The book The Professor, The Banker and The Suicide King, written by Michael Craig, chronicles the matches between Beal and the Corporation until March 2004.
One of Beal's biggest accomplishments against the pros was taking down what was considered one of the largest hands in live poker history -- a pot worth an impressive $11.7 million.
Beal would ultimately lose $16 million to the Corporation as a whole and vowed never to play against them again. However, that changed in a big way in February 2006. Beal returned to battle the Corporation.
After a series of matches at the Wynn Casino he decimated the pros to the tune of $13.6 million. This prompted the pros to pool their resources in an attempt to recoup their losses.
When Beal returned a week later the pros decided to put their fate into the hands of Phil Ivey. Over the course of three days, Ivey proceeded to embarrass Beal and emerged from the tables having won $16.6 million.
The $16-million loss prompted Beal to discontinue his challenge against the pros and he has yet to issue a new challenge.

Still Plays, Still Loses

Beal has kept true to his word and has not reopened his challenge to the pros, but he may still have dropped large sums elsewhere.
According to reports in 2011 Beal took part in some underground poker games including actor Tobey Maguire and billionaire Alec Gores.
Some reports claim Beal lost over $50 million in the course of three days while others claim that those losses may be inflated. If those reports are true, then Beal is quickly approaching losses of $100 million lifetime in poker.
While that pales in comparison to his overall wealth it's more money than most pros will ever hope to make in their career.
Beal still plays the game today but on a recreational basis. He has been spotted in Vegas poker rooms while in the city on business but still stays away from playing the Vegas pros.
Of course, should he ever decide to give the Corporation another crack at his money, a chair will be available.