When we last left off, I was deep into the final stretch of a month-long Las Vegas grind. More than three weeks of mixed game poker were already behind me, complete with some solid wins, painful losses, stupid unforgivable mistakes, mental fatigue, and moments of clarity that only come from extended time at (and away from) the tables. With just a few days remaining before flying home, my focus shifted definitively towards “how well can I finish?”
I won’t lie. Treading barely above the breakeven line, I also felt some desperation creeping into my mind for the first time. While I know not to be results-oriented as a poker player, a better bottom line result would certainly make a better impression upon crossing the finish line (and, frankly, an exciting and uplifting end to this miniseries).
What follows is not just a recap of my final sessions, but a series of reflections on how my month as a semipro mixed game poker player in Las Vegas came to its conclusion.
Having spent a lot of time at Orleans’ poker tables during the last week of my trip, the adjacent Baskin Robbins certainly brought me a good deal of joy.
Days 24-25 | November 28–29: Forced Rest and a Reminder of Why the Grind Matters
My final week in Las Vegas didn’t begin the way I had envisioned. Post-Thanksgiving, I got sick with stomach flu throughout most of Friday and Shabbat. I suppose, in hindsight, that it was for the best. A good dose of sleep, rest, and recovery would enable me to charge full force into my remaining few days at the felt. If I was destined to have gotten sick, let it be on days that I wasn’t going to be playing poker anyway, right? 🙂
Thankfully, by Saturday night, my hunger — and my hunger to get back out there and play more poker — returned in full force.
I late-regged for the $240 Triple Draw Mix tournament at Orleans. Two hours later I was out well short of the money, finishing a disappointing 27th out of 40. It was frustrating because I simply could not get anything going, but sometimes that’s just how tournament poker goes.
From there, I moved into a $4/8 Limit Hold’em cash game with a very specific goal: try to make back the tournament buy-in and call it a night. What followed was an eight-hour session that turned into one of the most exciting wins of my trip.
Over the course of the session I managed to bob and weave my way to winning $165. Along with that, I had also won an extra $75 from a poker room promotion for hitting quads. Then, on what turned out to be my final hand, I flopped quad aces and was awarded a massive $450 bonus. I quit immediately. After all was said and done, I finished up $690 on a $200 buy-in!
When you start a $4/8 Limit Hold’em session hoping to hit a promo… and eventually, after 8 hours, you do 😁🎉
Thank you @OrleansPokerRo1 🙏
Flopped quad aces never felt so good 😊 pic.twitter.com/ACfjWlLo3V
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) November 30, 2025
What made the session especially meaningful was the context. With a $5 rake plus a $3 jackpot drop almost every hand, the game effectively sheds around $350 per hour. That’s a tough game to beat! After eight hours, I was the only player still sitting at the table from the original lineup, and I am not sure any of the others booked a profit before leaving. To come out ahead naturally, even before bonuses, felt like a genuine achievement. The rest was gravy.
Day 26 | November 30: Long Sessions, The Agony of Missed Bets, and a Determined Grind
With the end of the trip approaching, every remaining hour I still had to play poker felt precious. It’s with that sense of urgency that I settled into a $6/12 mix session (with a half kill to $8/16) at Resorts World.
Fewer things are more “motivating” poker-wise than only having a few days left of a trip…
The scarcity ALWAYS makes it such a precious commodity to me.
As always, excited to play some mix here at @PokerRoomRWLV
Let’s make some more memories (and money) 🤑 pic.twitter.com/HHXSzKkdOp
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) November 30, 2025
Overall, I was doing okay, but I could feel some bad habits creeping in. I chased a bit too often instead of tightening up, and I made a few outright mistakes. The most glaring were missing bets at the end when I was good. For instance, in one Drawmaha 2-7 hand, I ended up checking back the river as last to act when I should have realized I was guaranteed at least half the pot. Those moments of lapsed focus continue to haunt me. You’ve got to make the right moves whether you’re playing with $2 chips or $20 chips!
Even so, a few hours in I had worked my way up to about $280 in profit and had my sights set on hitting $400.
It did not happen.
After the game combined to a single table, I steadily lost it all as the cards went cold. When the game eventually broke after nine hours, I was right back where I had started. Disappointed at the result, I found myself wishing I had quit earlier to lock up the profits. I guess that’s only natural, but I don’t believe it’s a very healthy way to approach poker. In any event, I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel on my day just yet.
From there, I headed back to Orleans to chase another promo at $4/8 Limit Hold’em. I know it isn’t a mixed game, but having managed to score a bonus there the night before combined with the lure of additional promotions is why I chose to grind at that specific venue towards the end of the trip. What can I say? They got me 🙂 🤷♂️
After about an hour I was ready to quit when I found myself down $110, but the table broke and there was exactly one seat left at the only other $4/8 Limit Hold’em table in the room, so I took it with the remaining $90 in my stack. On the very first hand, I was dealt pocket aces and they ended up holding at showdown. Thanks to multiple preflop callers and one opponent who stuck around with pocket kings until the end, suddenly I was back to even. From there, everything clicked. I finished the session up $200 and left immediately, another strong result in a brutally raked game.
Along the way, I learned a new Orleans-ism: six ways to the flop is apparently called “Orleans heads-up.” IYKYK 😂
Day 27 | December 1: Prioritizing Friendship, Learning, and Perspective
Though there was a low-stakes mixed game running on this day, I made the decision not to play and instead spend the day railing my friend and mentor Eli Elezra. Between hosting my Mixed Game Festival and my own grind, I had not had many chances to just sit with him, watch, learn, and enjoy the experience. I’ve put in a good couple hundred hours sitting on his rail over the years, and those represent some of my most enjoyable poker memories. I wanted to have that experience again before I headed home.
For about eight hours, I watched him grind his way from being slightly down in his $300/600 mix to locking up a low five-figure win. As always, it was riveting to have a front row seat to the action. I don’t really do much formal poker study, so that’s my version of “being in the lab”: talking through hands, debating decisions, and constantly asking questions. Old school-style.
Throughout the session, Eli and I also “talked through” my entire trip; the ups, the downs, and the lessons I should be aiming to learn and internalize for next time. It was also a chance to “own up” to the main mistakes I made during my month as a mixed games semipro that prevented me from being more profitable, all of which would have added up to another $3K or so. Even so, Eli reassured me that to nonetheless still be up a little after all that illustrated “how well I did” to withstand all the inevitable bumps along the road.
Let me tell you folks, having a Poker Hall of Famer give you that kind of an open, honest assessment helps boost your spirits a lot.
Later that night, I squeezed in a short $4/8 Limit Omaha 8 session at Orleans, starting hot and ending up with another $200 profit in just two hours. That felt like the perfect example of knowing when enough is enough. Not every poker session needs to be 10 hours long. Sometimes a clean, profitable two-hour session is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Not Tainting the Purity of the Grind
Most cash game players play low-stakes Texas Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha, where swings of $1,000 or more are pretty commonplace. With mixed games, we take escalators instead of elevators. That is to say that, generally speaking, it’s a far more gradual win/loss process. As I noted at the beginning of this miniseries, that’s how I built nearly my entire bankroll. It has taken me years of effort.
I obviously wanted to win more money over the course of this trip, but with just one day left I wasn’t about to flip a switch and just “gamble, gamble” at NLHE and PLO tables hoping to get lucky and spin it up. This is essentially the same reason why I never just “put it all on red or black”. I’ve always been a poker player, not a gambler. Plus, frankly, I wasn’t anywhere near mentally prepared to potentially lose the few hundred dollars in profit (or more) that I was still clinging to via one or two crazy coolers.
I flew out to Las Vegas to grind mixed games, and I was going to honor that process until I crossed the finish line.
Day 28 | December 2: One Last Hurrah
With 24 hours left to my trip, I was optimistic that I’d be able to end things off on a high note. As per my usual, I planned for an all-nighter.
It was cold. After arriving to shorts and T-shirt weather, the seasons had changed. I got here during NAPT Las Vegas and was leaving just as the WPT World Championship was kicking off.
It was a day of “lasts”: the last exercise walk, finishing off the food I had bought, filling the rental car’s gas tank, doing a last load of laundry, and packing up to head home.
I was proud that from a cost/overhead perspective, I had done a near-perfect job. Being in Las Vegas for a month meant I had to treat the time as though I lived there, not like I was vacationing there. With a stated goal of making money, it also meant not spending it unnecessarily. This felt like a particularly worthy achievement in a city built on lightening visitors’ wallets.
It also ended up being a great business day. This reinforced just how important it was to not abandon my regular work, especially the value of in-person conversations, while pursuing poker as a semipro.
And, of course, I had one final day of poker to play.
Last full day of the trip and it has been an amazing one…
Always bittersweet, but grateful for what has been, what is, and (hopefully, Gdwilling) for what will be 🙏
Time to make the final session count here at @ARIAPoker 😁 pic.twitter.com/gPDFpWQ4LG
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) December 2, 2025
I took my seat in a $9/18 mixed game at Aria and decided, for the first time all month, to buy in short (for just one rack; $300). My hope was that a scarcity mindset would help me value every chip. Unfortunately, after 3.5 hours, I needed to rebuy. Before doing so, I walked over to Bellagio to say goodbye to Eli and clear my head for one final push. On the spot, he decided to invest a couple racks ($600) in me, essentially giving me one last freeroll. Unfortunately, over the next 4.5 hours, I ran ice cold. I got quartered repeatedly, could not get paid when I was strong, and got outdrawn when I was ahead. Nothing worked. Even with the most positive of attitudes, you can’t always will your way to a win at the poker table. C’est la vie.
After the game broke, I decided to “give it one last shot” at Orleans in the $4/8 Limit Hold’em game. I figured that in a worst case scenario, the damage wouldn’t be too bad. In a best case scenario, maybe I’d get lucky and hit one of the high hands for a big promo score. I certainly came close on three separate occasions:
- I flopped four to a 10-high flush (would’ve gotten $1,200)
- I flopped four to a royal flush twice, but missed (would’ve gotten $5,000 for flopping it, and $1,500 if I had hit it on the turn or river).
Close, but no cigar. As if to rub a little salt in the wound, a couple hours into the session someone else took a seat at the table and within a few minutes managed to flop four fives, a promo hand worth just under $2,000. He was completely unaware of any promos running in the poker room…
That was my cue to leave. At least I won a few bucks before racking up with a wistful smile.
Closing Thoughts
I got absolutely demolished in my $9/18 sessions (17.5 hours) and $20/40 sessions (19 hours) over the course of the trip. By contrast, I won a little in my $8/16 sessions (55 hours) and was a big winner in $4/8 sessions (78 hours). Maybe there’s a real jump in player caliber, and I clearly need to improve and adjust? Maybe I just need to run better?
If I’m being 100% honest, I’d say it’s a combination of the two. After all, I’ve won at $20/40, $40/80, and even $80/160 before. Those weren’t fluke wins. Plus, sample size is a thing, both for better and for worse.
So, yes, a lot of it boils down to discipline, consistently making good decisions, and having decent card distribution. At the same time, I know that I obviously need to keep working on my game and actively heed the many lessons I learned during my month as a semipro mixed game player.
I will keep taking shots, and I will keep playing the occasional tournament in pursuit of big scores. Those scores will eventually come because luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. My job is to keep showing up.
Even after a month, part of me wanted to stay and keep playing. But the other part of me couldn’t wait to hug my wife and children again. The games will still be there when I eventually get back.
Ed. note: I’ve included some graphs and notes below for full transparency, along with an epilogue.
Notes & Stats:
- 174 BB won over 159.5 hours of low-stakes mixed cash games (22 sessions)
- $525 won via poker room promotions
- Won $150 playing $1/2 No Limit Hold’em for 1 hour
- Lost $840 playing in (and busting) four tournaments over 12.5 hours
- Lost $50 playing video poker (yes, that comes out of the bankroll)
- My $20/40 results and data are not reflected in the above graphs
Final tally: 202 hours of poker played | $600 overall profit
I came to Vegas for a month.
Not to cover events, like in the past.
But to run a Mixed Game Festival — and to play lots and lots and LOTS of poker.
As I take off to the skies and head home, just taking a moment to express absolute gratitude for having had the opportunity. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/9IcLFlvFXt
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) December 3, 2025
Epilogue
If you would have told me 10 years ago, or even two years ago, that I’d have the opportunity to grind for a full month in Las Vegas as a semipro mixed game player, I’d say “you’re out of your mind.”
While it’s easy to lament having won only $600 over the course of the month and ponder the futility of a $3/hour win rate, I instead choose gratitude:
- I have the best wife in the world.
- I have the best poker mentors and friends in the world.
- I got to live out a poker dream.
I also got to have the catharsis of writing an 11,000-word, 5-part miniseries about my adventure; a deeply honest account of what it means to grind mixed cash games over the course of a month. The swings, the mistakes, the wins, the losses, the camaraderie, and the countless hours at the tables all blended together into an experience that reaffirmed why I love the grind in the first place.
I did my best, and I know that someday — hopefully not too far in the future — I’ll get to do it again.
When I do, it’s going to be awesome.
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